Over the past 30 years, obesity has essentially become an epidemic, with two out of every three Americans being overweight. Narrated by journalist Katie Couric, Fed Up examines why the obesity rate is going up, despite the efforts of people to eat right and regularly exercise. The answer possibly lies within the food industry itself, which uses misleading marketing to advertise processed products as “low calorie,” despite still having weight-gaining ingredients like added sugar. With the current generation of American children expected to be the first to live shorter lives than their parents, something has to be done about how food is produced and consumed. To the uninformed, Fed Up is a very educational documentary about how high sugar content in processed foods leads to weight gain. The recommended daily serving of sugar is only 6-9 tsp., though the average American would often end up having over 40 tsp. over the course of a day. Sugar is in practically all processed foods and is often absorbed directly into the liver, due to the lack of fibre. The film proposes that the easiest way to lose weight is to just leave sugar out of your diet and cook and prepare real unprocessed foods. The biggest problem with Fed Up is that it comes off as a bit preachy, especially if the viewer already knows the information the film is trying to give. It’s easy to challenge people to live without sugar for 10 days, but in practice it can be a very hard task to do, especially since eating healthy is often much more expensive. That said, Fed Up still got me thinking about the amount of sugar I eat in my diet and I would say that I would recommend the film to anyone concerned with obesity. 8 | LIKED IT Screenings:
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Sat., May 3, 3:30 PM – Hart House Theatre