The Perfect Human Diet

2012 "An unprecedented global exploration for a solution to America's #1 killer."
6.3| 1h30m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 22 May 2012 Released
Producted By: Gravitas Ventures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.perfecthumandiet.us
Info

"The Perfect Human Diet" is an unprecedented global exploration to find a solution to our epidemic of overweight obesity and diet-related disease - the #1 killer in America. The film bypasses current dietary group-think by exploring modern dietary science, previous historical findings, ancestral native diets and the emerging field of human dietary evolution; revealing for the first time, the authentic human diet. Film audiences finally have the opportunity to see what our species really needs for optimal health and are introduced to a practical template based on these breakthrough scientific facts.

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Director

C.J. Hunt

Production Companies

Gravitas Ventures

The Perfect Human Diet Videos and Images
  • Top Credited Cast
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  • Crew
C.J. Hunt as Self / Narrator / Main Subject
Gary Taubes as Self / Science Journalist / Author, Good Calories Bad Calories

The Perfect Human Diet Audience Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.
Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
jbradfordinc Watched this documentary yesterday. It was very interesting from the perspective of evolutionary origins of the human diet, and somewhat accurate from that respect I believe as well. However, it's clear anti-vegetarian/anti-vegan bias made it less than desirable as a movie to recommend. It makes several poor assumptions about what it means for us in a modern society based on our ancestors' diets. And it glosses over a many of the modern arguments for vegetarianism and veganism that are very powerful.This documentary also continues to harp on the idea that the consumption of meat is responsible for our ancestors developing large brains. While this may have been a factor, it completely ignores the fact that most evolutionary biologists believe that it was the advent of cooking that is largely responsible for our increased brain capacity, not the consumption of meat. (No other carnivore/omnivore developed large brains, only us.) It is much more likely that our bodies incorporated certain animal-based nutrients, like vitamin B12, as our brains enlarged, rather than being the cause of our enlarged brains.But, it should be noted that veganism and vegetarianism are not diets for optimal human health in and of themselves. You can absolutely be a fat, unhealthy vegan if you want to. Veganism is largely based in the ethical and environmental arguments, taking into account the almost irreparable damage that our modern agricultural industry is doing to the planet. To be vegan AND healthy, you must also consider what our ancestors consumed and make sure you are getting adequate plant protein from diverse sources, nutrients, etc.Both "Food Choices," which I highly recommend, and this documentary overlap in certain areas, which are that the consumption of highly refined, processed food products (like HFCS) are bad for human health in general. They both agree that humans are the most healthy when we consume whole food products with fewer additives. They also agree that milk products in general are not good for human health beyond a very young age.
Michelle Jones There are so many conflicting theories about diet that it makes sense to look back and see what humans ate and thrived on as they evolved. In recent decades there's been a lot of new theories with very little scientific research to support them, and at the same time, humans are getting fatter and sicker than ever before. Low-fat, high-carb, vegan, and other new diets all sound good, but there's no history of these diets ever being utilized by humans for any substantial amount of time. This film looks at the history of human diets and has some great concepts on what a healthy diet should be. The film touches on Weston Price's studies done in the 1930's, where Dr. Price was able to meet people who were raised on primal diets that had not yet been influenced by processed food. The results were quite surprising, and he published a book called 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration', which should be a must-read for every medical student.
