Movie Review: “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead 2”

I like Joe Cross, and have a lot of respect for him. His previous documentary, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, recounts how he lost some excess body fat and healed a major health problem through fasting. He was doing juice fasting at the time. His progress was remarkable.

The first documentary was inspiring, and was helpful because it motivated a lot of people, including me, to start learning more about fasting. But I found his second movie, which came out a couple of years ago, discouraging.

At the start of this one, a somewhat overweight Joe is shown talking to his somewhat overweight followers about rebooting (juicing). One follower tells him that “rebooting” made it easier for her to switch to a plant based diet. This ties in with the main theme in the movie, a contention that eating a diet which excludes all animal -based foods is the best path to health.

The problem is that, while many health authorities tend to parrot this recommendation, there really isn’t universal agreement about it.

Some people on the road to better health find that eating plant-based, at least for a while, does help their health. (When I was vegan, I felt better for a few months after giving up animal-based foods, but then I started feeling awful all of the time and developing nutritional deficiency symptoms. I didn’t recover until I added animal foods back into my diet.)
Like me, some others have found that adding in some meat, fish, eggs and/or dairy actually improves their health.. Some even go full carnivore, at least for a stretch of time, and experience positive changes as a result.
Joe heavily promotes fruit consumption. But fruit, being fully of fructose, is inherently problematic for many people. I can eat it, but only in small amounts. If I eat too much, my blood sugar goes through the roof.
The documentary would be more useful if it questioned Joe’s assumptions, instead of wandering around searching for confirmation of them.
One particularly silly (or sad) sequence shows Joe self-righteously burning a bacon cheeseburger, implying that meat and cheese are what are making people sick and fat. He’d have been better off, I suspect, burning the bun and eating the meat and cheese, as long as both are from grass fed cows.

Note to Joe, if by chance you’re reading this: I sincerely with you well, but in this movie I don’t see much evidence that you’re on the right path. I wonder if you’ve ever considered switching to an omnivorous paleolithic/ketogenic diet for a few months, or even a few weeks, to see what happens? If you’re like me, and many people I know who tried a vegan approach and found that it led to health problems, you’ll find an omnivorous diet a better and more reliable path to maintain a healthy weight.

You don’t have to give up plants; most people who eat ketogenic diets eat a lot of them. But you will, I think, make more progress toward your health goals. And you’ll have something brand new to educate people about in your next movie.

Take care, my friend. Wishing you the best.