There is a miniseries on Netflix, You are what you eat – Gemini Comparison, which is rapidly climbing the rankings of the most watched series on the streaming platform and which is an absolute must-see with a critical eye. Because he doesn’t talk about veganism and religious wars on diets, but It’s about our health.
You are what you eat – Comparing Gemini on Netflix: why watch the TV miniseries on vegan and omnivorous nutrition
You are what you eat – Gemini Comparison it is not the first TV series on Netflix that talks about nutrition, food and diets: in 2021 we wrote about The Game Changers, the Netflix documentary on vegan nutrition in athletes, but this time we are one step further. Why the series is about a real scientific studypublished November 30, 2023 (Cardiometabolic Effects of Omnivorous vs Vegan Diets in Identical Twins – A Randomized Clinical Trial) and which is somehow new: 22 pairs of homozygous twins, therefore with the same DNA, followed a healthy diet for 8 weeks, i.e. rich in fruit, vegetables, whole grains and legumes and low in sugars and refined starches; but one diet was plant based, that is, vegan in all respects, the other was omnivorous, that is, it also included chicken and fish as well as eggs and dairy products.
Dieta Made in USA
A premise is needed: You are what you eat – Gemini Comparison starts from the point of view of the “American diet”, the so-called Standard American Dietwhose acronym is “Sad”, from its historical assumptions and its social consequences.
The historical assumptions are that during the Second World War the US government realized that a large portion of young American men who wanted to join the military were too thin in order to meet the physical standards imposed by the army. This triggered one culture shock towards a high-protein diet based on meat and dairy products. But since meat and dairy products were not available in quantity and in any case at a high cost, this gave birth to the large-scale food industry, with intensive farming and products available in large-scale retail trade at affordable prices. With the end of the Second World War and the economic boom, cheap foods from supermarkets became an economic business for the food industry, up to the current condition in which, despite the specificities of what the different ethnic groups that make up the American company, the United States has the highest rates of obesity and overweight in the world. Resulting in related cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Gemini Comparison
The idea of the Stanford University study on the scientific basis of the Netflix TV series was born comparing health conditions, overweight and obesity rates and lifestyles of two populations divided only by a highway: the one of San Bernardino in Californiacuriously home to the first McDonald’s in history, and that of Loma Linda. Anyone who has been to the USA will surely have noticed that a highway can plastically divide the upper class neighborhoods from the slums, and even without reaching this extreme polarization in Loma Linda we have a community predominantly of Seventh Day Adventists who have access to fruit, vegetables, legumes , healthy foods, who carries out regular physical activity and who, above all, is predominantly vegetarian; on the other hand, in San Bernardino, we have a low-income and low-education community, which does not have access to fresh or non-industrially processed food, and which eats mainly low-quality food, often from fast food. What in jargon is now called “food desert“. Good: the community of Loma Linda lives on average 10 years longer than that of San Bernardino.
From here the new and revolutionary idea of comparing people with the same DNA for 8 weeks, i.e. the same starting point, and see the role of epigenetics – that is, factors such as age and environmental factors such as physical and chemical agents, diet, physical activity, etc. – in modifying the expression of genes. Or rather, in the case study, of some physical parameters relating to health.
The socio-environmental impact of the food industry
Tangentially in the Netflix TV series You Are What You Eat – Comparing Gemini there is another theme to take into account, in addition to that of individual and social health, and it is the socio-environmental impact of the food industry and intensive farming: from the deforestation of the Amazon to make way for pastures for the breeding of cattle that will provide low-cost meat to the spilling of sewage from intensive pig and poultry farms (with the not secondary note that American farmers only own the land and the sheds , while the livestock and their management are in the hands of multinationals even outside the USA) up to the shows of strength, in defiance of the pollution law, against small rural communities, are crude images that cannot leave one indifferent. But this is a correlate of the TV series, while the crux of the issue is health, precisely individual if not collective.
