I’ve written some about causality on the blog recently. I think people are often searching for causal stories to explain why things happen. There is one area however, where I don’t think that is true; the negative outcomes of our own behavior. This is heightened when we feel as though we have not done anything wrong.

I’ve been thinking about all this because of a film I saw over the weekend, Forks Over Knives (trailer below). It’s a very interesting documentary on food and diet based largely on the work of Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study. The basic idea is that we eat way too much meat and that we really should be focusing our eating on whole foods, i.e.; fruits, vegetables, and grains and that our diet is causing many of our problems with diabetes, cancers, and other diseases.

I read The China Study several years ago and highly recommend it for skeptics of vegetarianism and veganism. As someone who is very skeptical of most research, I found The China Study to be very well done and rigorous in its approach to studying how what we eat affects health outcomes. It is also by far the largest study of its kind and plainly an impressive undertaking.

Forks Over Knives follows several people as they move towards a whole food, vegan diet and the results are quite remarkable. Beyond weight loss and greater health, the participants saw diabetes disappear, cancer overcome, and more.

We don’t want to feel like the food we put into our bodies causes the diseases we suffer from but I would encourage you to take an evening and watch Forks Over Knives or read something like The China Study, Diet for a New America or Eating Animals and stretch yourself.