Game Changers Movie Discussion Thread. The science does not add up.

[Mrpb]

We're now seeing more people that are influenced by this movie. Discuss it here.

A new documentary called The Game Changers is pushing the “plant-based” lifestyle even further. The film, produced by James Cameron, argues that eating any animal products—including meat, fish, eggs, and dairy—can hinder athletic performance, wreak havoc on your heart, impair sexual function, and lead to an early death.

This New Documentary Says Meat Will Kill You. Here's Why It's Wrong.
https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition...ie-fact-check/

Layne Norton checks the claim that gladiators were vegan.

[AdamWW]

After watching it, my largest criticisms were:

Fireman experiment: No controlled pre-diet assessment of food intake, everyone lost weight, and anytime you 'clean up' an otherwise unhealthy diet which also induces weight loss, blood markers will improve... has nothing to do with not eating animal products.

Vegan Strongman: Absolutely no controlled study of his pre/post diet change strength. We have no idea if he got weaker, stronger, anything.

Vegan Cyclist: Again, no controlled analysis of pre/post diet change factors... we have no way of knowing if simply lifestyle or 'supplement' changes were responsible for her success.

Long-distance runner: N=1.... zero reason to suspect he couldn't have done just as well, or better consuming certain animal products.

'Cloudy' Blood Samples: Zero mention of saturated fat content of the meals given... not a controlled environment, no idea of genetic factors...etc


Overall, all the documentary suggested was that you don't NEED animal products to function as a high-level athlete.

At the same time, provides zero evidence that halting all animal products will improve your health/performance when controlling for other factors.

[Mrpb]

^ Thanks. I do like the sense of humor of the vegan strongman.

Vegan Strongman BLASTS Joe Rogan After Being Insulted In Podcast



Does anyone know when he became vegan?

[Strawng]

I can't believe you guys actually had the patience to sit through that entire movie. There's not a chance in Hell that I could do that after seeing the posts on here about it. I also just listened to the last "Stronger By Science" podcast with Greg Nuckols, and they do a pretty solid job of completely tearing it apart at 26:24:https://www.strongerbyscience.com/podcast-episode-24/.

I honestly don't like documentaries in general. Every mainstream documentary that I've ever seen was a load of bullchit. Even 'Super Size Me' was ridiculous. The man ate over 5k calories per day, did no exercise, and is believed to have lied about his actual food diary in order to sensationalize the
story that McDonalds = bad. Meanwhile in the documentary 'Fat Head', a clever response to the film in which a man lost weight eating McDonalds for a month, the narrator took all the buns off his burgers and ate a low carb diet because the reason 'Super Size Me' was full of chit is because carbs are actually the devil and unlimited amounts of saturated fats or McDonald's hamburgers are ok. None other than Gary Taubes repeatedly bombards the audience with the message that the only reason McDonald's is unhealthy is because of those pesky carbs in their buns, sodas, and fries...

[AdamWW]

I can't believe you guys actually had the patience to sit through that entire movie. There's not a chance in Hell that I could do that after seeing the posts on here about it. I also just listened to the last "Stronger By Science" podcast with Greg Nuckols, and they do a pretty solid job of completely tearing it apart at 26:24:https://www.strongerbyscience.com/podcast-episode-24/.

I honestly don't like documentaries in general. Every mainstream documentary that I've ever seen was a load of bullchit. Even 'Super Size Me' was ridiculous. The man ate over 5k calories per day, did no exercise, and is believed to have lied about his actual food diary in order to sensationalize the
story that McDonalds = bad. Meanwhile in the documentary 'Fat Head', a clever response to the film in which a man lost weight eating McDonalds for a month, the narrator took all the buns off his burgers and ate a low carb diet because the reason 'Super Size Me' was full of chit is because carbs are actually the devil and unlimited amounts of saturated fats or McDonald's hamburgers are ok. The only reason McDonald's is unhealthy is because of those pesky carbs in their buns, sodas, and fries...

It's funny when people say those kinds of things, which is quite often, considering most of these 'evil carb' foods actually end up being predominantly high-fat foods, not high carb. I think a big mac has like 48% of it's calories from fat, and only 32% from carbs....

