Hacker Cinema
Fed Up
2014 · Film · documentary · 95 min
Directed by Stephanie Soechtig
Fed Up blows the lid off everything we thought we knew about food and weight loss, revealing a 30-year campaign by the food industry, aided by the U.S. government, to mislead and confuse the American public, resulting in one of the largest health epidemics in history.
23 positive2 negative1 mixed6 neutralfrom 32 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
36 comments on Hacker News
I enjoyed the documentary Fed Up which claimed that when the low fat craze was beginning, the industry had a lot of excess fat, so you also see a rise in cheese advertising around the same time.
That’s because it’s profitable and it’s very difficult to make systemic changes. Here’s a few points:
- In the documentary Fed Up, it showed how Michelle Obama had to back down to the big food companies over her push for healthier food.
- I worked with bariatric surgeons and some incredibly cited papers stating that people can’t lose weight by diet and exercise alone. The surgeons I knew were incredibly narrow-minded and uninterested in any counter arguments.
- Sleeve gastrectomies are the most effective technology to fight obesity. If someone can’t change on their own in 10 years, then it is a good option. It removes 90% of the stomach including the hunger hormone ghrelin.
- The surgeon I worked with had a sleeve procedure, stretched his stomach out, and had a 2nd sleeve.
- Long term, the food environment has to change. Living expenses are high, work demands are high, people are stressed and all the easy options are terrible for you.
- We should distribute good meats, foods, vegetables and essentials in an entirely new way.
- Our business leaders like Buffett and Gates need to realize the absurdity of respectively owning Coca Cola and selling potatoes to the fast food industry. Buffet also owns DaVita, a dialysis company. Gates promotes global health but earns money from french fries being sold at McDonalds.
Watch the Fed Up documentary, how sugar is more addictive than cocaine in mice, how 80% of food products in US supermarkets have added sugar. Its nearly impossible trying to train yourself to moderate your sugar, its better to avoid it altogether as your body sugar level (GI) spikes causes withdrawal later. Our body does not need any refined sugar. Fruits are ok, avoid fruit juices as they often either have added or sugar or miss the fibre which helps your body slow down digestion.
Watch the Fed up documentary, explains it so well that no matter how much we try, exercising and eating less wont work. Our environment is saturated with products now which almost all have added sugar, only way is to look at ingredients and change your environment, dont bring these things home and instead bring better stuff home thats not got added sugar.
Brochure on corporate sponsorship for a pro-fat group.[1]
CBS documentary.[2]
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gikpfrH9MPPNZs_fD6ZT9i-cb4Tr4fwJ/view
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/documentary-fed-up-with-rising-childhood-obesity/
Anyone remember Susan Powder in the 90s screaming about how fat was making you fat? Go checkout the documentary Fed Up, it discusses the massive shift to low-fat-high-sugar foods being the norm in our grocery stores.
And we wonder why we have such massive preventable disease problems in the US. (and we are exporting obesity and diabetes around the world now)
Next time you are at the store, check your labels. Almost everything has sugar in it. There are a dozen names for white sugar now, so check them out.
Watch: "That Sugar Film", "Sugar Coated", "Fed Up".
Some great documentaries about this:
- That Sugar Film
- Fed Up (on netflix)
- Sugar Coated (on netflix)
I dont know about Fed Up, but at the very least That Suger Film is very dishonest and not good science. Unfortunately the only good source I have is in swedish, but here it is: https://traningslara.se/hur-du-gor-en-storsaljande-men-usel-dokumentar-om-kost/
There's 2 good documentaries I remember about the subject (though there's likely many more): That Sugar Film [1] and Fed Up [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Sugar_Film
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fed_Up_(film)
The documentary 'Fed Up' convinced me that a sugar calorie is worse than another type of calorie, and that sugar is really the cause of the obesity epidemic. There's also 'That Sugar Film' which makes many of the same points.
