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How angry would you be?

My teenager is texting me that we should look into a plant based diet because their health teacher is showing The Game Changers in class. (If that’s not the most Californian sentence ever, I don’t know what is.)

I’m actually open to moving towards a more plant-based diet, and I know that they can be healthy and tasty. When I’m on my game with planning and cooking, we already eat vegetarian about half the week.

But a Netflix documentary? Really? They’re notoriously awful and full of misinformation intended to fire people up. I’m incredibly disappointed in this teacher.

Hey, at least it’s giving me an opportunity to discuss evaluating sources and biases with my kid. Would you leave it at discussing it at home, or would you take it up with the teacher?
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Replies

  • mourvedre
    mourvedre Posts: 107 Member
    Any chance of getting a copy of the documentary and re-watching it with your teenager?
  • JBanx256 wrote: »
    I don't think I'd be angry, but more...annoyed? Like, OK, what's next, documentaries on Elvis sightings and alien abductions?

    IMO, this is a pretty amazing (and entirely fair) critique:
    https://renaissanceperiodization.com/expert-advice/game-changers-critique-by-dr-mel-davis

    FWIW, I have nothing against plant-based diets (I was vegetarian for years and my kiddo currently is, which I support wholeheartedly - both actually preparing their food and obviously paying for it). The Game Changers is just a lotta BS tho and has no place being taught as fact.

    Thanks! They texted me just before I needed to leave to pick up my younger kid, so while I was leery about it on the basis of its existence as a Netflix “health” documentary, I hadn’t looked up analyses of it yet.
  • JBanx256
    JBanx256 Posts: 1,470 Member
    JBanx256 wrote: »
    I don't think I'd be angry, but more...annoyed? Like, OK, what's next, documentaries on Elvis sightings and alien abductions?

    IMO, this is a pretty amazing (and entirely fair) critique:
    https://renaissanceperiodization.com/expert-advice/game-changers-critique-by-dr-mel-davis

    FWIW, I have nothing against plant-based diets (I was vegetarian for years and my kiddo currently is, which I support wholeheartedly - both actually preparing their food and obviously paying for it). The Game Changers is just a lotta BS tho and has no place being taught as fact.

    Thanks! They texted me just before I needed to leave to pick up my younger kid, so while I was leery about it on the basis of its existence as a Netflix “health” documentary, I hadn’t looked up analyses of it yet.

    Very welcome!

    Layne Norton also did a good piece on it:
    https://www.biolayne.com/articles/research/the-game-changers-review-a-scientific-analysis/
  • socajam
    socajam Posts: 2,530 Member
    How about getting your child to write an essay on plant based diet versus meat or vegetarian diets
    This would be a teaching moment on doing research and critical thinking skills - then both of you can sit down and discuss the findings
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,843 Member
    I looked at the above critiques, and they weren't the ones I had read before, so I went down a rabbit hole to find earlier threads and critiques:

    https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a29067926/the-game-changers-movie-fact-check/

    And here's an obviously biased source complaining about the biases in Game Changers:

    https://www.beefmagazine.com/beef/why-schwarzenegger-s-game-changers-documentary-dangerous
  • MargaretYakoda
    MargaretYakoda Posts: 2,113 Member
    nooshi713 wrote: »
    Not all Netflix documentaries are bad. There was good information in there. It is good to look at different sources of information and then use your judgement to determine what’s true or not. I would not be mad at all.

    Came here to say essentially this.
    Also?
    I pulled my kid out of public school in 4th grade because (reasons) and homeschooled after that. And one of the first, most surprising lessons he learned was that authority figures can be wrong. He learned it by checking the answers to his math in the teacher’s manual. Sometimes the answer was wrong. He could see it clearly and without any spin.

    This is an opportunity for the same lesson.

    Check multiple sources. Think criticality. Trust facts and science (mostly, quacks and charlatans still deserve derision)
    It’s a powerful lesson.

    Six disagrees here.
    Can anyone say what could possibly be the issue they’re disagreeing with?

    ‘Cause this isn’t accidental, and it isn’t anything I can understand a reasonable person would disagree with.

    Or do I have multiple disagree stalkers?

    Not upset. Just curious.
  • ythannah
    ythannah Posts: 4,366 Member
    I guess it would depend on what the teacher's motives were for showing the documentary to the students. Seeing as how it's a health class, I'm doubting it was for critique of bias in media!

    I was naively hopeful that it was some sort of lesson in how to critically evaluate popular information sources with regard to health topics. :D

    Disclaimer #2: I don't have kids and have NO idea what they do in schools these days.