You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment

I agree with a lot of the reviews, specifically the ones who mentioned the shows being pro vegan. What did the mayor of NYC have to do with this study? Nothing. The whole sexual thing and checking the heat of peoples genitals was just SO out there and really didn't need to be in the shows. The education about the cow/pig/chicken farming was interesting. I don't eat those things but was still interesting. I've also never seen salmon like what they showed in the shows, that was the nastiest piece of fish I've ever seen. I'd like to have known more about their blood test results, I don't think we ever know what their good cholesterol # was. I wanted to know if their iron levels changed, that kind of info. Did their blood pressure change much, and other vitamin levels. All the men seemed pretty fit too, should have had chubby guys since it would be nice to see if the vegan diet helped the guys.

I thought this was going to be a documentary about a fairly interesting study; what it turned out to be was insanely heavily biased vegan positivism based on bad science and seemingly bad faith. It also was pretty lacking in the "documentary" area as well, as it seemed to be to be mostly an advertisement both for veganism and for the vegan companies and owners which appear in the series.

The focus of the documentary is not on the twins and the experiment for which this documentary is named, but rather the effects of meat/processed foods on the environment and human health. However it: 1. Provides us with really no new information. Everyone knows by now that eating tons of bad quality and processed foods is bad for you. No need to hammer us over the head with it in 2024, and 2. Does not provide insight, studies, research, or really anything other statements presented as absolute fact provided by the kinds of people who have vegan tattoos. Maybe they're a little biased? Hmm.

Speaking of biased, this documentary does not provide ANY arguments for the other side. Not one. In the minds of whomever made this, and the people in it, there isn't a single benefit to eating meat. In one of the experiments they do to prove how bad our meat is, they get the most diseased looking salmon I've ever seen and try to cook it and it turns out looking horrible. Their point is that farmed salmon these days is plagued with all sorts of nasty things, but I've never in my life seen a salmon like the one they used in a grocery store or really anywhere. If they were fair they'd get several salmon to back up their claim (that something like 1 in every 25 farmed salmon in the store is messed up). Surely they didn't just get an abomination of a salmon to reaffirm their argument? Well actually yes they did do this and you can tell because you can see the another salmon in the shot, meaning they intentionally picked the worst looking one to demonstrate; this is called selection bias and is not the basis of good science or a good documentary. Also, they do not mention AT ALL how money is factor in preventing people from eating healthier, how overpopulation is leading to many of these issues, really anything socioeconomic, in the end it's just all blamed on the meat industry.

Lastly, the study itself was incredibly flawed. They give one twin a plant-based diet and the other an (healthy) omnivorous diet, have them exercise, and then measure their bodies before and after the 8-week long study and make conclusive statements based on that? They do not measure (or if they did they didn't show it) how many calories or macros each twin is eating with each meal. Surely if you're going to see how a vegan diet vs. An omnivorous affects a person, you'd make sure the calories and macronutrients are at least similar? There's no transparency at all in this study, so it just comes across as fearmongering.

I do agree with the sentiment of eating less meat and processed food. I think everyone is aware of the dangers of everything provided in this documentary now. Everyone knows they should eat healthier, and everyone knows which foods are healthy and which aren't. If plant-based meat tasted and had the same texture as meat, I'd switch immediately, and I think many others would as well; it's kind of a no-brainer. However when you present an incredibly one-sided biased flawed piece like this as if it's some sort of scientific breakthrough, really all it does is make the people involved look better.

It is a good idea to promote Plant Based Diet. But what is promoted in this series is a lot of processed vegan food that is still not a healthy option. Processed vegan meat substitute, or cheese. Plant Based Diet to be healthy has to be whole, not processed, full of vegetables, fruits, grains, pulses. No oil!

And why all the Americans companies have to immidiatelly go global? Take over the world? Can't you guys just stay local and let other communities in the world just stay healthy. Why they have to buy processed cashew nuts if they can just eat them raw? Why producing a processed vegan sausage? People who do not want to eat animal products do not want to eat sausages. Simple food like grains, pulses, vegetables take very little time to prepare. We should be going back to nature, to simplicity. Instead we exploiting now cashew farms because we need to produce tons of fake cheese? Vegan means eating fresh, minimal processed food. Vegan eating vegan cookies, and oily stews with fake meat is still not healthy.

I object to the presentation of this series. It says, it's about the experiment. But it's not. Except for episode 1, there is hardly anything about the participants. It's about how bad the food industry is, and how bad meat is for you. I agree absolutely that the meat industry is very bad. The word alone tells you that. But it's the skewed info on the series I don't like. Just say it upfront. We want to convince you, that veganism is best. You should not eat meat. We will show you a lot of bad things about the food industry, in order to make you change to vegan. That is the point of the series.

By the end of the 4 episodes, I was quite confused about the results and the ins and outs of what they ate, how they cooked the food themselves, how they trained, and the differences in the results. It started off really interesting with presenting the study and all its different components and what they could find out. Sadly, by the end they just focused on convincing people to go vegan. The context of the food industry etc especially the bacteria in some meat was quite interesting, but again it was quite heavily biased towards veganism, not showing one drawback of a full plant based diet and it felt like they were trying to do 2 things in one - the actual study and a documentary about the bad meat industry.