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Kip
Andersen and Keegan Kuhn are self-taught documentary filmmakers who are making
a huge impact with their movies. You have likely heard of Cowspiracy, their wildly popular debut documentary that received
acclaim from Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky who encouraged his
friend Leonard DiCaprio to watch it.
Cowspiracy impressed DiCaprio so much that he produced a cut of the flick
for Netflix, which made it instantly accessible to millions of people.
In
their latest film, What the Health,
Kip and Keegan team up to take on the complex topic of health, and I was pleased
to talk to them about this unusual documentary that is full of evidence-based
revelations, fascinating interviews, and entertaining moments.
“With
this film, we really wanted to focus it on what true health really means. A lot
of people think of health as their own personal health, and we dive into that,
but we really expand on holistic health. We take everything into consideration.
True health is not only personal health, but it is also community health and
planetary health. We dive into a lot of all those things. This film is unique
in that it’s a full spectrum of every aspect of what health means coming from a
true scientific standpoint that has mostly been hidden from the general public
up until this point,” Kip explained.
Their
inspiration for making What the Health
evolved from their work on Cowspiracy.
They interviewed Dr. Michael Klaper, who really got the filmmakers thinking
deeply about the potential health issues associated with dairy when he pointed
out that cow’s milk is produced for baby cows, not for humans at all. When they
started to look further at why people eat secretions from cows, they dug into
researching the overall impact of animal products on human health.
Kip
and Keegan soon discovered that the animal agriculture industry and its
lobbying power are huge, and they were shocked to see that studies were being
manipulated. Perhaps most shocking of all, however, was the fact that dioxins
are having such a huge impact on vulnerable people. When I interviewed the
filmmakers, they shared how 93 percent of human exposure to dioxins, which are
the most toxic substance known to science, comes from meat and dairy products. Children
are too often exposed to these substances in meat and dairy, too.
The
filmmakers ultimately discovered that living a plant-based lifestyle can
provide huge health benefits and protect people from being so often exposed to
dioxins. Kip shared, “I feel it’s extremely important. You can see by many case
studies that have been around for 40 or 50 years all showing that a plant-based
diet is what our bodies as humans is designed for. It’s extremely important to
eat what our body is physiologically intended to eat.”
I
wondered what attracted the two to make this movie and the other meaningful
projects they’ve been involved in, and Keegan shared that what draws him in is
a story that hasn’t been told or information that’s been hidden. “I think Kip
and I both want to get information out and particularly information that has
been withheld from the public.”
Kip
continued, “We want to tell stories in a new, interesting and entertaining way
from a different angle. A lot of this info is out there, but we like to look at
it from different angles. We ask questions other people don’t ask and look
where people haven’t really looked before. We care about different perspective
and different angles presented in a unique, entertaining way.”
Considering
the impact that their movies have had and the passionate way they have gotten
these major stories out there, I had to know what their individual vegan
stories.
Kip
told me, “I went vegan around nine years ago. It was a combination of things
that happened really at the same time. I saw a video on how animals are raised
and killed. Right around the same time, I found out about the impact of raising
animals for food on our environment. It wasn’t until quite a bit later that I
found out about the effects on health. The ethics and the environmental impact
of eating meat made me go vegan around nine years ago.”
Keegan’s
story goes even further back, he revealed, “I’ve been vegan for 20 years coming
up in June. I was raised vegetarian with an idea of being compassionate to all
animals. When I found out how dairy cows have their babies taken away from them
and that egg-laying chickens spend their entire lives laying an unnatural
numbers of eggs is why I went vegan. Initially for ethics, but it evolved into
the environment and health.”
What the Health is now available to
watch online through Vimeo
on Demand.
You can follow the film on Facebook and Twitter. I think it is likely
to inspire many new vegan stories.