There's also many studies out there showing that the tendency to over eat things like candy which are only super-sweet (like a jolly rancher), vs being super-sweet AND high fat due to refined sugar and oils, is far far less than when you combine both processed fats and carbohydrates. Yet somehow because candy (even high fat ones like chocolate bars) TASTE sweet, people immediately assume it's the sugar causing the issue.

Ironically, if someone really wanted to gain weight past, they'd be best off just drinking oil. It would be far easier to consume 2000 calories of any kind of oil (volume wise) than sugar, and the sweetness of pure sugar does end up becoming unpalatable after a while.

If folks really wanted to avoid foods that are easy to over-consume, they'd basically avoid refined sugar, refined oils, but especially the combination of the two.... I mean that's why things like ice cream are so damn tasty... it's sugar and cream... or take something like cheesecake, same thing.

I don't think anyone out there is getting fat or obese by eating too much avocado, sweet potato, blueberries, oatmeal, or pistachios.

[backinthegymbro]

Overall, all the documentary suggested was that you don't NEED animal products to function as a high-level athlete.

You don't if you use juice like all the pros.

[Strawng]

There's also many studies out there showing that the tendency to over eat things like candy which are only super-sweet (like a jolly rancher), vs being super-sweet AND high fat due to refined sugar and oils, is far far less than when you combine both processed fats and carbohydrates. Yet somehow because candy (even high fat ones like chocolate bars) TASTE sweet, people immediately assume it's the sugar causing the issue.

I don't think anyone out there is getting fat or obese by eating too much avocado, sweet potato, blueberries, oatmeal, or pistachios.

Wow, that candy example is a perfect analogy. Hitting even 500+ calories exclusively on jolly ranchers, pixie sticks, or gummy bears sounds absolutely miserable. Unfortunately, it’s WAY less satisfying to blame hyper-palatable foods than demonizing specific macronutrients. It appeals more to the human desire for simplicity, and it allows us to have our cake and eat it too...just either vegan or without sugar. This mentality also of course keeps people fat when they try the flavor of the week diet and make no progress due to either lack of results or sustainability.

I think the only whole foods items that people could potentially binge on would be things like peanut butter, which I suppose is why things like the paleo diet arbitrarily forbid it. Once again though, peanut butter is actually high in fat, has natural sodium, and a bit of carbs. Even still, 500 calories of just peanut butter? Sure, I’ve done it after a hard day in the gym. I do it almost daily but I add it to some oats or fruit to increase paleability and keep my weight up. 500 calories of peanut butter cups though? I could destroy that chit in a second any time any day.

[AdamWW]

Wow, that candy example is a perfect analogy. Hitting even 500+ calories exclusively on jolly ranchers, pixie sticks, or gummy bears sounds absolutely miserable. Unfortunately, it’s WAY less satisfying to blame hyper-palatable foods than demonizing specific macronutrients. It appeals more to the human desire for simplicity, and it allows us to have our cake and eat it too...just either vegan or without sugar. This mentality also of course keeps people fat when they try the flavor of the week diet and make no progress due to either lack of results or sustainability.

I think the only whole foods items that people could potentially binge on would be things like peanut butter, which I suppose is why things like the paleo diet arbitrarily forbid it. Once again though, peanut butter is actually high in fat, has natural sodium, and a bit of carbs. Even still, 500 calories of just peanut butter? Sure, I’ve done it after a hard day in the gym. I do it almost daily but I add it to some oats or fruit to increase paleability and keep my weight up. 500 calories of peanut butter cups though? I could destroy that chit in a second any time any day.

Your PB example is yet another great point: I could definitely stand in my kitchen and eat 5-6 TBSP of peanut butter even if all I had access to was water.

However.... If i'm being honest.... if I JUST had access to the PB and nothing else before/after... I honest don't think i'd want more than about that much. It's more the idea of combining things like Peanut Butter with other flavors like Jam, Bread, Cookies/Crackers, or even sugary things (like the PB cup example you gave) where the over-consumption comes in. Most people keep a plethora of different flavor profiles in their kitchen, and I can definitely go through 1000 calories of PB if I had some ritz crackers and some strawberry preserves nearby... it's about the constant over-stimulation of our taste pleasure with intensely palatable foods, especially when you throw some salt in the mix, that causes issues for some people. Hits all our taste/pleasure centers at once.

