“Fed Up”

I recently watched the documentary “Fed Up” which is popularly described as “the film the food industry doesn’t want you to see”. This documentary contains interviews of multiple children directly affected by obesity as well as food regulation supporters such as Michael Pollan that provide scientific facts on the issue. The film starts out by describing the trends Americans have gone through to get healthy. “Eat less, exercise more” has been the common sense answer to obesity for more than a century. “Fed Up” argues that lack exercise is not and lack of willpower is NOT the root of the obesity epidemic in the United States, and it sets out to prove how the food industry has tricked us and why they deserve the majority of the blame.

A nutritionist that was interviewed in this film explains that it is impossible to exercise our way out of the obesity problem. It is really ironic because soft drink companies like Coca-Cola fund a lot of research on obesity. If this research is funded by the food industry, they can pretty much come up with whatever they want to keep them in business & keep a lot of people blind to this irony. The obesity epidemic cannot be completely caused by genetics; it is not, and has never been, normal for 10 year olds to die of heart attacks. Most experts say that the obesity epidemic has taken place in the last 30 years or so. When people began to catch wind of the dangers of fat-based food, the food industry responded by replacing fat with sugar. Between 1977 and 2000, Americans doubled their daily sugar intake. Processed foods are so easy to modify, and these tiny modifications become marketing claims for food companies. “Reduced fat” oreos, for example, have 10 less calories than regular ones & have the same sugar content. Poor food choices are overwhelming in school cafeterias. School lunches are super unhealthy and most are driven by soda companies. Children have no idea how bad this food is & that instills poor values in their food choices. The problem is, there are no commercials for fruits and vegetables, only junk food. This shapes the whole way kids think about food and what they think that food is. This documentary is very informative, however I do think that there’s a lot about the food industry (like farming) that this film doesn’t really go into that much. Also, I think that the people that should be viewing this documentary probably won’t. Overall, I highly recommend this documentary because it is interesting, informative, and provides some plausible long-term solutions to the obesity epidemic that our society really needs to consider.

A summary/review of “Fed Up” can be found here: http://hamptonroads.com/2014/09/fed-–-what-food-industry-doesn’t-want-us-know