My Review of the “Fed Up” Documentary
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My wife and I recently watched a documentary called “Fed Up” after I noticed that my friend Jay Jones had recommended it some time ago on his Facebook page. It appeared to be a documentary about healthy eating and living. We always enjoy watching those kinds of documentaries.
Now, I must say that because I have watched so many health documentaries over the past few years, much of the information presented wasn’t new to me. However, the way the message was delivered was powerful and personally convicting.
On to my review.
The Main Message of Fed Up
One main message I received from watching Fed Up to me appeared to be that big business is making a huge profit from selling sub-par food (and stuff that’s not really even food) to the American public. Also, the government has been somewhat complicit, and has been strong-armed by big business whenever it attempts to regulate the food industry for the sake of public health. In other words, their money talks really loudly.
Another main theme of the documentary was that sugar is one of the biggest bad guys coming against our health in today’s world. The documentary discussed how much sugar contributes to the American obesity epidemic, how sugar is masqueraded in many different forms in various products, and how sugar is really similar to drugs and produces similar effects in the brain as cocaine. Now that was pretty crazy to hear.
Our Brains Get Hard-wired for Obesity
One thing mentioned in the documentary that got to me in particular was how someone was saying how we hard-wire our brains for obesity and poor health. I don’t remember verbatim what was said, but basically it was something like this.
When we start off as kids eating products with sugar, the powerful effects of sugar in our brains essentially result in a hard-wiring effect in our brain circuitry. This hard-wiring is the same thing that happens when we learn new habits by repetition.
The especially sad thing about this is that it is very, very hard to break those brain connections when we start to indulge in sugar at such young ages. And because sugar causes such a strong insulin response as the body attempts to balance our blood sugar, children deal with increased risk of obesity AND Type 2 Diabetes. Let me remind you that Type 2 Diabetes used to be considered an adult disease.
What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us
Another thing that really pained me was to see how folks in the documentary really didn’t know how to lose weight and live healthily. The current state of society has caused us to forget how to take care of our bodies.
The documentary profiled the lives of four kids and their families. All were dealing with significant weight problems resulting from diets filled with sugar and processed foods, and to add, they were dealing with self-confidence issues as well.
In most of the cases, when the parents were discussing how they were attempting to eat healthier (and they weren’t seeing any results), I immediately saw why. They were still consuming lots of processed foods. To make it worse, the parents thought they were doing well because the processed foods were labeled with “low fat”, “reduced fat”, and other health claims.
Thing is, the only way to really improve your diet is to stop eating most processed, man-made junk, and to focus on what God provided long ago – vegetables, fruits, beans, grains and meats. Because we as humans have become so, so detached from natural food – depending on the supermarket instead of growing and raising it ourselves – we don’t know this anymore, and we are suffering for it!
So Should I Watch Fed Up?
These are the kinds of things we must know about if we really want to have all the knowledge we need to truly thrive. As they say, knowledge is power, and unfortunately, even if you don’t know what’s hurting you, you’re still getting hurt. So you might as well be informed.
Kudos to Stephanie Soechtig for directing the film, as well as to Katie Couric and Laurie David for producing it.
