"Food is Medicine"
Doctors, scientists and chefs around the globe combat illness with dietary changes, believing fat should be embraced as a source of fuel.
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We all love food. As a society, we devour countless cooking shows, culinary magazines and foodie blogs. So how could we possibly be throwing nearly 50% of it in the trash? Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping and survive only on discarded food. What they find is truly shocking.
Kathryn Calder, one of the vocalists behind the Influential and successful indie band The New Pornographers, puts her life on hold when her mother is diagnosed with ALS. After moving back to her childhood home to care for her mother, she is inspired to record her first solo album, 'Are You My Mother?' there as a gift to her as she fights the disease. Old bandmates, friends, and a new extended family only recently discovered all join Kathryn in her and her mother's journey.
Norway’s beloved home economics teacher and cooking pioneer Ingrid Espelid Hovig charmed viewers for decades, showing everyone how to cook — from everyday meals to the perfect crispy Christmas pork rind. A forty-year career celebrated through classic clips and memorable moments.
For centuries, the ports of Lebanon dominated the trade routes between Europe, the Middle East, China and India. In this documentary, our intrepid gastronaut Merrilees Parker finds a world of heavily spiced lamb, cooling salads, deliciously strong wines from and sweet pastries filled with pistachios and honey.
The 2016 Reebok CrossFit Games were a grueling five-day, 15-event test to find the fittest man and woman on Earth. "Fittest on Earth: A Decade of Fitness" follows the dramatic story of the top athletes who qualified and competed and offers an inside look at what it takes to be among the world's elite athletes, both in training and on the competition floor. The CrossFit Games challenge competitors to perform intense physical tasks, but the hardest part is sometimes mental. Athletes often learn the details of the events only minutes before they begin, and everyone handles the pressure differently. Which of these fierce competitors will rise to the top and earn the title of Fittest on Earth?
From New York City to the farmlands of the Midwest, there are 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., yet one dish in particular has conquered the American culinary landscape with a force befitting its military moniker—“General Tso’s Chicken.” But who was General Tso and how did this dish become so ubiquitous? Ian Cheney’s delightfully insightful documentary charts the history of Chinese Americans through the surprising origins of this sticky, sweet, just-spicy-enough dish that we’ve adopted as our own.
Both during and after pregnancy, yoga is a perfect way to firm your body, build strength, and gain flexibility. These two yoga practices, filmed in a serene garden overlooking the Pacific Ocean, are also a wonderful way to maintain emotional balance and reduce stress during the exciting and often hectic times surrounding the birth of a child. In the prenatal sequence you'll practice safe and simple movements intended to strengthen and tone your body at any stage of pregnancy, while providing relaxation that will help create a luminous space in which your baby will thrive. The postnatal sequence is designed to redefine your body, restore your energy, and help you reconnect to yourself and your own wellness.
Morgan Spurlock subjects himself to a diet based only on McDonald's fast food three times a day for thirty days without exercising to try to prove why so many Americans are fat or obese. He submits himself to a complete check-up by three doctors, comparing his weight along the way, resulting in a scary conclusion.
Virologist Dr Chris van Tulleken embarks on a global investigation into the hunt for the pathogen that could trigger the next pandemic and the cutting-edge science developed to tackle it. Known only as ‘Disease X’, it is shrouded in uncertainty. Its origin is unknown, how it could spread is unclear, but its impact could be much more severe than Covid-19. To uncover what Disease X might be, where it could emerge and what traits it needs to spread, Chris follows the paths of past deadly viruses. He visits the ground zero of the Nipah virus in Malaysia, which inspired the film Contagion. He also heads to the front line of the ongoing bird flu outbreak in US dairy cattle in California.
In Ramen Heads, Osamu Tomita, Japan's reigning king of ramen, takes us deep into his world, revealing every single step of his obsessive approach to creating the perfect soup and noodles, and his relentless search for the highest-quality ingredients.
Pelican, a bakery located at Asakusa, Tokyo, becomes crowded every morning. There are only two types of bread sold. It looks ordinary but meet a bakery that has been loved for 74 years with a taste you won't get tired of even if you eat it everyday!
Filmmaker Judith Helfand turns the camera on herself to document her battle with cancer caused by DES, a drug prescribed to her mother during pregnancy. Refusing to confine the tears, rage, laughter and hope to dinner table conversations, Helfand invites us to witness her personal journey from radical hysterectomy patient to vocal opponent of toxic exposure. From her suburban home to the halls of Congress, the intensely private becomes widely public, and an American family is transformed and strengthened.
Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner examines how mammoth corporations have taken over all aspects of the food chain in the United States, from the farms where our food is grown to the chain restaurants and supermarkets where it's sold. Narrated by author and activist Eric Schlosser, the film features interviews with average Americans about their dietary habits, commentary from food experts like Michael Pollan and unsettling footage shot inside large-scale animal processing plants.
In this remarkable journey, Planet Food travels the world to see how control of the spice trails, over the last five millennia, has made great cities and destroyed ancient civilizations. Our guides travel from the Molucca Islands of Indonesia, the original home of cloves and nutmeg, to the Indian province of Kerala, with its native pepper and cardamom. Additional stops include Venice, Beirut, Cairo and other significant places in the spice trade that created and toppled empires.
“I am a hypochondriac”, admits Rosa Von Praunheim, the icon of the gay movement, right at the beginning at the film. The director, who turned seventy in 2012, is afraid of cancer, and he actually suffers from glaucoma, with osteoarthritis in his big toe. Von Praunheim is interested in alternative medicine and goes on a foray into the scene.
The film interweaves the personal accounts of polio survivors with the story of an ardent crusader who tirelessly fought on their behalf while scientists raced to eradicate this dreaded disease. Based in part on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky, Features interviews with historians, scientists, polio survivors, and the only surviving scientist from the core research team that developed the Salk vaccine, Julius Youngner.
With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what's wrong with our malnourished bodies, it's no wonder that modern society is getting sicker. Food Matters sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide sickness industry and gives people some scientifically verifiable solutions for curing disease naturally.
A comedic, brutally honest documentary following self-destructive TV writer Dan Harmon as he takes his live podcast on a national tour.
Filmmaker Kip Andersen uncovers the secret to preventing and even reversing chronic diseases, and he investigates why the nation's leading health organizations doesn't want people to know about it.
The Captains is a feature-length documentary film written and directed by William Shatner. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains in the Star Trek franchise.
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
Ten of Muhammad Ali's former rivals pay tribute to the three-time world heavyweight champion.
This character-driven film considers the evolving sex trafficking landscape as seen by the main players: the exploited, the pimps, the johns that fuel the business, and the cops who fight to stop it.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
A documentary focused on plastic pollution in the world's oceans.
One man's journey to discover the bitter truth about sugar. Damon Gameau embarks on a unique experiment to document the effects of a high sugar diet on a healthy body, consuming only foods that are commonly perceived as 'healthy'. Through this entertaining and informative journey, Damon highlights some of the issues that plague the sugar industry, and where sugar lurks on supermarket shelves.
Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.
A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese interviews his mother and father about their life in New York and family history back in Sicily.
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
A feature length, theatrical documentary on the life of Paul Gascoigne, one of the greatest footballers that ever lived: delving deep into his psyche, vulnerabilities, fears and triumphs.
Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?
The film follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia.