A Fighting Chance

What if you could cure heart disease without medicine or surgery? What if diet could reverse the effects of heart disease?

That premise is what drove Moorestown resident Julia Grayer and Gage Johnston to make Chow Down, a documentary that follows the life of three people who were told they were going to die.

“This is about giving people choices and letting them decide,” Johnston said. “We thought this was important information. People sometimes are not even given the option.”

The option: changing to a plant-based diet. Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic advocates the diet. He is the director of one of the longest-running studies that a plant-based diet can reverse even late stage heart disease.

Grayer, a Moorestown resident, said it was important to tell the story of Esselstyn’s research while making the film as entertaining as possible.

“I’ve always been interested in nutrition,” Grayer, 28, said. “These people were on death’s door. We wanted to get the information out there.”

The documentary will be shown at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 9 at Whole Foods in Marlton. The event, which is free, will include a question and answer session with Grayer and Johnston. The film is also entered in the Jewish Film Festival and will be shown at Woodcrest Country Club on April 3.

Grayer, who received a degree in psychology from Haverford College, thought it would be a simple documentary to make.

It was anything but simple.

It took five years to finish the documentary, including preproduction, three years of filming and post-production.

“The hardest part was finding the story,” said Grayer.

“It took the evolution of the movie to frame the movie,” said Johnston.

In their research, Grayer and Johnston found lots of information that they needed to sift through to find what they would tell in their film, which runs 73 minutes.

“We only included information that studies supported,” said Johnston. “It was very important to us to focus on heart disease and to include those things that people would understand.”

What they also found is that completely changing your diet is hard.

“It’s really hard,” said Johnston. “You have to make an effort. We wanted to make it for those people who have not lived as vegetarians.”

Grayer and Johnston hope the success of Chow Down will lead to funding for their next project, though they aren’t sure what that is yet.

“I’m interested in the neglected truth,” said Johnston. “What’s the overlooked thing? That’s what I like about documentaries.”

“I’ve always thought this was a great way to get information out there,” Grayer said of making documentaries. “This fills a void.”

Chow Down is available at Whole Food stores, on Amazon and through Netflix.