Even Michelle Obama’s proclamation that her own focus on healthier eating and exericise wasn’t meant to “demonize” the food industry, is called on the carpet here. The first lady’s tone shift to focusing more on exercise than diet came right at the time her foundation partnered with many of the companies deemed villainous here. She misses the point, the film’s experts agree, in that no amount of exercise can offset the damage done by such high caloric intake. The experts further espouse that a calorie isn’t merely a calorie, but that the empty, fiber-free calories from sugars go straight to the liver and create metabolic havoc (Type-II diabetes, previously unheard of in children just a few years ago, is on the increase). The difference between consuming an orange and orange juice, for instance, is huge.
It’s an uphill battle when 80 percent of all supermarket products in our country contain added sugar, and when 80 per cent of schools no longer make their own lunches but commission the giant food companies to provide essentially fast food. High fructose corn syrup is so cheap due to the government subsidizing of the corn industry, that it essentially creates a budget class of crappy food, priced far below that of fruits and vegetables. Of course, with education, it is still possible to put together a low-cost healthy meal but the will needs to be there.
America’ political cosiness with the food industry is typified in the film by a 2003 Bush administration pissing match with The World Health Organization. Set to publish guidelines for sugar consumption at no more than 10 percent of the overall diet, the WHO faced pressure from the Bush boys to eliminate the Unjted States’ funding of the organization unless they removed the guideline. It was left out….Additionally, to this day, there is no figure present next to sugar on ingredients labels’ percentage of daily recommendations. Instead, it’s left blank.
Fed Up, directed by Stephanie Soechtig, and narrated and executive produced by Katie Couric, focuses on a few families who wish to act on changing their obese children’s eating habits. They meet with mixed success but provide the film with the tender, human counterpart to all the statistics and doomsday scolding of its admittedly convincing experts. Even Bill Clinton stops by to say he didn’t do enough in his administration but he recognizes the problem now. It’s a shame other politicians, including Minnesota’s Democrat senator Amy Klobuchar, are shown kowtowing to their state’s food industry lobbyists. Klobuchar defends a controversial decision to allow tomato paste to be considered a vegetable for the purpose of school lunch quotas. Schwann Food Co. Is located in her home state–they, the largest purveyor of school-lunch pizza in America. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin is a voice of reason, lambasting attorneys from the food industry for making ostensibly scientific claims that there is no proof of harm from sugar (“they’re lying through their teeth”). Harkin retires next year. Meanwhile, at children’s birthday parties throughout the country, millions of parents still feel obliged to serve a cake AND soda course.
4 Having Your Cake and Dying From It Too (out of 5 stars)