FED UP – The DVD Review

I have an eating disorder. I have fought for years to try and keep my weight down. I am one of those people who have gained and lost the same 50 to 75 pounds so many times it is now very difficult to lose the weight at all. Yet I am determined to get my weight down to a healthy level and keep it there. I always thought I was doing something wrong, well obviously I have been, but I have had no help from the food industry in these United States. Along with recent documentaries about the unhealthy food we have available in our grocery stores and restaurants such as Food Inc, Super Size Me and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead you can, and should, see Fed Up, an infuriating look at the processed foods we all have access to in our grocery stores.

Fed Up is definitely one sided, but for reasons that are obvious. Doctors, nutritionists, health care advocates and others are more than willing to talk about what’s wrong with the food industry. Those who produce the food? Not so much, very few are willing to talk on camera about what they do. In the end credits we see that Coke, Pepsi, Schwanns, McDonalds, and many other food producers refused to be interviewed on camera.

Katie Couric narrates and admits from the start that this documentary began as a short news item on NBC, but the more the journalists at the network dug into the story the more alarming it became. A featured player is First Lady Michelle Obama who caught a lot of flak for suggesting that children in school should have healthy food to eat. What are kids fed now in school? McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King and lots of Coke and Pepsi. Easy to see how chronic and epidemic morbid obesity is taking over the citizens of our country. Like I said I have my own weight problem, I finally got down to just below 300 pounds, trust me, I have lost weight recently, but I need to lose a lot more. As recommended in Fed Up and in a diet plan put together by Dr. Joel Fuhrman I avoid processed foods as much as possible. I gave up drinking soda years ago, soda is one of the worst drinks you can have, no nutritional value and lots and lots of sugar. Juice is just as bad, juicing takes out every bit of nutrients you need from fruit or vegetables. You are better off eating one orange than drinking 6 gallons of orange juice.

I read Dr Fuhrman’s excellent book Eat to Live a few years ago. He is not included in this documentary but many Doctors, nutritionists, journalists other people concerned with the obesity problem in this country agree with him. The food we eat, most of the food in our grocery stores, is killing us. Obese children used to be rare, not any more. Childhood diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke and heart attacks used to be nonexistent. No longer. In Fed Up we meet several children with obesity problems, one of them actually contemplates gastric bypass surgery, something that used to be unheard of, now commonplace.

Yes I have a weight problem but I am doing everything I can to correct that, after seeing Fed Up I started reading the ingredients on any processed foods I look at in a grocery store. As pointed out in Fed Up almost all processed foods have added sugar, a lot of added sugar. Under the slightest bit of pressure from the government food companies started reducing the fat content of their products. And as we hear in Fed Up, you take the fat out and food doesn’t taste like much of anything, so they started adding sugar, a lot, an awfully lot of sugar. Seriously this documentary will make you nauseous. Sugar is addictive, sugar is as much a legal drug and as addictive as tobacco, caffeine or alcohol, and about as healthy. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good doughnut and a cup of coffee as much as anybody. But my breakfast now is several pieces of citrus fruit, oranges or grapefruit, a couple of apples and whatever else is in season. Georgia peaches are good right now. Sometimes oatmeal and not the instant kind. I take my lunch to work while my co workers almost always get take out. While they have pizza or fried chicken or Chinese takeout I have raw vegetables, broccoli, carrots, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, steamed potatoes and beans or hummus. Sounds great right? Trust me, I would love to eat fried chicken or pizza every day for lunch, but that’s how I got to be over 300 pounds to begin with.

Eating vegetables every day I feel a lot better and that much fiber fills me up. After work I have a protein smoothie with some fruit and non dairy milk. I work in a call center; have been in call center customer service for well over 15 years, so like a great many Americans I have a sedentary job that is also stressful. But in addition to trying to eat right I go to a gym, I try to go at least twice a week, and take a yoga class, I walk as much as I can. And it’s still hard to lose weight, but I consider myself lucky, I have worked with a great many people who are so obese they have trouble getting out of a chair. I have watched some co workers take as long as 10 minutes to get out of a chair to take a 15 minute break.

Florida has a lot of people who have become so obese they are now on disability and ride around in the little electric carts that have taken the place of wheel chairs. All of this and so much more is touched on in Fed Up. This is one documentary that is infuriating. Any time there is any talk in the Government about regulating the food industry, especially in terms of school lunches, the corporate flacks come out of the woodwork to whine and snivel about “the nanny state!” And oddly enough I somewhat agree, I don’t want the government telling me what to eat, but it would be nice if the food companies at least had to label their products with the percentage of sugar added. Seriously, they don’t have to put the sugar percentage on the ingredients. You’ll see how many grams of sugar a product has, not the percentage! As someone wiser than me once said “Dude, that’s messed up!” It would also be nice if the food companies did not target and market to kids that are still in school. Comparisons are made with the fight to get tobacco labeled as the killer substance that it is. Big tobacco insisted for decades that their product was actually healthy despite all evidence to the contrary. The same thing with the processed foods industry. And as Fed Up points out, the obesity epidemic bodes ill for our country. Health care costs are already extremely high, the obese among us will always have health problems that are hard and expensive to treat. And who will be our first responders? Who will staff the military, police, emergency services?

Not long ago I tried working for a funeral home, transporting the dead. I picked up several people from hospitals and medical examiners offices who weighed well over 300 pounds, not an easy task. My coworkers told me they had to pick up a person who weighed almost 500 pounds, from a mobile home. They had to have help from firefighters, ambulance personnel and police to get that person loaded.

Fed Up is one documentary that needs to be seen by every person in this country, especially if they have children. The point is made that we would be outraged if our kids had unsafe water to drink, or if the air was poisoned in schools. Why should we not be outraged that instead of school lunches that are real food prepared by professional food service workers (cue Adam Sandler’s Lunch Lady song from Saturday Night Live!) kids are served lunch by McDonalds and Pizza Hut? I give Fed Up five out of five stars. If you see any people who fit this profile at WalMart or McDonalds please don’t be quick to judge, with the food that’s available in our grocery stores this can happen to anybody! Now I’m going to have some celery and an apple, I am out of here!