On this day in vegan history · May 6, 2011
Forks Over Knives Sends America to the Produce Aisle
A low-budget documentary made a simple, testable claim: eat only whole plants and disease often retreats. Grocery carts changed within the week.
The facts
- Date
- Premiered May 2, 2011; limited release May 6, 2011
- Director
- Lee Fulkerson
- Featured researchers
- T. Colin Campbell, PhD, and Caldwell Esselstyn, MD
- Rotten Tomatoes
- 61% (critics)
Forks Over Knives premiered on May 2, 2011 at the SilverScreen Theater at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, then opened in limited theatrical release on May 6. Director Lee Fulkerson built the film around two researchers, T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell Esselstyn, who had spent decades arguing that heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers respond to a whole-food, plant-based diet. The film had no stars and a small budget, but critics noticed, and so did viewers who had never used the phrase 'plant-based' outside a nutrition journal. Roger Ebert gave it three stars and told his readers, in print, that it might save their lives.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
here is a film that could save your life
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, in his 2011 review
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Forks Over Knives didn't discover the underlying science, but it translated it into a phrase people could say to each other in a kitchen, and it helped move 'whole-food, plant-based' out of clinical vocabulary and into everyday conversation.
Sources
This history is still being written.
Every morning the brief covers what moved veganism forward, and every day one more verified piece of that story joins this almanac. Free, and tomorrow’s lands in your inbox.
Free, every morning. No guilt. No preaching.