Yesterday I watched an episode of “The Game Changers” on Netflix, after a friend of mine recommended it to me. I was shocked by what I saw.

The show is a “documentary” about athletes discovering that plant based diets are better than meat based diets. But that’s not the shocking part.

The show was so full of scientism (thank you Taleb) and false information that it got me angry. Then when I thought about it, I realised that this is linked to why I don’t watch the news anymore.

It’s not that shows like “The Game Changers” and Fox News are fake news that are publishing lies, even though they are. The problem stems from the fact that most of what we consume today as information sources is really entertainment. Heavily dramatised, and simplified past the point falsehood.

Without getting into the weeds of nutrition, The Game Changers claimed such absurdities that there’s no difference between plant and animal protein (true to a degree, but different plants have different levels of the essential amino acids) but also that animal protein gives you cancer. Which would be quite a big difference.

(It also showed a trained athlete going from a max of 10 minutes doing a workout to over 60 minutes just from switching to a plant based diet. That would make these plants much more powerful than steroids. Is this a documentary or the home shopping network?)

Almost everything we watch, read, or listen to today is a dramatisation of some information. Even the news is trying to find the edge to make you sit up and pay attention. That’s no different from marketing. The news tries to work from fact, but since dramatisation requires simplification, it makes no real difference if you are watching CNN, the WHO briefing, or listening to some celebrity’s podcast.

It’s all fake news. We must view it critically, which means never believing it at face value.

(Please don’t watch The Game Changers, it is total crap, no athletes know that little about nutrition.)