Nutrition

You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment 
A Review of the Netflix Docu Series

I was so excited about this docuseries when I saw the trailer for it:

The Episode 1 description reads, “Identical twins join a scientific study and must stick to either a plant-based or omnivorous diet for eight weeks to determine what is the healthiest.”

And then, almost immediately, I was super frustrated.

I was excited because we all know genetics play a big role in our health. But it’s not an exact science of how big of a role they play vs. the role of our diet, fitness, and lifestyle habits.

So, I was really excited to see some hard evidence of what change they saw in people who were identical from a DNA perspective.

But then the documentary took a different turn.

I want to cover a few different things that make it so you know that the You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment is not something you should take seriously.

1. Funding and Bias
2. Farming Practices
3. Health
4. The Results

1. Funding and Bias

Unfortunately, when it comes to health and nutrition, it’s hard to come across people who aren’t biased.

But this documentary took it to a new level. They claimed they were honestly seeking to determine which diet is healthiest but let’s take a look at who funded it, who developed it and and who was actually in it.

You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment was funded by The Vogt Foundation which is a private foundation that supports the Oceanic Preservation Society (OCS). The OCS is a California-based non-profit organization that promotes marine conservation and environmental protection by combating global issues. 

Who directed the docu series? Louie Psihoyos - the Executive Director of the Oceanic Preservation Society.

To think that you’re going to get a straightforward study that is unbiased would be pure ignorance. To think you're going to get a docu series that isn't manipulated to fit the narrative of these people and this society would be blind optimism. 

And who was in this documentary? The main nutrition scientist in this study was a man by the name of Christopher Gardner. Christopher Gardner is a professor at Stanford who started a movement called "Stealth Nutrition" whose goal is to get health professionals to encourage their clients to consider the links between food and animal rights & welfare, climate change, or human labor abuses. He’s also the head of Stanford's plant-based diet initiative which is funded by Beyond Meat.

Beyond Meat is a company creates, you guessed it, plant-based, vegan meat.

And then there’s more standouts in the documentary like Patrick Brown who is the founder of Impossible Foods who also makes Vegan meats; another Miyoko Schinner who is the founder of Miyokos Creamery, a company that makes vegan cheeses. And Miyoko's personal Instagram bio reads, “is an activist out to end cruelty to animals and climate change by connecting our palate to our future.”

Now, don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying these people are bad people. I am saying that they have an agenda. I’m saying there is no way that a documentary that is directed by a Vegan, based on a study done by a Vegan, with a Vegan fitness trainer, and funded by Vegan food companies is going to provide an unbiased look at health and nutrition.

That’s the first thing to understand about this documentary.

Now let’s talk about it from another angle.

2. Farming Practices

This is the topic of all 4 of these that I personally know least about, but I do know some from my own personal research.

For starters, no, industrial agriculture and factory farming is not good for our environment, it’s not a responsible way to raise animals, and the meat it produces is not what’s best for our health.

There’s no doubt about all of that.

But two things:
1. The degree to which it is harmful to our environment and our health is overblown and
2. This documentary spent zero time recognizing regenerative farming practices

Let’s take the popular claim that cows burping and farting adds methane gas into the atmosphere. 

There was an analysis that came out in 2006 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, called “Livestock’s Long Shadow.” The report said that Livestock produces 18% of all Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, which is more than the transportation sector.

In You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment, Carlos Nobre, a scientist at the University of Sao Paulo, says, “we know that a large amount of global emissions comes from the whole global agricultural sector and most of that comes from cattle.”

When looking at the 2006 analysis, it failed to separate the percentage of GHG emissions that came from the actual cattle themselves vs. what came from other parts of the industry. Things like the manufacturing of cars and planes used, the energy required to run the factories, the energy used for transportation and refining oil.

All of these things are obviously still factors, but most of the 18% was actually from the other factors other than the cattle themselves. 


But in this documentary they show you how easy it is to say things that aren't based on truth that make sense on the surface and can scare you into changing your beliefs.

For example, Patrick Brown, the founder of Impossible Foods, was quoted in the documentary saying, ““Every time you eat a piece of meat, a little puff of smoke goes up in the Amazon.” I mean...c'mon. He’s just trying to make you feel guilty for eating meat and paints this ridiculous picture in your head.

Another direct quote from, from the docu series is, “I read a report that said we would need 3 planets to survive if we continue to eat like we eat.” They don’t go on to note any particular report or study or back it up for any kind of reason why.

