‘Scary’ Netflix documentary could leave you questioning your life choices

Before we get started, consider this your *spoiler warning for You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment*.

The 2024 Netflix documentary You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment has been causing a stir ever since it hit the streaming service, with no end of people flocking to social media to express their horror.

It might not be as literally terrifying as the likes of American Nightmare or Tiger King, but it’s got plenty of people re-evaluating their own life choices.

The four-part series follows a trial by Stanford Medicine which saw four sets of twins split down the middle, with one of each pair being on a vegan diet while the other maintained an omnivorous one.

Over the course of the trial, the diets’ impact on each twin was monitored, investigated, and compared to their opposite number, with the aim being to find out what diets’ effects would be on people who are, to all intents and purposes, genetically identical.

"The study found that, after only eight weeks, the twins eating the plant-based diet experienced: an increase in their life expectancy; reduced visceral fat (the dangerous fat that accumulates around your organs); reduced risk of heart disease; and even a heightened sexual drive,” said Netflix’s Tudum.

“The results surprised even the Stanford research team."

While the documentary is over a year old, viewers are still being blown away by the trial’s results and the conclusions is draws about certain foods.

Plenty of people have weighed in on it on social media over the past year, including one X user who said: "Watching it now. Very enlightening."

"I know someone that watched that and has decided to work on becoming a vegan," said another person.

"Watching 'You Are What You Eat' on Netflix and it’s making me rethink my whole life,” said a third person. “I’m so grateful we found a local farm to get our meat and produce from. It’s all so scary."

It’s even convinced some people to cut meat out of their diets: "I’m watching You Are What You Eat on Netflix and I’m done eating meat because of it. It’s traumatising.

Plenty more have been angered by the show’s apparent messaging around food.

"This was horrible,” said one person. “Want to sell us a bunch of chemically sprayed over processed vegetables!!!! This was a joke."

"I endured 'You Are What You Eat' on Netflix last night,” began another upset viewer. “Far from being an unbiased comparison of two diets, it's a propaganda piece for our meat-free future.”

The show’s participants were certainly convinced by the study’s process, effects, and conclusions, however.

In an update issued by Netflix in January this year, Tudum reported that participants had reduced their red meat consumption or increased the amount of plant-based foods on their plates since finishing the study.

Twins Pam and Wendy, who featured in the doc, are from South Africa and had grown up eating meat most days. After taking part, in their January update they said their diets are now “not fully plant-based,” but they “don’t eat meat like before”, and they have "cut their meat consumption by around half".

Considering red meat’s close association with bowel cancer, its environmental impacts, and the fact you can get protein from plenty of other sources - not least poultry and fish - there are plenty of good reasons to cut back on it.