What You Should Know About the Pro-Vegan Netflix Film 'What the Health'

The recent pro-vegan Netflix documentary, What the Health, is under fire from nutrition experts. The film, which is co-directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn—the creators of another Netflix documentary, Cowspiracy—and co-produced by actor Joaquin Phoenix, is being criticized by some health professionals for exaggerating weak data and misrepresenting science to promote a diet that avoids all animal foods. TIME fact-checked the film. Here are four things that What the Health got wrong—and what it got right. The documentary claims that eating an egg a day is as bad for your life expectancy as smoking five cigarettes a day, due to artery plaque buildup from high cholesterol content in eggs. But that assertion is based on outdated information, and recent research suggests that the effects of eggs are nowhere near comparable to those of cigarettes. Recently, national nutrition experts declared that cholesterol, found in foods such as eggs, is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption. Other research has shown that the kind of cholesterol you eat isn't solidly linked to cholesterol levels in the blood.