This is irresponsible and not based on anything.

Am I an expert on farming practices? No.

Am I an expert on GHG emissions? No.

What I do know is that these things are over exaggerated to scare you and change your beliefs.

And remember, this docu series gives zero recognition to regenerative farms and responsibly-raised animals.

I personally don’t buy meat that is industrially farmed or factory farmed. With beef I always get grass fed. With fish, I always get wild caught. And with chicken and eggs I always get organic and pasture raised.

This ensures that the animals were raised right, they have positive effects on our environment, and they are nutritious for our bodies.

Last thing that they didn’t even mention were a lot of the negative side effects of things like soy farming - which is a main ingredient in a lot of vegan foods - like soil erosion and degradation.

Again, that is not my area of expertise, so I won’t try to talk about that any further. However, from what I can tell, farming practices required to eat a vegan diet are not the fix our planet needs. 

Now, let’s dive into what the documentary was actually supposed to be about, health.

3. Health

The classic argument against meat that has been used for decades is the dangers of saturated fat and this documentary leverages that argument, too.

That is a decade old critique that has been modified and updated.

According to Healthline, “Most scientists accept that saturated fats are not as unhealthy as previously assumed...evidence suggests that they don’t cause heart disease, though their exact role is still being debated and investigated.”

Do I think we should be eating butt loads of saturated fat? No. 

But if you have saturated fats from responsibly-raised sources, and not in excess, then the dangers of them are most likely minimal to none for most people.

The documentary goes further into the decade old argument that eating saturated fats will increase your LDL cholesterol levels. But now, people are coming to realize that the link between cholesterol levels and heart disease is much more complex than they thought.

There is not just one kind of LDL cholesterol. There are LDL cholesterol particles that are large and not strongly associated with heart disease whereas small and dense LDL cholesterol particles are. Most blood tests don’t break down the difference between small and large LDL cholesterol.

I’m not saying to eat tons of saturated fats. I’m not saying that a high LDL cholesterol number is okay. I’m saying that the science is still unknown and the conversation is a whole lot more complex than this documentary and most people make it.

Another thing this docuseries does, which is frustrating, is they have everyday people make claims about how you can eat a plant-based diet and get all the nutrients you can from an omnivorous diet.

There is an unnamed woman in the docuseries who touts how good mushrooms are for your health. She talks about how mushrooms have both Vitamin B12 and Iron so it’s even better than eating meat. 

When I heard that, I was surprised. I was like, wow, I didn’t realize how healthy mushrooms are.

So I fact checked that and compared mushrooms to grass fed ground beef.

Let’s start with Vitamin B12.


So, how much is in ground beef and mushrooms?

4 oz of grass fed ground beef has 2.2 micrograms of B12. And remember, when you’re buying 1lb of ground beef at the grocery store, that’s 16oz, so that is if you just consume ¼ of that.

1 cup of raw brown mushrooms have 0.1 micrograms of B12. And I checked white mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, and all other mushrooms and they didn’t have any B12. 

So…the whole Vitamin B12 claim is completely false.

How about Iron?



1 cup of raw brown mushrooms contain 0.3mg of Iron and 1 cup of white mushrooms contain 0.5mg. 

So yes, mushrooms contain some iron, but it’s minimal and it would take eating a ton of mushrooms to get to the same quantity of iron as ground beef.

So, once again, misleading information.

People often claim that certain food items have a certain vitamin or mineral but fail to say in what amounts. 

Lastly, let’s talk about what I was originally super excited about, the results.

The Results

The results should have been the most shared and interesting part about the study, but they spent only about 20 minutes of the entire 4 hour docuseries talking about them.

But even then, they found a way to put their spin on it.

They reported results on 4 sets of twins. Their body composition results are as follows:

Jevon and John

Jevon - Omnivore
- Gained 7.1 lbs of muscle

John - Vegan
- Gained 2.3 lbs of muscle

When they were reporting this, I was so frustrated. 

For literally every single person, when reporting their numbers, they showed a graphic on the screen of exactly how everyone’s numbers changed from start to finish…except for Jevon. Except for the omnivore who gained 7.1lbs of muscle. They breeze passed it quickly and didn’t note how amazing of a gain that was in just 8 short weeks.

