You are what you eat. That is the simple message from Stephanie Soechting’s new documentary
about the food we produce / consume and the correlation with the ‘global
obesity epidemic’ that we have been hearing for the last few decades. Fed Up
explores two parallel ideas: that the amount of sugar we ingest is more
important than the levels of fat or calories (or even exercise); and that
multinational food companies and corporate lobbyists have spent decades feeding
us misinformation about how to live healthy lives and exploiting our ignorance
for vast profits.
The film divides itself between the
emotional personal journeys of a number of obese youngsters trying to lose
weight, and more factual sections of historical and political analysis of the
processed food industry and how it has gained such dominance in American
culture. At certain points, watching Fed
Up is worse than sitting through a horror film. Horror films work by confronting characters
with symbolic external threats (vampire; disaster; psychotic killers etc.), which
make audiences empathise and reflect on their own axietites. Fed Up
makes you reflect about the long-term internal threat that audiences are doing
to their own bodies by eating such dangerous levels of sugar. The sugar in my tea suddenly felt obscene and
frightening….
