One of the strongest motivating factors for my pursuing documentary is aligning my passion – in want of a better word – for more holistic healthcare approaches with engaging in and helping to create robust and fair debates. As we are aware, sources of media are incredibly powerful in shaping our worldview, including our opinions and beliefs in all things food and wellness. This plays out in various different ways, making it difficult for us to ascertain what is really best for our optimal health, especially with the mixed messages coming at us from all sorts of directions.
It’s because of this that I am always on the lookout for interesting documentaries, particularly on the subject of health and the heavy role that nutrition can have from a functional standpoint. I’m also open to looking at films that rebut the very claims I find myself often agreeing with, willing to (sometimes) suspend my own tightly held beliefs and question what influenced them in the first place.
The BBC documentary, “Clean Eating: The Dirty Truth” – available on SBS Demand – was one such film and so I was open to watching it as well as to the claims it put forth. I think it’s important to clarify, whether or not I agree with the arguments foregrounded by the documentary isn’t really relevant nor the point of this blog post.
More so, the aim of my writing is to analyse the tactics whereby (it is my belief) those creating the film discredit opposing viewpoints as well as making sweeping generalisations in regards to what they call “the clean eating fad.” In my view, the biggest weakness of this film as that it looks at different theories of “clean eating” as being all the same thing.
“Clean eating”, rather, is a subjective banner under which so many practices, beliefs and theories fall, and which bare all sorts of relationships to conventional medicine. It is not to say that, because an individual may follow the guidelines of a particular “clean eating” modality (ie. to avoid processed junk food and to return to nature as much as possible), that they disregard the strengths of conventional medicine. Thus, we should look at “clean eating” (or, as I prefer to put it, functional nutrition), as a spectrum – going from the most relaxed to extreme examples – rather as all within the one category. While addressing the topic of “clean eating” in the former most sense would allow for a fairer and more balanced approach, I feel the film takes the latter approach and, for me, this is a big downside.
Let me start by saying that the film did make some valid points. For a start, the presenter Giles (who is a doctor) highlights how the sudden proliferation of online sources touting the importance of “clean eating” has only been allowed by social media in recent times. It is because of this that, unfortunately, essentially anyone with a smart phone (and often who looks a certain way) can instagram, youtube or snapchat a particular set of nutritional dogma. This, I acknowledge, poses a danger to clouding influential audience members’ understanding of what is and isn’t healthy. I felt like this criticism (which is largely a by-product of our contemporary media eco-system) was valid.
What I didn’t like was that film drew direct parallels with these social media influencers and say, other members of the natural healthcare community, despite great differences in credibility. (On a side note – a degree in Functional Nutrition, which is based upon the philosophy that food can have a heavy hand in the best and worst of health outcomes – takes at least four years to complete, includes comprehensive biochemistry and explores the human body for the first two years as would an allopathic medical degree). Anyway, I digress.
Essentially, the point that I would like to make here is that the presenter makes a valid point but selects a very limited range of perspectives to amplify his agenda. Another point to make is that when he does hand the microphone over to established members of the natural health care community, he still makes subtle moves to discredit their position.
As an example, when interviewing the author of “The China Study” (purported as being “the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted”), he asks the participant about confirmation bias.
The presenter, at this point, narrates what confirmation bias is (being to subconsciously look for data that confirms pre-conceived beliefs or a hypothesis). I felt as though by merely including this explanation, the presenter was (subtly) challenging what the participant was saying, despite the studies being so esteemed over an established period of time.
The presenter also refers to movements as “fads”, which immediately will influence how the audience is positioned to view them. As an example, the film stakes to claim that humans have been eating gluten for “millennium” and that it’s only because of the “gluten free fad” that so many of us are going gluten free. This information seems to make sense, but in absence of knowing that that “millennium” actually equates to 0.05% of human evolution.
It is also relevant to point out that the presenter uses the most extreme and far out examples to justify his claims about “clean eating” as being invalid, unjustified and downright deceptive. It is through using one particularly sinister example towards the end of the film that I believe the producers put all examples of functional nutrition into the one category which, as I have already pointed out, is my singles biggest criticism of this film.
The example to which I am referring is of Dr Robert O Young, the father of the alkaline diet, which promulgates that acidic blood travels through to damage our organs and thus cause disease. This is what I consider to be one of the bolder and more extreme examples of “clean eating” but not a true and accurate representation of all functional nutrition modalities. The film then goes to reveal that the treatments offered by Dr Young do little to combat or cure illness such as cancer (which is their supposed purpose) and that several patients have died in his cure. Elaborating on this, the film reveals that Dr Young is facing several charges, including “practicing without a licence.”
Following on from the points that I have already made, the horrible example of the extremes of “clean eating”, as we see through the malpractice of Young, is important evidence of the more sinister side of a massive category of beliefs and practices. I feel very few people who follow some sort of “clean eating dogma” are aligned with the likes of Young, espousing that eating a particular way will clear them completely of terminal illness such as cancer. Personally, I am yet to meet such an individual that is sympathetic to this viewpoint. Had the film made this distinction more clearly, I feel the arguments would have been more balanced.
I should reiterate that I think the film does a good job in highlighting some of the downsides to what is a largely unregulated subculture. It’s dangerous that there are so many “fitness and nutrition experts” with few (if any) qualifications that have such easy access to platforms to campaign their views. This is a valid argument to make.
What I did not like was, what I felt, the bunching together of everyone from different sectors of the wider natural healthcare community as one hegemonic set of values and beliefs. This angle is highlighted by the narraters closing arguments, being that:
“So what I have learnt is that there are two worlds that co-exist: the world of science, of evidence, of objectivity and of “clean eating”, driven by belief, where proof is personal and that food can do what medicine can not. As a scientist, I know which one should prevail.”
