The Game Changers: Being on the Right Side of History

The Game Changers has become the best-selling documentary on iTunes and it took about a week to achieve this feat. The film, directed by Oscar-winner Louie Psihoyos and produced by Oscar-winner James Cameron, documents the explosive rise of plant-based eating in professional sports. It’s just not one sports, the film features sportsmen and women from a broad spectrum of sports that requires strength, endurance, agility, mobility, or simply power.

The film begins with an injured UFC fighter James Wilks’ quest to find ancient and scientific literature to heal himself of an injury. Wilks is the narrator who strings the stories of athletes from different sports and genres, from the seven-time western states champion and widely regarded as the greatest ultra marathoner of all times – Scott Jurek to power lifter Patrick Baboumian to UFC fighter Nate Diaz and many more. The storyline also features many medical professionals and doctors espousing latest research in the field of sports and nutrition. The result of this story telling is an in-depth view of how plant-based eating has translated into success for some of these great athletes. The film also looks at the role of meat in sports performance and unravels how cutting down or eliminating meat will do a world of good to sportspersons and the world at large. 

Wilks finds that the ancient roman gladiators, feted for their power and prowess, were primarily vegetarians. The prevailing misconception that you need meat to build physique isn’t necessarily true but more anecdotal, as stories passed from generation to generation.

But there was no way to verify this fact since plant residues decay while bones linger in the soil for centuries. Recently, researchers have begun to use a technique called isotopic analysis which has enabled them to reconstruct the diet of gladiators, confirming that Gladiators, despite of their burly physique, barely ate meat.

The Gladiators were primarily legume and barley eaters, yet their bone density is found to be amongst the very best recorded for the human species.

The story then takes us to the famous fight between Nate Diaz and Connor McGregor that happened in 2016. I remember watching the fight live on Internet. It took the MMA world by storm. Most elite MMA fighters consume copious amounts of meat. McGregor himself boasted of eating steak all day at the pre-match conference and said that he will rip apart Diaz who’d been a vegan for 18 years.

What happened on the ring stunned the world and it was billed as the biggest upset of the MMA world. Diaz totally outclassed a bloodied McGregor in strength, agility, and proved to be a smarter and intelligent fighter. Thus reaffirming what we already know – you don’t need to feed on meat to become a better fighter, you just need to train harder and recover faster.

The Game Changers then takes us to my favourite part as the camera zooms on Scott Jurek, an all time ultra marathon legend, who is attempting to set a speed record on the Appalachian Trail. This was in the summer of 2016, when Scott decided to run from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. A journey that took him 46 days, 8 hours and 7 minutes to break the previous record.

It must be noted that an average hiker takes 6-7 months to cover the Appalachian trail. What’s interesting is that Scott had long retired when he undertook this project, yet the skills he learned over two decades and the power of plants, enabled him to achieve this monumental feat. I had the good fortune to meet Jurek as we went for a run together and he mentioned how a vegan diet helps him recover quicker, thereby enabling him to work harder and longer than his contemporaries.

Scott’s story is the stuff legends are made of and it is for a reason that he is the most celebrated ultra marathoner of all times, and he achieved all this on a 100% vegan diet.

There are about 5-6 stories that flow parallel across the length of the film and each story reinforces the belief that we need to do away with outdated ideas of sports and nutrition, which are doing more harm than good to the sports fraternity. The belief that meat gives you power, milk is necessary for the bones are some such obsolete ideas. The story even displays how animal agriculture industries are using marketing to spread misinformation. Camel, the cigarettes company, used doctors in their ads in the 60s to say that cigarette smoking is harmless.

Fifty years later, we now clearly know that cigarettes do no good to anyone. Perhaps we are on the cusp where some have understood that animal protein is no good either, but should we be waiting another 50 years to drive this point home? The film, The Game Changers, true to its name, is an important step in this direction.

The film also reinforces that animals are the unfortunate middlemen in the protein chain. It is the plants that are source of all protein. We must cut out the middlemen and reach directly to the source. Not only will this benefit us personally, but also the animals involved and planet as a whole. It is win-win-win.

While the sports of running has broadly accepted that you can thrive on plant-based diets, yet the sports of bodybuilding is replete with bias in favor of meat. The film then zooms its focus on athletes known for raw strength and power. First comes Germany’s Strong Man – Patrick Baboumian, who created multiple Guinness records in powerlifting. Patrick says, “Someone asked me, how could you get as strong as an ox without eating meat?” His answer was, “Have you ever seen an ox eating meat?” Patrick says it succinctly and drives the point home.

Then it takes us to a professional bodybuilder – Nimai Delgado who was raised by immigrant Hare Krishna parents. He has been vegetarian since birth and a vegan for many years and has never eaten meat. Nimai’s sculpted body is testimony to the fact that protein advice in bodybuilding circuits is based on decades of misinformation. This misinformation is spread by protein and supplement companies. It is totally possible to build an enviable body on plants.

The film then plays a masterstroke by bringing Arnold Schwarzenegger, the biggest name in the bodybuilding world, whose pictures are adorned in gyms all over the world. He comes in the film briefly, but strikes a cord when he says, “I ate a lot of meat. They show in commercials – steak – that’s what a man eats. That is selling the idea that real man eats meat but you got to understand that is marketing. That is not based on reality.” Now that he’s almost plant based, Schwarzenegger confesses that his cholesterol is the lowest that it had been in his entire life. A little search on the Internet reveals that Schwarzenegger was advised by his doctors to cut meat.

When the virtues of plant-based eating comes from the big man (Schwarzenegger), the world pauses and takes note.

The Game Changers also espouses how some middle aged athletes extended the peak of their careers by making the switch. Dotsie Bausch, an eight-time U.S. national cycling champion, beat middle age to qualify for the Olympics at age 39. The film features Carl Lewis briefly, who clearly extended some years to his career by switching to a vegan diet.

And then! There is a brief shot of our own Virat Kohli, who switched to plant-based foods, which as per his own confession, takes his game to the very top and he, without a doubt, is on his way to become the greatest cricketers of all times.

As demonstrated by the athletes and research featured in The Game Changers, switching to a diet centered around plants can yield significant performance advantages, providing optimal fuel, increasing blood flow, making muscles more efficient, and speeding recovery by lowering inflammation. The holy grail of sports nutrition is to optimally fuel training and competition, while accelerating recovery. Athletes with dialed-in diets can push harder, last longer, heal quicker, and train again sooner.

The benefits of plant-based eating cannot only be experienced by athletes, but by anyone who wants to feel and perform better. It may be in sports or in any normal day-to-day activity. In this World Vegan Month, let us reconsider what we eat. We owe it ourselves as much as we owe to the animals and the planet. It is win-win-win. Today let us not only talk about bringing the change. Let’s be the change.

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Cover image: A shot of blood test samples from The Game Changers that shows a much clearer blood as a result of the consumption of beans (plants) versus chicken (meat).