Documentary ‘Fed Up' calls for an overhaul of the American diet

Directed by Stephanie Soechtig (Atlas Films, 2014)

Here are two telling facts from Fed Up, a documentary on American childhood obesity now on DVD: 1. Eighty percent of packaged foods in your local supermarket have added sugar. 2. In a university study, 40 out of 43 cocaine-addicted lab rats preferred sugar water over cocaine. Add that to an animated sequence showing the inside of a child’s body processing 160 calories of almonds versus 160 calories of soda, and you get the picture.

Fed Up is the latest project from Laurie David, the Hollywood mover and shaker behind Al Gore’s climate change flick, An Inconvenient Truth. David sets out to do for America’s processed foods industry what Gore’s film did for fossil fuels. While Fed Up lacks some of the earlier film’s high-budget sheen and pizzazz, it scores a direct hit on its chosen target.

There are a lot of things wrong with the American diet. Another documentary, Forks Over Knives, made a convincing case that almost all chronic illnesses could be prevented by turning to a plant-based diet. Fed Up’s message isn’t as radical, but its proposal to avoid added sugar will, for most Americans, prove even more inconvenient. The stuff is everywhere.

And that’s precisely the filmmaker’s point. There aren’t any individual solutions to the obesity epidemic. It isn’t just a matter of willpower or exercise. It’s a matter of systematic change in the way we grow, distribute, and consume our food.

In between expert talking heads, Fed Up follows the vicissitudes of four obese adolescents as they struggle with weight-related health problems. One girl is shown pursuing an endless round of jogging, swimming, and gymnastics. Another boy keeps an astute video diary reflecting on the nature of his problem. But they all end the film heavier than they were at the start.

As one commentator notes, if a foreign nation were doing this to our children, we’d declare war. Maybe this documentary is the first shot.