Fed Up Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCUbvOwwfWM
I find it helpful to hear success stories like yours. I'm obese, and I need to correct that. I believe sugar is one of the primary culprits. I'm going to attempt again to remove sugar from my diet for a month. I removed sugar from my diet for a couple weeks, and the weight loss results were very satisfying.
It is a hard diet to do though. I found that eating out was very tricky, and that shopping at the grocery store was also challenging. It required meal planning, and just thinking of most food in the grocery store as non-edible.
There are good documentaries, books, etc. on why sugar is so bad for us. I really enjoyed the documentary ["Fed Up"](http://fedupmovie.com).
There is a good movie about it: Fed Up
Made me watch my processed foods, and especially sugar intake.
Still think balanced diet and exercise are a very good idea
There have been several documentaries about this issue in the past few years:
- Sugar Coated (2015) - That Sugar Film (2014) - Fed Up (2014)
Some of the authorities who are found in these movies are:
Robert Lustig - Professor and pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF who speaks out against added dietary sugar. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Gary Taubes - journalist and author of Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease and Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It
Yoni Freedhoff - Medical doctor from Ottawa, Canada who criticizes the food industry's use of sugar. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BdFkK-HufU
It seems like a case is building, much like the case against the tobacco industry. Maybe there will be class-action lawsuits against soft drink and processed food companies based on recent suppression of potentially life-saving research.
I lost weight at a similar rate after seeing the documentary "Fed Up". Lost 10 lbs the first week. 40 lbs overall in 3 months. All I did was limit my sugar intake to 25g per day.
The documentary "Fed Up" is about sugar and was the first time I was made aware there is no daily RDA % for sugar on nutrition labels. They just have the grams. They lobbied very hard to make it that way, because having "4700%" for a daily RDA wouldn't look very good!
> We're talking about cutting out a food category > and presumably replacing it with another.
Pretty much, yes, depending on how you categorise foods.
> I don't know of any convincing evidence this > results in weight loss. Open to information of > course!
Plenty of evidence exists - where have you already looked?
Atkins - probably the most famous. Tim Ferris - relatively recent. Both good starting points for some large (though in some cases you'll find some insufficiently formal) studies.
The 2014 US film 'Fed Up' goes into some good detail about why this particular food category is bad for you - including a lovely animated graphic about a half hour in.
The actual article (did you read it?) this story points to has a box on p24 that describes this too - the 'a calorie is not a calorie'. That box includes several links to some more scientific research on the subject.
The underlying problem is that the sentiment you've expressed - replacing one food category with another can't possibly be effective at reducing weight / risk of disease, improving well-being, etc - is one that the sugar industry is very happy with, and regrettably is very widely held.
To many people it's intuitive that all energy is equal in terms of what your body does with it. Unfortunately there's no evidence that this is the case, and plenty of evidence that it isn't.
Do some searches on things like 'evidence of weight loss with low-carbohydrate diets' maybe append 'high fat' for some interesting variants.
You'll find some good studies, plus an abundance of anecdotes (blogs basically :) of people who've maintained or increased their raw energy input, while reducing their weight, through dietary changes alone.
It's not. I recommend watching the documentary Fed Up on Netflix, it help explains how we got to this state.
Sorry for your loss.
Can you elaborate on whether his diet excluded rice, refined grains and any other sort of simple carbs?
I was rather shocked to see in the documentary 'Fed Up' that all these carb rich foods get broken down to simple sugar molecules pretty darn quick and as far as the body is concerned are identical to sugar.
In an HN discussion thread yesterday[1], there were some who argued that all calories are equal insofar as obesity, diabetes, etc is concerned.
That idea has been largely discredited, as the NYT article on "Fed Up" explains. Here's a snippet:
At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology whose research was cited by experts in the film, said that the long-held idea that we get fat solely because we consume more calories than we expend is based on outdated science.