Cardiometabolic effects of omnivorous and vegan diets in identical twins – A randomized clinical trial
The title of the studio from which the Netflix series derives is already explicit: a randomized clinical trial in identical twins on the cardiometabolic effects of omnivorous and vegan diets. As mentioned, the twin pairs are homozygous, therefore with identical DNA, the assignment of the diet is random, by drawing lots, the twins involved in the study are heterogeneous in age, ethnic group, gender, social background and education. Among the tests they are subjected to at the beginning and at the end of the 8 weeks covered by the study are weight, fat mass and lean mass, visceral fat, libido, resistance, biological age and brain activity, as well as a series of other indicators extrapolated from blood, urine and stool tests. In short, a complete and thorough check-up. For the first 4 weeks, the twin pairs only eat the meals provided by the scholars, for the second 4 weeks they have to shop independently and prepare their own meals.
You are what you eat – Gemini Comparison: the results of the study in terms of health and well-being
At the end of the 8 weeks of study the results are there for all to see:
LDL cholesterol (the “bad” one): with the vegan diet it decreased by at least 10%, while it remained unchanged if not increased in the case of omnivores;
TMAO (TriMethylAmine-N-Oxide)a blood parameter indicative of the level of inflammation and the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (such as heart attacks and strokes): the figure drops with the vegan diet while it remains unchanged or increases with the albeit “healthy” omnivorous diet including meat;
Microbiomeindicator of intestinal health: in vegans, beneficial bacteria for the intestine increase and intestinal inflammation decreases;
Biological and cellular agei.e. the age that can be attributed to an individual on the basis of his morphological and functional conditions such as quality of tissues, organs and systems, evaluated with respect to standard reference values: the twins who followed the vegan diet were biologically even years younger than their omnivorous brothers;
Libido (measured via a genital blood pressure test): the vegan diet exponentially increased the libido of those who followed it, with much higher values than those who followed the omnivorous diet;
Body composition and athletic performance: Everyone lost weight but some twins who followed the vegan diet also lost muscle mass. However, always due to the subject’s “mistakes”: either he ate too little by not respecting the rules and meals provided or he did not do activities as he should have. On the other hand, the muscles of those who ate omnivorously remained satisfactory, however their visceral fat did not decrease and in some cases it increased
Critical vision
Now, put like this, all we need to do is immediately abandon meat and dairy products and embrace a vegan diet. However, although it is a TV series based on a true and rigorous scientific study, a bit of critical vision is necessary.
First of all, the assumption is that we are talking about the American reality, which despite the alarming rates of overweight and obesity, including childhood, that we are also experiencing (the so-called Homer Simpson Syndrome) is a reality still a little distant from ours .
Then like all entertainment products, You Are What You Eat – Gemini in Comparison is packaged as it should: the physical trainer who follows the pairs of twins is vegan and always appears with his muscles in plain sight from his tank top and runs faster than the twins who is training; similarly in the series we also talk about surrogate products such as Beyond Meat, and the intervention of Miyoko Schinner, fondatrice di Miyoko’s Creamery which produces vegan butter and cheese, is a great advert for the substitutes industry; equally emotional impact is the storytelling around the choice of chef Daniel Humm who after bringing the Eleven Madison Park restaurant in New York to 3 Michelin stars and being named the best restaurant in the world with dishes such as roast duck with honey and lavender, lobster cooked in butter or foie gras has made a U-turn U-shaped towards a vegan choice dictated above all by ethical reasons; last but not least we don’t talk about the need for supplementation for those following a long-term 100% vegan diet (typically the indispensable Vitamin B12 and Omega 3, but also Vitamin D, Iron, Calcium, Zinc and Iodine) nor the environmental and social costs of the boom in demand for some products (typically avocado, which we have already written about here).
Having said all that, You Are What You Eat – Gemini Comparison it must be looked at without preclusions or preventive positionsand having to deal with your food choices a little, both in terms of quantity of certain foods and in terms of quality, can only be good for individual and collective health, including that of the planet.
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