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Posted by on Jun 7, 2014 in Blog, Movie Reviews, Restaurant Reviews | 0 comments

Movie Review: Fed Up

 

fed-up-movie

 

“Fed Up” likely won’t solve this very serious problem.  It probably won’t even have much of an impact on what we buy and eat.  The food lobby and commercial advertising are too powerful.  But someday, when half of this nation is obese and we’re broke trying to figure out how to care for 100 million diabetics with flooded doctors’ offices, we can’t say that we weren’t warned.

 

After a recent showing of the film documentary Fed Up at a local cinema, I gazed around the movie theater and noticed something unusual.

The showing attracted about 25 to 30 moviegoers.  As the audience slowly shuffled towards the exit, not a single soda cup, candy wrapper, or popcorn bucket could be found anywhere.  Nothing was carried out.  No cups or wrappers remained behind clogging the cup holders.  No trash was left on the floor.  No one had been snacking or drinking anything during the show.

And that’s the snag of this troublesome slap in the face to American culture, a film which chronicles our dysfunctional dietary habits, maliciously puppet-stringed by a food industry that collectively views us as a bunch of lab rats painted with dollar signs.  Those who go and see this movie most likely have converted already to an awareness of the congregation of horrors hidden inside what we eat and drink, with disastrous consequences ahead for us all.  At the same time, the smash-hit Godzilla was showing down the hallway inside two other theaters, presumably stocked with dozens of children guzzling sugary Big Gulps and popping M&Ms well on their way to obesity and diabetes, the Fed Up choir was busy singing the chorus of nutrient-rich idealism.

As movies go and as documentaries are graded, Fed Up is at best, average.  But the filmmakers’ intent here isn’t to dazzle us with special effects, nor even necessarily to entertain us.  Perhaps, it’s rather to shock us.  The real mission — and it’s a noble one — is to wake people up from a shared stupor of collective ignorance about the national health care crisis which is already here, and very likely to get much worse as we get older and fatter, just as the medical costs required to treat all the side effects skyrocket.  In other words, whether we personally decide to eat healthily or not, we all end up paying the price for this crisis.  Doctors’ offices are flooded with overweight patients.  We pay higher premiums for medical insurance.  What’s most frustrating is, many of these health problems are preventable.

Behind all the clogged arteries, diabetic kits, fatty livers, stomach ulcers, cancers, and strokes are giant corporations that package their poisons inside colorful boxes and use cheerful animals and circus clowns to fatten us up at the feeding trough.  Like big tobacco companies 20 years ago, they have consistently lied and deceived us.  Worse, they continue to knowingly pump out toxins and then buy off any politician or federal agency who tries to put a stop to the madness.  Should there be any doubt about this, review several instances in the movie which show how attempts to change Americans’ eating habits become demonized.  “Food Nazi” is a favorite accusation of the food lobby.

In terms of setting itself apart from other films of its kind, including two excellent documentaries on similar subject matter, Food Inc. and Super Size Me, Fed Up does blaze some bold new territory.  It’s most effective in convincing us that calorie intake and lack of exercise aren’t really the culprits of obesity.  Not in a macro sense, anyway.  All statistics show that more people are working out now than ever before.  There are more health clubs and active members now than at any time in history.  Moreover, “low fat” and “sugar-free” products are immensely popular in the marketplace.  They even sometimes outsell regular food products.  No doubt, people are more health-conscious now than they were a generation or two ago.  So, if we’re now exercising, and we’re eating lower-calorie diets, and we’re paying attention to our health more, then why are we so fat and getting bigger by the pound?

Let’s establish some basic facts.  Half of us are overweight.  One-third of us are obese.  About a third of us are expected to have diabetes within the next 20 years.  If the prospect of 100 million Americans with diabetes, including an explosion in childhood diabetes, doesn’t shake us from a collective coma, then perhaps we deserve to gauge ourselves into bankruptcy and then an early supersized grave.  The bottom line is — the lifestyle adjustments and costs of this crisis are going to be astronomical.

Fed Up shows us that much of this is avoidable.  If you’re serious about your health and diet and want to shed a few pounds, then you have to get militant and quit thinking of junk food as an innocent amusement.  That means avoiding soda pop, processed foods, products loaded with sugar, bread made with bleached flour, food with high-fructose corn syrup, and other staples of the national diet that belong inside a garbage can rather than ingested within our bodies.

Unfortunately, this national epidemic has produced millions of victims who are completely unaware of what’s being done to them.  For instance, many minors can’t make proper dietary decisions for themselves.  Fed Up takes us inside schools, where a whopping 80 percent of all school districts have contracts with either Coke or Pepsi.  That’s criminal.  How can this be?  Instead of libertarians and conservatives going after New York Mayor Bloomberg, who was ripped apart for once suggesting we should reduce beverage serving sizes, perhaps we should instead save some of that disdain for the irresponsible public officials who allow children to be plugged incessantly with sugar.  Indeed, this is where our eating and drinking habits are born — at homes brimming with junk food and schools teeming with soft drinks and cheeseburgers — eventually training our youth for a lifetime of self-abuse.

Fed Up likely won’t solve this very serious problem.  It probably won’t even have much of an impact on what we buy and eat.  The food lobby and commercial advertising are too powerful.  But someday, when half of this nation is obese and we’re broke trying to figure out how to care for 100 million diabetics with flooded doctors’ offices, we can’t say that we weren’t warned about the dangers and the costs.

TAG: Movies about the food industry

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