I mean hell, one of method i'm using right now to gain weight is to add PB and these delicious Strawberry preserves to my oats instead of just whole fruit, because it's much more calorically dense, sweeter, and just takes up less space in my stomach, plus you don't even need to chew the peanut butter.

Now, there is one possible exception to this for me... and it's cereal. Cereal even being mostly carbs, I can slam 1000 calories of cereal without much effort if I tried to. A box of cinnamon toast crunch or golden grahams isn't too much of a chore. But, it's definitely harder than the equal amount of calories in, say, baklava or chocolate chip cookies, so even then it takes more time.

[Gxp23]

Saw it on netflix, stopped watching after 15 mins or so.

Gladiators were vegan, big fuggin whoop.

Im sure their diet consisted mostly of beans, oats and starchy foods and I also recall reading that they wanted to have a decent layer of fat around their midsection for protection more or less.

I think people hear the word Gladiator and instantly think, oh yeah like the TV show Spartacus, they are all ripped and practically in peak human fitness, when in reality they were slaves who were fed slop and forced to fight each other for others entertainment, ofc they were not getting fed meat (or at least not much), that was for the wealthy or those who could go out and buy it id assume.

Anyway, I will maybe go back and watch the rest of it now so I can see all the stuff Adam was talking about.

[Mrpb]

This is a good review written by a vegan Dietetic student: https://dieteticallyspeaking.com/an-...-game-changers

I can't believe you guys actually had the patience to sit through that entire movie. There's not a chance in Hell that I could do that after seeing the posts on here about it.

I have not seen it. I'm not motivated to watch it. Too painful.

Meanwhile in the documentary 'Fat Head', a clever response to the film in which a man lost weight eating McDonalds for a month, the narrator took all the buns off his burgers and ate a low carb diet because the reason 'Super Size Me' was full of chit is because carbs are actually the devil and unlimited amounts of saturated fats or McDonald's hamburgers are ok. None other than Gary Taubes repeatedly bombards the audience with the message that the only reason McDonald's is unhealthy is because of those pesky carbs in their buns, sodas, and fries...

When Fathead came out I actually believed it.

[Strawng]

When Fathead came out I actually believed it.

I'm not gonna lie, me too lol. I chalked it up to me knowing little-to-nothing about nutrition at the time, but then again I suppose back then it was before the insulin theory of obesity was disproven and Taubes was revealed to be a complete charlatan. It actually inspired me to research nutrition more because I tried a low carb diet after seeing it and felt terrible. Within a few months of seeing it I realized its message was scientifically unfounded.

[3maj]

^ Thanks. I do like the sense of humor of the vegan strongman.

Vegan Strongman BLASTS Joe Rogan After Being Insulted In Podcast



Does anyone know when he became vegan?

Rekt. Joe Rogan is an idiot.

[rhadam]

I don't have the time to watch it, and given what i've heard from some of my friends still in the industry there's no way i'm wasting my time to view this garbage. The sad thing is how many acquaintances i've seen, both irl and on FB, speak positively about this "documentary." I had a buddy post that Men's Health article which i've been forwarding to interesting parties. This is a great example of why i was so unhappy with my career in dietetics.

[Mrpb]

Good stuff...


"Plant vs. Animal Burrito Blood Lipid ‘Experiment’

This part of the movie had my blood boiling (pun intended). Cardiologist, Robert Vogel, conducted an experiment with 3 NFL players, where he gave them each a plant based burrito and a meat based burrito, then compared the blood drawn 2 hours after each meal.

As we can see from the image, the blood after consumption of the plant based meal is clear and transparent, while the meat based meal resulted in a cloudy effect. This made major headlines because according to the film, the cloudy serum we see with the meat based burrito, symbolizes endothelial dysfunction.

This sounds scary, but how much of this is science and how much of this is fear-mongering?

The cloudy effect seen in the blood, is called postprandial lipemia.

It is physiologically normal to see a rise in triglyceride rich lipoproteins in the blood post-consumption of dietary fat.

If we tested these athletes fasted, their serum would all look identical. Hence — why the film decided not to take fasted samples. It wouldn’t have fit their agenda. Using non-fasted triglycerides is inherently flawed due to meal-timing and fat content of the last meal.

