PLANEAT: Nothing changes the planet as much as the way we eat

The Herald calls this documentary a “compulsory viewing”. Time Out says “compelling scientific evidence.”  Sir Paul McCartney hopes this “will alert people to the dangers of some of our current practices.”

They were talking about PLANEAT, a film that tells us “nothing changes the planet as much as the way we eat.”

I have watched many films about food, plant-based diet and animal cruelty. My boss gave me a PLANEAT DVD before Christmas and asked me to watch it. I looked at the back of the DVD cover and saw the names of the usual suspects in those documentaries. The film features Dr. Colin Campbell, the author of China Study who explored the link between diet and disease and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn who work in Cleveland Clinic and use a plant-based diet to cure heart disease patients. Both of them were mentioned in several of my blog posts about veganism recently. Professor Gidon Eshel was also interviewed in this documentary for his investigations into how our food choices contribute to global warming, land use and oceanic deadzones.

All the information was nothing new to me after watching a plethora of documentaries during my research on plant-based diet and also as the juror and division chair for Columbus International Film +Video Festival. However, what I like about this movie is that the filmmakers also feature a few pioneering chefs and some of the best cooking you have ever seen, which provides a different angle of the beauty of vegan food. It demonstrates how people have yet to take their imagination beyond a plain salad. All you need is a chef who has some creativity, knowledge and passion for food and cooking.

This documentary is independent, as with most films that are about food, health and environment. As an independent film producer and actress, I fully support and recommend this to any inquisitive minds about health and plant-based diet. If you are interested in a copy of this DVD, let me know. I do have access to around 50 copies of it in Hong Kong.

Don’t murder me with secondhand smoke

I am afraid of getting lung cancer. Seriously, I am.

I don’t smoke and my parents stopped smoking years ago. Neither do my best friends in the U.S. or Hong Kong smoke. However, I’m surrounded by smokers on a daily basis, unless I don’t leave my apartment. The moment I step out of the apartment building to the time I arrive at the office, I will run into 20 smokers on the street if I’m lucky. On a bad day, I will walk past 30 of them. If I have to work at an event or entertain customers, literally I will be stuck in the middle of 10 smokers with cigarettes, pipes or cigars. What the heck is going on in Hong Kong? It looks like it’s going backward rather than moving into a new era.

Exposure to secondhand smoke is also known as involuntary or passive smoking. American Cancer Society stated that secondhand smoke is classified as a “known human carcinogen” (cancer-causing agent) by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , the US National Toxicology Program and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization. I wonder if people know that tobacco smoke contains more than 7,000 chemical compounds, including more than 250 of them that are known to be harmful and more than 60 are known to cause cancer.

EPA estimates that exposure to secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year in nonsmokers in the United States. There is also some evidence suggesting it may be linked with cancers of the larynx (voice box), pharynx (throat), brain, bladder, rectum, stomach and breast. Not only would it cause cancer, secondhand smoke can also increase the risk of heart diseases. It is particularly harmful to children. They are at increased risks for asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, pneumonia, bronchitis and middle ear infections.

I don’t care if people want to kill themselves, but don’t murder me with secondhand smoke. I don’t want cancer. Do I really have to wear a mask everywhere I go?

Maybe finally people will stop eating McDonald’s and other cr@p?

McDonald’s seems to be hugely popular in Hong Kong and around the world. Kids love this place and the little toys that come with the kids’ meals. Maybe after this ridiculous McDonald’s Twitter campaign and media reports in Hong Kong and overseas, people will start paying more attention about what they put in their bodies.

On January 18, Mcdonald’s sent out two tweets with the hashtag ‘#McDStories’, in an attempt to highlight the suppliers and farmers who provide McDonald’s with their food. Instead of generating positive publicity, the campaign was backfired and people started using the hashtag #McDStories to voice their grudges and horror stories about this fast food chain, including finding finger nails and getting diarrhea after eating their food. People continue to talk about it today.

I am not sure whether all the tweets shared were true, but surely they are telling us that McDonald’s isn’t that popular after all. The hatred is obvious. Only if people find out more about what hamburgers and sausages are made of, I think the cows and pigs won’t have to fear for their lives every day.