The Game Changers

It’s not often you see a movie that is both information-dense and highly entertaining. “The Game Changers“, which I saw last night at the Boulder International Film Festival, scores highly on both counts.

I hadn’t heard of the movie. Its opening montage – which features Ultimate Fighting, powerlifters, biochemical diagrams and rhinoceroses – provides few clues to its content.

It’s about vegetables – why eating them is great, and why eating meat is unnecessary and harmful. It is not the least bit preachy. It is fun and engaging. It is totally directed at men, and at their fears that giving up meat will make them less masculine. It even runs a pseudo-experiment on three NFL players, who find (using the Rigiscan) that they have harder and longer erections when they lay off the meat. It’s a hoot.

The science presented is definitely slanted toward the vegetarian case, but there are no whoppers, unlike most nutritional advocacy pieces.

I’m not a vegetarian, nor do I intend to become one. I’ve already cut my meat consumption to about a third of what it used to be. I’ve laid off beef in particular because of methane emissions, and because I am tired of seeing cows trash beautiful landscapes and foul their waters. And also because so many welfare ranchers in the West are such entitled assholes.

Go see this movie. At worst you will be entertained by great characters, storytelling and visuals. At best you will learn some things that might change your life for the better.

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