Fed Up

The movie titled Fed Up is about the effects of sugar and its contribution to the worldwide obesity and type 2 diabetes pandemic, a situation so serious that children were beginning to get this disease, which was initially classified as adult onset diabetes. The movie does a good job of describing the politics of food and the complicity of the USDA with multi-national agribusiness/food companies, mostly revealed by Marion Nestle's, PhD in her Food Politics and Soda Politics. The movie breaks down in having revealed the evils of sugar, it failed to adequately discuss the alternatives to sugar. Just eating vegetables and fruits is an incomplete answer. This omission arises because there is eclectic group of scientist/doctors with conflicting view as to what constitutes a healthy diet. To that end, one needs to look at the cast of characters in this movie and those who are missing but should have been included.

First and foremost there is First Lady Michele Obama with her "let's move" program, yet she does not want to "demonize" the food and beverage industries. Both Dr Nestle and Mrs. Obama seem to me to be proponents of the lipid hypothesis that saturated fat is bad promulgated by the 1977 McGovern Committee report. This has its roots Ancel Keys M.D. who was co director of the Framingham heart study. The other Co director, George V Mann, M.D. thinks, "This is the greatest public health scam perpetrated on the American public." Former President William Clinton pursues a vegan or perhaps lacto-vegan diet promulgated by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD

in his book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.

Michael Pollan, in The Omnivore's Dilemma and Eat Real Food, Mark Hyman M.D. Robert Lustig's M.D. Fat Chance , Mark Hyman, M.D. and Gary Taube's Good Calories Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat all emphasize the importance of quality fats, both saturated and unsaturated from animals, properly raised, and plants. David Perlmutter, MD, not mentioned in this movie, in his Grain Brain notes primitive hunter-gatherers ate a ketogenic (high fat) diet. This is also confirmed in medical anthropologist Weston A. Price's DDS 1939 Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.

Gary Taubes presents good historical data in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was generally known one could eat all the meats, fats, vegetables dairy, and whole fruits desired so long as one avoided or strictly limited the consumption of starches (bread, potatoes, cereals, etc) and sugars By so doing, Lustig points out the hormone leptin, which tells one's body it can stop eating, would not be overwhelmed by the hormone insulin, which insists one must keep eating. Both Taubes and Lustig assert the calories in-calories out is a failed paradigm; it's not physics but biology. To push the matter into the absurd, if one over eats, even slightly, one ends up morbidly obese and if one under eats, even slightly, one ends up terribly emaciated!

Although I am a Doctor of medicine and these facts are known by me since decades, I'll try to evaluate the efficiency of this documentary more than the facts which are undisputed.

The "not enough data" or "the relation is unclear" for many global hazards, are arguments that is constantly presented by all the major corporations. The pollutants in the atmosphere, the radiation emitted by cellphones and many other dangers are overlooked by the governments because of the enormous profits of major industries. To tell you the truth if these factories were to be closed probably millions of people would lose their jobs and their families could starve, literally.

That's not an excuse though. You can't (I heard the exact example in some TV series) to sell drugs with the excuse that YOU need to survive and provide to your family.

Fed Up, if nothing else, seems like a very credible Documentary. With interviewees such as professors of medicine from universities like Harvard, an ex-head of the FDA, and even an ex-POTUS (Bill Clinton) it's difficult to have doubts about that.

The "emotional" segments with actual families who suffer from obesity and what goes with it, are occupy a large part of the film but aren't too melodramatic.

The facts are presented with a clear way. Modern infographics are merged with real life examples to make each message as comprehensible it can be. You also get to realize some "weird" truths like the fact that while the US government is trying make the citizens and especially kids to eat healthier, at the same time tries to promote the use of agricultural products like corn when corn syrup is the number one provider of the sugar in many many foods.

The statistics are to be feared. 50% of American will experience the consequences of obesity even if their weight is in normal range. The movie rings the bell for the future generations too.

The production has high production values and a modern feel.

Just read that some critics wrote things like "A whirlwind of talking heads, found footage, scary statistics and cartoonish graphics". Well...that's a good thing! The problem is that all these facts and guidelines are often written in poorly made pamphlets or boring videos. You want nowadays to pass your messages in a modern way. Fast cuts, graphics and music are essential so the movie won't get boring and the viewers stop watching and miss the message.

A good effort overall. I recommend to see it, and to take it seriously.

Fed Up highlights sleazy lobbying efforts of the food industry and describes simple actions our government could take to alleviate the obesity epidemic. Even Michelle Obama was distracted by the industry. Perhaps with the prodding of this movie production, Michelle O. has more recently started to get back on track with making dietary changes in our schools.

Will our government move in the right direction? Only with a strong grass roots effort to counteract the industry. Fed Up gives us the tools. The People enacted change upon the tobacco industry. We can do it again for food!

Warning: Don't see this movie if you're happy with the status quo, a shorter, lower quality of life, and don't mind paying even more for health care.

Fed Up is a clearly well-meaning documentary, and its producers, director, and parties involved obviously bear emotions on the food industry that are perfectly in-line with the title of the documentary they are making. However, it bothers me that reviews of the documentary praise the film as something groundbreaking and that its discoveries and examination of the food industry is shocking. Did everyone forget the documentary Super Size Me, which garnered nearly-unanimous praise and just came out ten years ago? What about Food, Inc., another documentary concerning what we eat and where it comes from, or even its follow-up documentary A Place at the Table, released last year? As stylistically sublime and efficient as Fed Up is, it's not new information, but, maybe like the recent NSA/wiretapping controversy, maybe we just need a friendly reminder with more bells and whistles.

