Food Matters

Everybody can agree that good nutrition is vital to maintaining good health; but this documentary by nutritionists-turned-filmmakers James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch crosses into propaganda with its insistence that nutrition therapy, including mega-doses of vitamins, is just about all that's needed to prevent—and even cure—cancer, heart disease, lupus, arthritis, and depression. Beginning with a quote from the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food,” the commentators quickly proceed to assail the “pill for every ill” pharmaco-medical establishment, backed by interviews with assorted figures in the nutrition and natural healing fields. “What if they gave everyone in America free health insurance and nobody needed it?” asks author and therapeutic nutrition specialist Andrew Saul, adding that “people need education, not medication.” Charlotte Gerson, founder of the Gerson Institute in San Diego, claims that “a healthy human body will not, cannot, develop cancer” (the institute's Gerson Plus Nutritional Therapy—devised by her father, Dr. Max Gerson, in the 1920s—is recommended for cancer treatment, but patients need to travel to the Gerson clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, as it is illegal in the U.S.). The film ends with a disclaimer that says, in effect, don't blame anybody associated with this production if, should you follow any of the advice it gives, something goes wrong with you. Not a necessary purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Zoretich)