Dennis Littrell The problem with the conclusion that this documentary comes to is it won't work! If all of humanity—seven billion strong and increasing—ate the "natural" quasi-Paleolithic diet that the scientists in this film find "perfect"...well they won't because with present technology it is impossible for the planet to feed that many people that high on the hog. Raising the necessary number of cows, pigs, chickens, etc. requires more land and fresh water than is available. It's as simple as that.The second problem involves a "what is, is right" kind of fuzzy thinking. The fact that our ancestors ate a lot more meat than they did grains does not mean that sort of diet is best. They ate that way because they had no choice.The third problem is that the kind of meat hunters and gatherers ate was a bit different from the fat-laden, choice cuts of meat eaten today. It was lean and grass-fed. And a lot of it wasn't meat at all. It was fish, shellfish, clams, mussels and insects.Aside from these three very important points the documentary is not bad. The film makes it clear that it is the modern diet of processed foods that is responsible for the obesity epidemic in the developed world. And yes the paleo-primal, hunter-gatherer diet is superior to the junk food that is shoved in our faces on TV, over the Internet, on billboards and at fast food restaurants.And yes meat- and fish-eating turned upright-walking dull-witted apes into hominids. Without high-quality foods we could not have grown our big brains. But that was then. This is now, and what is needed is a balanced diet of whole foods with plenty of fruits and vegetables, some carbs, some high protein foods, and oils from the trees: e.g., olives, avocados, coconuts, etc.—Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is"
thornsthorns The entire documentary is all built on flawed logic, flawed assumptions and flawed conjectures. basic gist is, since evolution and history says that for 99.9% of human history we humans have been hunter gatherers, our diet should be like that. But that is a very flawed way of thinking. Just because our ancestors were meat eaters doesn't mean meat is better than vegetables for us. Our ancestors were not exactly optimizing their potential, just because they were living like animals. Evolution does not create perfect scenarios and perfect species of perfect health, that is a fallacy this documentary is based on. It assumes our ancestors were eating a diet, that they had perfectly evolved into. Which is not the case. While i agree with half the documentary (the half condemning modern diet of processed foods), the other half of it is a load of pile of false truths and false logics. I present here some of these flaws the documentary ignores. 1) Our ancestors no doubt starved many months, many weeks, many days of the year, through winter, when they could not find hunt food to the point where many no doubt died. This documentary completely ignores this fact when promoting this high meat diet theory. 2) Our ancestors also ate insects, larvae, and other unhealthy and disgusting things, at no point do they start promoting a diet of insects. Which again is another example of picking and choosing history. 3) Our ancestors also didn't bath or clean themselves at all. No one would say poor hygiene and living and eating like a wild dog is better for us, just because our ancestors did it for millions of years. So why use the same premise for dieting? 4) another example since our ancestors never exercised and only exerted themselves when hunting, optimal health means we should not exercise unless chasing a deer. Which they probably only did once a month for a few minutes and only in large groups. 5) historically human societies have been fishermen rather than hunters. This a fact the video ignores, as game food was not guaranteed whist fish from the ocean or rivers largely was. Thus most civilizations were situated on coastlines and near rivers. Ultimately the point is, our ancestors did not have an optimal best perfect diet, trying to mimic them is like trying to copy a C student in an exam, you are not going to better a better grade. This is the poor logic used in this DVD, which is flawed. If you look at native aborigine populations in south America, Australia who are following very much our ancestors diet, and look at the athletes from the Olympics, anyone with half a brain can tell that the athletes in the Olympics are healthier and better. Our ancestors also rarely lived beyond 40, average lifespan was probably around in the late 30's. so evolution hasn't engineered the paleo-primal diet to exactly keep our body ship shape beyond 40 (going by their own logic). So that's another flaw in using the logic of our ancestors diet is evolutionary wise the best for us. Frankly documentary is a load of baloney. But they are right in that the paleo-primal diet is a million times better than the modern processed sugar, salt, spices, oils artificial chemical diet we have in the 21st century. But they need to De-emphasise the meat intake, as our ancestors if anything like normal hunter gatherers would most likely have not had much meat in their diet as consistently as modern lifestyles or the paleo-primal diet likes to infer. As you can't exactly catch and cook a deer with a spear 3 times a day. Even lions eat only once a week in the wild, sometimes once a month periodically, and even starve when the herd migrates. As hunting eating food isn't exactly on the dot, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner time like we have made nowadays. Saying completely no to wheat is a fallacy as no doubt our ancestors must have eaten wild grain, in order for them to become farmers of the stuff. So it was part of their diet, which documentary ignores.