Cholesterol, the Great Bluff
In the News • 1h 22m
Directed by Anne Georget • Documentary • 2016 • 82 minutes
For more than six decades, doctors, nutritionists, and public health officials have been waging a war against high cholesterol in an effort to fight heart disease. It’s a war that has seen the demonization of saturated fats, the rise and fall of hydrogenated oils, and the introduction of several generations of “miracle” drugs.
But what if the basic premise linking cholesterol and heart disease is wrong?
CHOLESTEROL, THE GREAT BLUFF convincingly argues that the link between cholesterol and heart disease is tenuous – and that its persistence results from a potent mix of bad science, entrenched interests, and pharmaceutical profits. As the film makes clear, researchers who made any serious attempt to study other hypotheses—that sugar led to vascular disease, for instance—found themselves threatened, their research funding cut and their careers derailed. CHOLESTEROL, THE GREAT BLUFF deploys an array of authoritative and engaging experts to attack the foundations of the cholesterol hypothesis.
Up Next in In the News
-
Riot in the Matrix
Directed by Hansjürgen Schmölzer • Documentary • 2020 • 52 minutes
Why do data protection activists bother? What do they seek to achieve and who supports them? Their opponents, as their allies, often are in unexpected positions. The film explores the world of a community of well-connected activi...
-
Insecticides: A License to Kill
Directed by Miyuki Droz, Sylvain Lepetit, Sébastien Séga • Documentary • 2022 • 58 minutes
The insect apocalypse is here. For decades, scientists have recorded plummeting insect numbers around the world. And when insects go, so do large swathes of complex ecosystems: bird populations decline, fi...
-
Antisemitism
Directed by Ilan Ziv • Documentary • 2022 • 120 minutes
This documentary masterfully traces the history of anti-Semitism and its effects, from cartoon-like medieval church iconography showing Jews with funnels on their heads, to WWII propaganda comparing Jews to rats and neo-Nazis marching in th...