review: beyond impossible

Vinnie Tortorich Has a Beef With Plant-Based Burgers

If you’ve read my book, you know that I loves me some Vinnie Tortorich.  His “No Sugar, No Grains” lifestyle made low-carb seem sane and doable, where before I’d dismissed it. His podcast introduced me to the world of the therapeutic ketogenic diet for epilepsy. It’s safe to say that without him, my book would not exist.

So whenever I get a chance, I support his ever-growing repertoire of creative pursuits: I recently reread his book Fitness Confidential for the nth time; I never miss an episode of his podcast; I’m a subscriber to his Pure Vitamin Club; I fuel my workouts with his NSNG Foods’ Ultra Fat. I’ve even been a guest on his show, and he was gracious enough to feature my book on his Amazon influencer page.

So when his new movie Beyond Impossible came out last month, I was among the first to preorder.

Now, all of that preamble to say, the following film review should probably be taken with a rock or two of salt. Anyway, here it is:

how did we get here?

If there’s one theme that runs through all three of Vinnie’s films, it is this question. In Fat: A Documentary, and its sequel Fat 2, “here” is defined as the point where more than half of our population is obese, overweight, or otherwise metabolically unhealthy. The films delve into the history of America’s weight problem, and show how corporate greed and governmental negligence have hit Americans right in the gut.

His latest film, Beyond Impossible, asks a more pointed question: How did we get to the point where factory-produced, processed foods — specifically, plant-based burgers — are viewed as being “healthier” than their natural counterparts — i.e., meat?

Just like his first two docs, Beyond Impossible uses a fast-paced blend of interviews, archival footage, and direct-to-camera commentary to create a hard-hitting barrage of facts, opinions, and ideas that leave the viewer shocked and awed. It’s not for the faint of heart.

The film systematically takes on the three main arguments in favor of foods like the Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger, and by extension, the vegan / “plant-based” diet itself. Proponents will say that these foods are healthier, more environmentally sustainable, and more ethical than eating animal products.

Vinnie disagrees. Time after time, he shows that these arguments are shaky at best, and at worst, downright deceptive.

I won’t go through them all here, but I can’t resist sharing just one of my favorites. We’ve all heard some version of the argument that a hamburger takes 660 gallons of water to produce. This is based on the fact that a cow drinks up to 30 gallons of water each day throughout the course of its life, and a burger represents a portion of that cow.

This one never sat right with me. As a backpacker, I know that a gallon of water is heavy to carry around (8 lbs, to be exact). A cow will drink up to 75,000 gallons of water in its lifetime. Yowza! So that explains why the average cow weighs around 600,000 pounds — more than the Statue of Liberty!

Right??

Well, as it turns out — and this is a scientific fact, folks — the water doesn’t stay in the cow. Like us, cows have these funny habits of exhaling, peeing, and pooping. So all those gallons of water (most of which is rainwater and not potable for human use anyway, the film explains) is returned, in some form or another, back into the ecosystem.

feeding the cows v. feeding the world

I ran into a similarly sophistic argument a few years ago in that hellacious place called Twitter. Someone had posted a PETA graphic claiming that 85% of American soybeans were used to feed livestock. If we simply fed these beautiful beans to humans, the argument went, we could solve world hunger and climate change besides.

However, I had just read Nina Teicholz’s book The Big Fat Surprise, so I knew that around 85% of the world’s soybeans were made into America’s #1 most popular oil, soybean oil.

“Wait just one soybean-pickin’ minute,” I thought. “85%, plus another 85%? That’s like… a lot. There’s not much left over for soy lattes and tofurkey.”

So I did a little digging and found out, to my surprise, it’s the same beans. It works like this: big ol’ pile of soybeans goes into the factory, where they get crushed, heated, mixed with chemicals, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Out the other end comes oil, along with a waste product called “soybean meal.” (Yummy!) Rather than throw this gunk out, someone, somewhere, had the bright idea that we can feed it to animals. And so we do. That’s how the same 85% of soybeans are used to feed both people and animals, even though it’s probably not the healthiest way to feed either of us.

at the movies

Beyond Impossible presents a counterpoint to arguments like these, and many others posited in vegan films like James Cameron’s recent Game Changers. Does it succeed?

Largely. The film is thoughtful, eye opening, and credible. Part myth-buster, part expose’, it takes an in-depth look at many of the corporate interests pushing the plant-based narrative (such as the above-mentioned James Cameron’s multimillion-dollar investment in a pea protein supplement company).

It has to be said, though, that one place it falls short of its glossy plant-based counterparts is in production value, which is uneven at times. It was created on a shoestring budget during a global pandemic, which means that some scenes, such as interviews with expert agronomists, are straight from Zoom, and it shows. This may seem nitpicky, but it could put a dent in the film’s credibility for some audiences.

The other thing that viewers might not enjoy is the way the film gets down and dirty with real-life footage. If films like Cowspiracy and Seaspiracy make their argument with shock-value scenes of livestock and fish being slaughtered, Beyond Impossible goes tit-for-tat, using footage of cute and fuzzy critters being sacrificed in the process of growing and harvesting crops like wheat and corn.

“There’s no free lunch,” Vinnie deadpans into the camera, stating that for something to live, something else has to die. (Contrary to popular belief, “rodenticide” doesn’t just politely shoo bunnies out of the carrot patch). It’s an inconvenient truth, but a timeless one — as an English teacher, it’s my sworn duty here to point to Robert Burns’s famous “best-laid plans of mice and men” poem, the full title of which is “To a Mouse, On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.”

In the end, Beyond Impossible is a wild adventure of a documentary. It will spoil your appetite, it will blow your mind — and that’s exactly what it sets out to do. Love it or hate it, you won’t soon forget it. And you might feel a little less guilty next time you skip past those bean patties in the burger aisle.

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