Fed Up is narrated by news anchor/talk-show host Katie Couric, who brings her perky-mannerisms and clarity to the table when discussing the food industry's peddling of high-sugar products, in addition to illustrating the tremendous influx of diseases like diabetes, heart problems, and obesity in America. Couric examines how America has seen numbers and their pant-sizes explode in the last couple decades, after the McGovern Report in the late seventies attempted to implement harsher food restrictions and advertising campaigns on the food industry. The industry responded by releasing many products claiming "low fat," "reduced fat," and "no fat" products which, despite their ostensible health benefits, literally taint their possibilities for being nutritious by adding massive amounts of sugar to compensate for the flavor fat provided. In addition, ad campaigns of the food industry were not given very detailed restrictions, allowing corporations to peddle food to kids that had little to no nutritional value and result in health problems from an early age.

How anyone could see any of this information to be new or groundbreaking is beyond me, but I continue to digress. Fed Up, after all, is a competent and intensely watchable documentary, illustrating a growing problem in America. The topic it touches on is one I've been telling people about for years, when my friends and I engage in debates about food and the health of America, in that poor-quality, processed food is ubiquitous beyond belief. Service stations have turned into gas stations/convenient stores, stocking every brand of soda, chips, and frozen foods one could imagine, and with no restrictions with advertising and lower-cost ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup in the foods, the corporations wisely look to glitz their products with billion dollar advertising campaigns to make sure your children know their product, by every color on the box to the plastic-wrap you need to peel off of the tray.

In addition to exploring the utter anomaly of how gym memberships in America could double, while obesity rates do the same, directress Stephanie Soechtig also illustrates stories from obese teens all across America, who are committing themselves to make healthy eating choices. While these kids are only twelve, fifteen, and even as young as ten or eleven, they condemn the idea of a diet, stating consuming healthy foods is how we should be eating all the time, but nonetheless, feel soul-crushed to learn that their lifestyle changes result in little-to-no weight loss whatsoever. Some of them, through their dietary ventures, experiences weight gain. While this part of the documentary steers into emotionally manipulating territory, if one looks past this effect and seriously contemplates the devotion of the kids and the fact that everything they were told to do to lose weight isn't working, it becomes a very upsetting situation to witness.

Watching these kids in tough positions makes me recall my own food habits, which are flawed to say the least. I weigh about one-hundred and forty pounds at age eighteen, am roughly five feet, ten inches tall, and, for the last two years of my high school career, scarcely ate breakfast, ate a muffin and an RC Cola for lunch, occasionally ate a balanced dinner, but mostly just played it by ear, and still kind of live that way today. When I was younger, my family ate a balanced dinner nearly every night we could, with meat, a vegetable, a salad, and a side of corn, mashed potatoes, rice, or stuffing. Then both my parents began working irregular work hours, I got a job and began working irregular hours, and to this day, we only eat together on Mondays.

This is the point Fed Up never brings up when questioning why Americans continue to buy into the cheap, alternative food that is heavily processed and infused with sugar when there are obviously healthy options. Few have time to cook when jobs demand so much of us today. It's far too difficult, especially when we can head down to the local fast food place, get a bag of food impersonally thrown at us at the drive-thru window, and get home with money in our wallets and time to spare.

Fed Up really hits its stride at the documentary's conclusion, when it compares the food industry's peddling of garbage to the manipulative and cloyingly false advertisements of the tobacco industry about four decades ago, which almost seem like farcical parodies today. Could you believe we bought their lie that smoking was sexy? Could you believe we thought it was okay to suck anything other than oxygen into our lungs and believed that it wasn't quietly hurting us? The filmmakers behind Fed Up believe (or hope) we'll be saying the same about the food industry in a short time. All I can say is if we continue getting "wakeup calls" like this documentary, we should learn to make their impact last before being greeted with a fairly similar product in relative short notice.

I've seen most of the movies that have been in theaters and online about nutrition. "Fed Up" is an important movie that does not have everything in it, but it tells the story in a good way and contains a wide variety of important information. I was very impressed.

One thread talks about how it is virtually impossible to overcome your body's instincts as well as habits you have been trained in since birth by commercials, and the ubiquity of food placement and messages that we get.

Another thread talks about the political system and how taken over it has been. When you start to piece things together - including facts from other industries - it becomes apparent that when we count GDP, Gross Domestic Product, we are really fooling ourselves counting the sale of foods that carry with them health costs that will show up for decades and be problems. The one thing we seem to be good at is manipulating people to hurt themselves in this country, and how can that have any good effect on either personal responsibility or the future of our way of life.

There is a lot to think about there. Several people have important messages including Dr. Robert Lustig, Gary Taubes, Michael Pollan, as well as others. I wish we got more than sound bytes and the movie was able to deeper into some of the issues here. The main idea that the movies takes on is that a calorie is not just a calorie, but it depends on the state of your body, and from where that calorie came from and what is it. Sadly this is not explained in depth, and I could have been.

An important movie that I am going to mention and urge people to go see.

NOTE - if you look through the reviews and comments in the message board you will see the typical empty vapid comments from people on the right-wing who will talk about personal responsibility. This is a good issue, and the movie deals well with it.

Go see this movie. 10/10