Conversation with Director: You Are What You Eat - A Twin Experiment || PLANT CEO #87

PLANT CEO

In this insightful episode, we sit down with Louis Psihoyos, the documentary filmmaker behind projects like "The Game Changers," returning to discuss his latest hit Netflix documentary series "You Are What You Eat." The film follows an experiment with 21 sets of identical twins, where one twin from each pair adopts a whole food, plant-based diet and the other sticks to a standard healthy omnivore diet for 8 weeks. The published results showed stunning improvements among the plant-based twins across areas like weight, visceral fat, blood pressure, telomeres length, and inflammatory biomarkers. Key outcomes highlighted in the discussion include the plant-based twins having longer telomeres reflecting cellular regeneration and reduced visceral fat even with the same exercise levels. All twins reportedly improved their diets after seeing the data. The episode covered why Psihoyos pursued this twin experiment to dig into the genetics vs lifestyle debate on nutrition needs. He attributes the film's viral popularity to public and medical community interest in plant-based eating. The results were shocking even to the research team - with the quick health improvements among plant-based twins exceeding expectations. Psihoyos sees the findings as firmly establishing the health and longevity benefits of plant-based eating for all populations. If you are also interested in filmmaking for the betterment of our planet, then look out for his tips and hear about one of his new projects.