Lecture Series Continues with ‘Perfect Human Diet’ Screening

The Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology continues its fifth annual lecture series with a screening of a documentary that follows one man’s quest for the perfect human diet.

This year’s series, Food For Thought: What Should We Eat?, explores the issues of ethics and values that arise in the fields of consumption and production of food.

“Food — what is a more central part of our lives?” said Dr. Matthew Brown, director of the Center for Values. “We eat it every day. We regularly travel to restaurants and grocery stores to get it. We cycle through fad diets; we are inundated by a variety of radical movements: veganism, primalism, localism, raw foodism. But how often do we really think about food?”

CJ Hunt, who has more than 20 years of broadcasting experience and is author of two books on diet and health, will show his documentary The Perfect Human Diet, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Jonsson Performance Hall. After the screening, there will be a Q-and-A with Hunt and local experts in health and nutrition.

Are there diets that really work? Do we have any sound evidence for effectiveness of our dietary choices? What types of evidence are there? These are the questions that Hunt tackles in his film by examining evidence from fields of archaeological science, paleo- and forensic anthropology, nutrition and metabolism, biomolecular archaeology, and the emerging field of human dietary evolution.

The trailer for the film can be seen here.

The documentary evolved from Hunt’s true-life story, beginning in 1978 when paramedics brought him back to life at the age of 24, after suffering a full cardiac arrest while jogging. This incident evoked an intense passion to find out how we can all achieve longer, healthier and happier lives, and to share that information with others.

Co-sponsored by the Meteor Theater, which features a variety of independent films, the event is free and open to the public.