That Sugar Film

Are we able to stomach another movie about health and the way we are used to eat? That depends on yourself. This movie is not as out there as the one about McDonalds/Fast Food (Supersize me), because it is about everyday food and things you may eat and drink yourself. Actually it is very likely that you consume most of the things, not being aware about the sugar they contain.

If you're made aware of this though, will you be able to eat and drink more healthy? If even smoothies have more sugar than you'd think (or is it just me), what options are there? You get a couple of solutions and answers, but the movie never tells you that you have to do this or that. The ultimate decision lies within yourself ... And if you think about Mary Poppins while watching: The movie acknowledges this too ...

Yes, that's right. I said it. This movie changed my life. Well, it did so might as well acknowledge it and send a big warm thank you to the folks that made it.

Since watching the movie I've changed my diet completely. I wanted to wait about a month before I wrote this review just to make sure it took hold and actually did change my life. It seems now though that this one really got into me deep. Message received loud and clear.

I actually feel stupid for the many decades of damage that I've done to my body for being so ignorant about sugar and the products we consume every day. I also feel betrayed by society as a whole for not recognizing this sooner, and still not doing anything about it to this day. Why are we so stupid?

Sugar is killing us and nobody is doing anything about it. Well, I suppose not everybody. The makers of this film and probably a handful of others are working on the awareness, and I will also do my part telling everyone I know about this film.

If you care about living and being healthy and you care about the health of your family and friends, watch this film, tell them to watch, and then tell them to spread the word.

That Sugar Film is one man's journey into the effect of eating the sugar that is hidden in food marketed as healthy. There is increasingly awareness that we live in the age of sugar with the population of our planet suddenly consuming massively more sugar. There are links between this new diet and obesity and mental illness. Warning bells were sounded in 2009 by childhood obesity expert Prof Robert H. Lustig at the University of California, whose youtube lecture went viral.

Damon Gameau's playful exploration of this crucially important subject is a big wake-up. He packages it in a palatable, family-friendly form, the perfect counter-punch to the food industry's current marketing of sugar. Gameau follows in the footsteps of Morgan Spurlock's gonzo doco, Supersize Me, where Spurlock offered himself as a guinea pig to look at a diet of Maccas. Here, Gameau puts his body on the line to look behind the health claims of fruit juice, flavoured yoghurt, muesli bars, breakfast cereal and more; a diet only of food marketed as healthy and natural but brimming with heaped spoonfuls of unwanted sugar.

Hugh Jackman's sand paintings of the history of sugar is the first of many bite-sized pleasures that make up this rollicking journey of discovery that is guaranteed to disturb your eating habits. With food corporations more in denial than the tobacco industry, tell-tale signs are products marked 'lo-fat' or '100% natural'.

What Gameau reveals about the fructose-laden fare cynically marketed to us at the cost of our health is nothing less than shocking. The film also stirs the pot about obesity, behavioural problems in children, and even rocks the foundations of consumerism. He is the canary in the coalmine and we must give thanks for the warning.

With great songs and great graphics this film is truly sickening, albeit with an upbeat ending. Suitable for all the family, That Sugar Film is compulsory viewing for anyone who has children or anything else to live for. This is THE one film to see … before you die!

In this documentary, film-maker Damon Gameau becomes his own guinea pig and spends 60 days eating healthy foods with added sugar. Before this process, he had eradicated sugar from his diet so the contrast is even more pronounced. Over the course of the 60 days he puts on considerable weight, experiences mood swings and notices a drop in overall motivation.

What I found so alarming about this film was that it didn't play things easy and simply expose the dangers of excessive sugar intake. Gameau doesn't consume any junk food whatsoever, such as fizzy juice, sweets or ice cream, he instead purely sticks to food marketed as healthy. It's this more than anything that sets off alarm bells because this route seems to most people a route to weight loss and improved physical well-being, yet as the film demonstrates it actually leads to obesity and mental damage. Time and again we are shown the volumes of sugar that is hidden in so-called 'healthy' foods and it makes you pause for thought. What comes out loud and clear is that sugar is clearly a socially acceptable form of addiction and the sugar industry have been instrumental in minimising public information on the dangers their product presents. It's very interesting to note that over the course of his 60 day experiment Gameau eats no more calories than he did previously, yet he puts on almost a stone in weight. One of the key lessons, therefore, is that there are calories and there are calories, i.e. sugar calories affect the body decidedly differently to the way protein and carb ones do.

The approach taken by the film is very much of the fun and informative variety. Sometimes the humour doesn't work so well but in the main this approach is good in that it is very accessible. After all, this is a film that you would want children to watch and learn from. There are a couple of star cameos with Hugh Jackman giving us a brief history lesson about man's relationship with sugar and Stephen Fry pops up to explain some of the science behind it. On the whole, I found this to be an excellent wake-up call about a subject I had hitherto given minimal thought to. There is a lot of very valuable information in this film that could be genuinely life changing if applied to your day to day life, and I reckon that is as good a recommendation as anyone could need.

Fun film that truly opens our eyes to how the presence of sugar in our modern diet affects our health, both physically and emotionally. Sugar is in all processed foods even fruit juices. So we need to know how it affects us. Director Damon Gateau puts his health on the line to test what happens to our bodies and mood when we consume 40 teaspoons of sugar a day, which is the average amount in our modern diet. We become involved with his personal experiment and it's all presented breezily and with humour. The finale is an incredibly clever jingle/song that sums up the doco brilliantly. All performed by Gateau. The framing of the film with the birth of his child and how he develops his own "pregnant" stomach is hilarious! This movie could change your life!