The film claimed they added avocado to the plant based burrito, which should show cloudy serum as well. Why didn’t it?

For one, we don’t know how much avocado was added, because this wasn’t a published study. We can’t look at the methodology, all we can do is take the films word for it, which is not how science works. Luckily, they cited a paper that apparently replicated the results they achieved (8). That paper brought some interesting points into the equation.

The study looked at different foods in relation to the rise in postprandial triglycerides.

Olive oil, which is vegan, had the same postprandial rise in triglycerides as cheesecake and hamburger/fries!

The researchers even found that salmon had *half* the rise in triglycerides compared to olive oil! They also found that omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin C, and vitamin E improved endothelial function.

According to the research that The Game Changers linked, and our current knowledge on postprandial lipemia, this is not an issue with consuming plants vs animals. It is simply what we see when we draw blood from an individual that just consumed a fatty meal. "

https://dieteticallyspeaking.com/an-...game-changers/

[AdamWW]

Good stuff...


"Plant vs. Animal Burrito Blood Lipid ‘Experiment’

This part of the movie had my blood boiling (pun intended). Cardiologist, Robert Vogel, conducted an experiment with 3 NFL players, where he gave them each a plant based burrito and a meat based burrito, then compared the blood drawn 2 hours after each meal.

As we can see from the image, the blood after consumption of the plant based meal is clear and transparent, while the meat based meal resulted in a cloudy effect. This made major headlines because according to the film, the cloudy serum we see with the meat based burrito, symbolizes endothelial dysfunction.

This sounds scary, but how much of this is science and how much of this is fear-mongering?

The cloudy effect seen in the blood, is called postprandial lipemia.

It is physiologically normal to see a rise in triglyceride rich lipoproteins in the blood post-consumption of dietary fat.

If we tested these athletes fasted, their serum would all look identical. Hence — why the film decided not to take fasted samples. It wouldn’t have fit their agenda. Using non-fasted triglycerides is inherently flawed due to meal-timing and fat content of the last meal.

The film claimed they added avocado to the plant based burrito, which should show cloudy serum as well. Why didn’t it?

For one, we don’t know how much avocado was added, because this wasn’t a published study. We can’t look at the methodology, all we can do is take the films word for it, which is not how science works. Luckily, they cited a paper that apparently replicated the results they achieved (8). That paper brought some interesting points into the equation.

The study looked at different foods in relation to the rise in postprandial triglycerides.

Olive oil, which is vegan, had the same postprandial rise in triglycerides as cheesecake and hamburger/fries!

The researchers even found that salmon had *half* the rise in triglycerides compared to olive oil! They also found that omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin C, and vitamin E improved endothelial function.

According to the research that The Game Changers linked, and our current knowledge on postprandial lipemia, this is not an issue with consuming plants vs animals. It is simply what we see when we draw blood from an individual that just consumed a fatty meal. "

https://dieteticallyspeaking.com/an-...game-changers/

The 'Cloudy Blood' segment and the Firemen segment were the two biggest misses IMO.

It completely omitted critical details, and I have zero doubts the creators of the movie knew this... they simply want to pander to the gullible audiences.

[3maj]

The 'Cloudy Blood' segment and the Firemen segment were the two biggest misses IMO.

It completely omitted critical details, and I have zero doubts the creators of the movie knew this... they simply want to pander to the gullible audiences.

The "sleeping boners" thing was also cringeworthy.

[AdamWW]

The "sleeping boners" thing was also cringeworthy.

Not to mention totally irrelevant

[Mrpb]

The "sleeping boners" thing was also cringeworthy.

Wut? LOL. what did they say?

[AdamWW]

Wut? LOL. what did they say?

They hooked up this circumference-measuring thing to these guys' junk while they slept to measure the side of their bonerz.....

I kid you not.

Apparently meat doesn't make you as 'happy' as plant. lol.

[Mrpb]

They hooked up this circumference-measuring thing to these guys' junk while they slept to measure the side of their bonerz.....

I kid you not.

Apparently meat doesn't make you as 'happy' as plant. lol.

That's interesting... I sometimes wake up from hard boners. It's annoying. so they're saying it's from eating vegetables?

