Watch The Beautiful Truth

Rady Ananda
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Written and Directed by Steve Kroschel. Featuring Charlotte Gerson, Jay Kordich, Garrett Kroschel, Joyce Riley, and Howard Straus. – 2008, 92 mins.

Compelling and potent, this 2008 docufilm celebrates how far we’ve come in taking back our food supply, and even acknowledges the reality that no one can verify an electronic vote count (which hand counts can rectify but only if enough precincts care enough to count the ballots – say 8 workers per thousand voters).

The sense of a genuine road trip and coming of age tale of this teen, as he comes to recognize the major forces acting on his health and well being, make this a nice Holiday respite from tasks and parties and bad roads.

Mainstream organizations long involved in the food fight highlight the Gerson Therapy, whole foods, GMOs, MSG and more, but Andrew Kimbrell from the Center for Food Safety speaks forcefully and articulates well. It’s from his lips the movie gets its title.

One of the talking heads, Howard Strauss of the Gerson Institute, knocks you over by outright stating, “Genetically modified foods are lethal.” But that’s after Joyce Riley, a military nurse, discusses Gulf War Syndrome, laying the blame on a variety of toxins including depleted uranium, vaccines, GMO foods and the fog of war.

It’s a feel-good, eat-good flick, even if Kimbrell’s enthusiasm in ’08 didn’t foresee the Monsanto takeover of the FDA and USDA, or the White House (given Obama’s broken campaign promises to label GMOs and not appoint industry insiders).

Top Doc‘s intro:

Raised on a wildlife reserve in Alaska, 15-year-old Garrett was interested in the dietary habits of the farm animals. After the tragic death of his mother, Garrett’s father decided to home-school his son and assigned a book written by Dr. Max Gerson that proposed a direct link between diet and a cure for cancer.

Fascinated, Garrett embarks in this documentary on a cross-country road trip to investigate The Gerson Therapy. He meets with scientists, doctors and cancer survivors who reveal how it is in the best interest of the multi-billion dollar medical industry to dismiss the notion of alternative and natural cures.

IMDB’s Plot Summary:

A troubled 15-year-old boy attempting to cope with the recent death of his mother sets out to research Dr. Max Gerson’s claims of a diet that can cure cancer as his first assignment for home-schooling in this documentary from filmmaker Steve Kroschel (Avalanche, Dying to Have Known).

Garrett is a boy who has always been close to nature. He lives on a reserve with a menagerie of orphaned animals, and over the years he’s become especially sensitive to the nutritional needs of the diet-sensitive animals he’s charged with caring for. When Garrett’s mother suffers a tragic and untimely death, the boy falls into a dangerous downward spiral and nearly flunks out of school.

Increasingly concerned for Garrett’s well-being and determined to strengthen their bond despite the many challenges on the horizon, his father makes the decision to begin home-schooling the distressed teen. Garrett’s first assignment: study a controversial book written by Dr. Max Gerson, a physician who claims to have discovered a diet that’s capable of curing cancer.

Is Dr. Gerson’s therapy truly the legitimate, alternative cure it appears to be? In order to find out the truth behind this long-suppressed treatment, Garrett interviews not only Dr. Gerson’s family members, but various doctors, skeptics, and cancer patients as well.

[Spoiler removed]

Recently from Rady Ananda:

Rady Ananda is the creator of Food Freedom News and COTO Report, Rady Ananda’s work has appeared in several online and print publications, including four books. With a B.S. in Natural Resources from Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture, Rady tweets @geobear7 and @RadysRant.