A new documentary narrated by Katie Couric argues that sugar is the root of the country’s obesity problem.
Fed Up, which bowed this week at the Sundance Film Festival, takes aim at both “Big Sugar” as well as the corporations that help push it on the unsuspecting public, according to a review in LA Weekly.
Fed Up traces back the last 35 years and makes a convincing case that big business is to blame. (When isn’t it?) The food industry responded to the McGovern Report by flooding the grocery aisles with “healthy” chips, cookies, drinks, and cereals that cut fat while quietly upping the sugar. Since then, sugar consumption has doubled.
The film comes from producer Laurie David, the environmentalist who also had a hand in Vice President Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
First Lady Michelle Obama was asked to participate in the film but declined. The New York Times reports the film isn’t kind to Obama’s efforts to slow the rise of obesity.
The New York Times says FLOTUS is portrayed in the film “as a patsy, with her well-meaning ‘Let’s Move!’ childhood obesity initiative quickly co-opted by food giants and undercut by politics.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association issued the following statement regarding the film:
Whether it is new packaging or new ways to prepare our products, or introducing low sodium, low fat and organic foods, we are constantly working to provide the products that empower all consumers to make the choices that are right for them and their families.
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