[AdamWW]

That's interesting... I sometimes wake up from hard boners. It's annoying. so they're saying it's from eating vegetables?

Yeah. Eat an eggplant, get an eggplant.

[Strawng]

That's interesting... I sometimes wake up from hard boners. It's annoying. so they're saying it's from eating vegetables?

Yeah. Eat an eggplant, get an eggplant.

I have some connections over at Netflix, and a buddy of mine might be able to get through to Rogan. How would you boys feel about becoming very, very rich?

[AdamWW]

I have some connections over at Netflix, and a buddy of mine might be able to get through to Rogan. How would you boys feel about becoming very, very rich?

In!

[rhadam]

They hooked up this circumference-measuring thing to these guys' junk while they slept to measure the side of their bonerz.....

I kid you not.

Apparently meat doesn't make you as 'happy' as plant. lol.

That is quite possibly the dumbest thing i've ever heard.

Science, not even once.

[AdamWW]

That is quite possibly the dumbest thing i've ever heard.

Science, not even once.

Yup, lots of derp in that movie.

[GrouchyUSMC]

So people clean up their diet and saw benefits? Pardon me if I don't roll my eyes in amazement. The lack of meat had nothing to do with it - people were just being more cognizant of what they ate.

Somewhat related but fun read -

https://www.clydefitchreport.com/201...-for-veganism/

[broganoff]

The "sleeping boners" thing was also cringeworthy.

I had a 24 oz bone in rib eye at a Reno steakhouse on Saturday. Had raging boners all night, in addition to horrendous gas that just about melted a hole in the mattress. Good thing it was a business trip, otherwise if my wife had been in the room I would've been sleeping in the hallway.

Wait, what were we talking about again? Oh yeah, vegan boners. Disproven with my n=1 experiment. Although it did demonstrate to me that my body can only absorb so much protein, and that any excess protein has to go somewhere. Hence the gas.

[broganoff]

Vegan Strongman: Absolutely no controlled study of his pre/post diet change strength. We have no idea if he got weaker, stronger, anything.

My theory, assuming the strength gains actually happened, in addition to the weight gain that he claimed. He probably ate more calories on a plant based diet in order to hit the amount of protein required to keep building muscle. I imagine he also ate more calories just to simply stay satiated. This inevitably led to more weight gain, which may have included to extra muscle required to do the stronger lifts.

Plus, given that guy looked somewhat overweight to begin with, I'm not sure if a diet that helps you gain weight is much of a selling point.

[rexfrommex]

It's funny when people say those kinds of things, which is quite often, considering most of these 'evil carb' foods actually end up being predominantly high-fat foods, not high carb. I think a big mac has like 48% of it's calories from fat, and only 32% from carbs....

There's also many studies out there showing that the tendency to over eat things like candy which are only super-sweet (like a jolly rancher), vs being super-sweet AND high fat due to refined sugar and oils, is far far less than when you combine both processed fats and carbohydrates. Yet somehow because candy (even high fat ones like chocolate bars) TASTE sweet, people immediately assume it's the sugar causing the issue.

Ironically, if someone really wanted to gain weight past, they'd be best off just drinking oil. It would be far easier to consume 2000 calories of any kind of oil (volume wise) than sugar, and the sweetness of pure sugar does end up becoming unpalatable after a while.

If folks really wanted to avoid foods that are easy to over-consume, they'd basically avoid refined sugar, refined oils, but especially the combination of the two.... I mean that's why things like ice cream are so damn tasty... it's sugar and cream... or take something like cheesecake, same thing.

I don't think anyone out there is getting fat or obese by eating too much avocado, sweet potato, blueberries, oatmeal, or pistachios.

that's crazy that you mentioned jolly ranchers I was walking to class today and some dude had a Ziploc of jolly ranchers and I told him you wanna let me get a blue one and he had no choice but to do it.


I felt like *** after he strong armed robbed that gas station for some darts

[AdamWW]

that's crazy that you mentioned jolly ranchers I was walking to class today and some dude had a Ziploc of jolly ranchers and I told him you wanna let me get a blue one and he had no choice but to do it.


I felt like *** after he strong armed robbed that gas station for some darts

Well there ya go