Fed Up about Childhood Obesity
Katie Couric was impressed enough with her talk show guest Stephanie Soechtig, the director of the documentary Tapped, that she asked Soechtig to direct a passion project for her. The epidemic of childhood obesity was a subject that Couric felt was only being superficially covered by the media. The result of their collaboration: the rabble-rousing documentary Fed Up. This informative film is the result of research uncovered by the esteemed producing team, which included Laurie David, the director of award-winning An Inconvenient Truth, as well as narrator/executive producer Couric. The film asks, “What if the current solutions to obesity are not solutions at all, but are actually making things worse?
The Dangers of Sugar
The subtle but effective animated opening credits feature the stenciled words FED UP which crumble into piles like cocaine. This works as an effective metaphor for the film’s comparisons between the addictive qualities of sugar and cocaine. A remarkable series of facts about childhood obesity follow, including this sound bite: “For the first time, more people will die from obesity than from starvation.”
Another remarkable piece of information presented in the film is the fact that food labeling laws do not require companies to publish the percentage of the daily requirements of sugar on a packaged food. For example, disclosure of fat and protein percentages are required. Yet, when developing low-fat and low-calorie products, food companies compensate for the loss of flavor by increasing the amount of sugar. Nearly all products that are lean, low-calorie, and fat-free contain as much sugar as the original product, if not more.
A Calorie is not a Calorie
The movie explains that a calorie is not a calorie. Sugar, under its many processed guises, is delivered directly into the liver, and prompts an immediate rush of sugar into the blood stream. The overload of sugar delivered to the liver is then converted to triglycerides and immediately stored in fat cells. When sugar is combined with fiber, as is the case with real fruits, vegetables, and nuts, the digestion of fiber slows the rise of blood sugar.
Kids who eat only processed and fast food, which are full of refined sugars, not only have an over-activated liver, they also have a brain which is constantly activated to send the signal that they are always hungry. The cycle of empty calories is made available to children from the time they drink baby formula and eat their earliest breakfast foods. These processed, high sugar content foods are continuously marketed directly to children, made available at their eye level in more and more stores, and often the only or the predominant “nutrition” available in their school cafeterias.
Stories and Statistics
Fed Up intersperses video diaries of four obese teens with surprising statistics and interviews with food experts, industry representatives, and legislators. The painful body image experienced by the four teens in the film is complicated by their attempts to exercise more and eat less — as they are prompted to by the media and their doctors. While the processed foods provided by their parents and schools may be low-fat and/or low-calorie, the sugar content is astonishingly high. It’s a vicious cycle in which food economics are a contributing factor. As one parent points out, “Cereals, chips, value meals are easy to buy because they are cheaper.”
The Truths about Food
Comparing the food industry to the tobacco industry, the film points out that, just as the tobacco industry claimed for years that cigarettes did not lead to lung cancer, the food industry confuses the obesity issue by emphasizing exercise and stretching out half-truths. Soft drink companies still claim that there is “not enough solid evidence” to prove that sodas are unhealthy.
At 99 minutes, the film is neither too long nor boring. It is disturbing to hear the statistics of future increases in childhood obesity, the attempts of the food corporations to manipulate the media with non-solutions , the power of the food lobbyists to influence even the First Lady, and the omnipresence of fast food in public school. It is easy to feel disillusioned.
I know I’m fed up. I’ve limited my shopping in traditional supermarkets because it is too much work to find genuinely organic products with pure ingredients. They exist. They are just hidden with peripheral shelf space otherwise not being dominated by the big food companies. My 29-year-old son saw this film at the premiere at Sundance Film Festival, and it impacted him so strongly that he has removed refined sugar from his diet. He still quoted facts months after seeing the film.
Eat Real Food
Like the film Hungry for Change, this film recommends switching to real foods as much as possible, extolling the health benefits of non-processed food. The filmmakers of Fed Up suggest waging a grassroots campaign to change the availability of sugar to children, similar to the campaigns waged against advertising cigarettes to minors.
Take The Fed Up Challenge
- Get off sugar for 10 days.
- Avoid processed foods.
- Steer clear of ingredients you don’t recognize.
- Soda and junk food aren’t the only culprits.
- Added sugar has many hiding places: granola bars, salad dressing, orange juice, white bread, peanut butter, cereal, whole grain cereal, yogurt, ketchup, chips.
- Avoid kids’ menus.
- 80 percent of public schools have deals with Coke or Pepsi.
- 1 Soda = 10 tsp of Sugar.
- Tell your child’s principal to put students’ health ahead of big soda’s money.
Learn more about Fed Up
Learn more at: FedUpMovie.com
Karen Henry is an Associate Editor at LA YOGA who volunteers in a variety of capacities for nonprofit organizations and artists around Los Angeles. She practices yoga as a counterbalance to her daily impact sports and is a mother of four grown children who also practice yoga . Now, she’s working on teaching yoga and joy of life to the grandkids!