But then John, the Vegan who built 2.3lbs of muscle, they highlighted to a large degree. The lady talked about that result like it was the most amazing thing she’s ever seen. And yes, they showed that graphic on screen.

How they represented their two results on screen was ridiculous.

Next up, Carolyn and Roselyn.

Roselyn - Omnivore
- Lost 8.1 lbs of body weight. The breakdown was she
     - Lost 7.7 lbs of fat
     - Lost 0.4 lbs of muscle

Carolyn - Vegan
- Lost 7.9lbs of body weight. The breakdown was she
     - Lost 5.0 lbs of fat
     - Lost 2.9 lbs of muscle

When discussing their results, they essentially blamed Carolyn’s lack of maintaining muscle due to the fact that she didn’t strength train. Which I’m sure yes, is a huge reason for it. But they didn’t even mention how maybe it was also due to the fact that she probably wasn't eating enough protein from her vegan diet. 

Next up are Charlie and Michael.

Michael - Omnivore
- Lost 0.2 lbs of body weight. The breakdown was he
     - Lost 3.8 lbs of fat
     - Gained 3.6 lbs of muscle

Charlie - Vegan
- Lost 3.5 lbs of body weight. The breakdown was he
     - Lost 2.8 lbs of fat
     - Lost 0.7 lbs of muscle

When reporting their results, they basically attributed Charlie’s loss of muscle to the fact that he wasn’t weight training like Michael was. The lady reporting the results also told him, “I’m convinced you’re under eating.” To which he responded that it often felt like he was stuffing himself (full of food).

Lastly, let’s look at Pam and Wendy.

Wendy - Omnivore
- Lost 3.5 lbs of body weight. The breakdown was she
     - Gained 0.3 lbs of fat
     - Lost 3.8 lbs of muscle

Pam - Vegan
- Lost 7.6 lbs of body weight. The breakdown was she
     - Lost 1.0 lbs of fat
     - Lost 6.6 lbs of muscle

When reporting their results, both sisters claimed that they didn’t do the weight training the trainer had prescribed. Instead they added in jump rope and the treadmill regularly.

So, of course, that’s what led to both of them losing muscle. 

What do the results tell us? 

It’s hard to tell because it’s only 4 sets of twins and an 8-week study. And they didn’t show us exactly what they were eating, the macronutrient profile, how many calories, what their workout routines looked like, and more.

But, when it comes to body composition, the omnivores they reported had more favorable results than the vegans.

But I honestly don't even care about that as much as I'm simply frustrated with how they covered the results, reported them, and portrayed them.

Conclusion

There’s plenty more about this docuseries that frustrates me. A few of them are:

- The lady who evaluated their reports said that if energy doesn’t come from carbs then it won’t come from fat but it will come from muscle breakdown. Not true.

- They try to make it sound like childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes are because of the consumption of meat when it’s really because of the consumption of refined sugars.

- They say big words like bifidobacteria only comes from a vegan diet to make it sound smart and true. And while yes, this kind of bacteria that is good for the health of your microbiome comes from plant foods, it comes from fermented foods and that’s something that needs to be intentionally added into your diet.

- They try to make meat eaters sound like bad people. The famous chef in the episode tells us that when he changed his restaurant to a vegan menu, he had meat distributors say some nasty things to him. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t, but this show does everything it can to put a negative spin on all things meat.

Don't get me wrong.

I LOVE vegetables. I eat broccoli and brussels sprouts literally everyday. Have you ever seen how many sweet potatoes I eat on Instagram? I love my plants. And I love fruit.

I’m not hating on fruits and veggies or vegetarians and vegans.

I’m hating on the documentary and how it claims to be about health when it’s clearly not.

Should basically everyone be eating more fruits and vegetables in their diet? Yes.

I always aim to eat at least 4 cups of veggies and 2 cups of fruit a day. 

Factory farming is not good for the environment, the animals, or our health. Agreed.

But, that doesn't mean all meat is bad for the environment. It doesn't mean all animals are raised poorly and it doesn't mean all meat is bad for our health. But that's exactly what this docuseries is trying to get you to believe.

When animals are raised right and consumed in the proper manner, they are one of the healthiest things we can eat, are beneficial for our environment, and ya, they taste pretty damn good, too.

There are plenty of farmers, people, and companies doing this the right way.

Here are just a few:

Support these companies and buy responsibly raised meats at any of your grocery stores.

To stopping the spread of misleading information,

Nick

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