The weather is getting colder, making the outdoors increasingly inhospitable and driving us to our couches, where we inevitably find ourselves scrolling through Netflix to find a new series to binge or movie to check out. Unfortunately, some of the content our customers may find as they scroll is not exactly friendly to meat. The latest entry in the anti-meat Oscars is “The Game Changers,” a ‘documentary’ that claims to “expose the world’s most dangerous myth” – that animal protein is necessary.

With James Cameron involved as executive producer, it’s not surprising that the film is well-produced, attention-grabbing and emotionally appealing. With Michael Gregor (formerly with HSUS) and Josh Balk (current vice president of farm animal protection at HSUS) also behind the scenes, it isn’t surprising that the film is light on facts and heavy on dramatic calls for everyone to go vegan.

As one example of the film’s version of scientific rigor, an experiment is featured in which a urologist had three college football players eat a grass-fed, organic beef meal on night one and a plant-based meal on night two and recorded their penile function on both nights as they slept. The experiment claimed to show that the plant-based diet increased diameter by about 8% and showed a 300% increase in lasting ability compared to the meat-based diet.

The film also makes sure to mention animal agriculture’s alleged drastic impact on the environment, especially in terms of deforestation, water use and water pollution.

With “The Game Changers” making the rounds and New Year’s resolutions right around the corner, now is the time for all of us to brush up on the facts about meat and poultry’s ability to play a role in a healthy, balanced diet and share that information broadly.

Specific to the movie, Men’s Health did a great fact check and concluded that it is “heavy on the plants, but light on scientific context.” More generally, MeatPoultryNutrition.org has a lot of useful information along with the Animal Ag Alliance’s newly redesigned website.

People are hungry for information on eating a healthy, balanced diet – let’s make sure we’re feeding their curiosity with facts.

Netflix show goes to ridiculous extremes to disparage meat

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