He has studied the effects that different foods have on weight gain and said that it is true that 100 calories of fat, protein and carbohydrates are the same in a thermodynamic sense, in that they release the same amount of energy when exposed to a Bunsen burner in a lab. But in a complex organism like a human being, he said, these foods influence satiety, metabolic rate, brain activity, blood sugar and the hormones that store fat in very different ways.
Studies also show that calories from different foods are not absorbed the same. When people eat high-fiber foods like nuts and some vegetables, for example, only about three-quarters of the calories they contain are absorbed. The rest are excreted from the body unused. So the calories listed on their labels are not what the body is actually getting.
“The implicit suggestion is that there are no bad calories, just bad people eating too much,” Dr. Mozaffarian said. “But the evidence is very clear that not all calories are created equal as far as weight gain and obesity. If you’re focusing on calories, you can easily be misguided.”
[1] Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11658835
Great documentary called Fed Up: http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home
It basically posits that ALL sugar, from fructose, to organic brown sugar to high fructose corn syrup is broken down to the same basic molecule: glucose.
Even white rice, potatoes and bread break down similarly. It was sobering viewing and highly recommended. The 5:2 diet proponents also suggest the same thing from their research - that natural sugars are no better than unnatural sugars (at least according to the doc).
I watched a documentary called "Fed Up" that addressed this. I haven't verified the accuracy of the documentary, but here was the explanation it gave, which is consistent with your first sentence.
"Fat" was declared the enemy, so highly processed food providers started removing fat. The food tasted bad. So they added in sugar. So now people were eating much more sugar, but still craving fat, and seeking it from other sources. So it became a double whammy.
At the same time, as many products (such as dairy) were being made low-fat, the highly processed food industry needed something to do with all that fat, so it launched the "cheese glorious cheese" campaign, where highly processed cheese (with lots of added salt) was now added to almost every conceivable thing, at low cost (because it was left over from the milk). Cheese went into pizza toppings (extra cheese!), pizza crusts, processed mac n cheese, all kinds of approximations of previous foods. So now, Americans, instead of eating fat where it naturally exists, were instead eating lots of low fat processed food products with sugar to replace the fat, and then eating the fat in other products, with lots of added salt.
The other thing the documentary asserted (well, a physician in the documentary asserted) is that the popular believe that "a calorie is a calorie regardless of source" is incorrect in terms of how the body processes calories from different food sources. A calorie of sugar can lead to weight gain in a way that a calorie from other sources doesn't. Again, this is just what was in the documentary "fed up", I don't know much more about it than that.
Rather than focusing too much on the difference between Europe and the US, I think it might be useful to realize the difference between "big, corporate food" and an almost completely orthogonal supply system. Orange juice and a juiced orange may have almost nothing to do with each other, at this point (depending on the source, of course).
The reason I say this is that I think it would be foolish to count on the atlantic or a national border as safety, instead, think of something that has conquered the US food market (among other markets) and will absolutely expand and conquer new territory when possible.
While not limited to the Soda industry, this sentiment is expressed pretty vividly (even comparing testimony, marketing etc.) in the documentary Fed Up[1]. Worth a watch if this sort of thing is interesting to you and currently available on Netflix.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381335/
"Fed Up", a documentary currently on Netflix, changed the way I look at food, especially sugar. I now avoid it at all costs.
Here's the video that started a lot of the public awareness of the issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
And there's also now a great documentary on Netflix called "Fed Up" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCUbvOwwfWM), for anyone who has a subscription. It particularly tackles this silly idea that it's okay to eat and drink shitty food all day, so long as you exercise for a little bit too.
Just watched 'Fed Up' this week. It is your typical one sided documentary however it does shed a lot of light into this topic.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381335/
Also, I'd recommend going here and looking at the FDA's proposal on labeling %DV for added sugars: http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm385663.htm
>Who told you that? Insulin does not produce inflammation.
These are just from the first page of google. The covariance between insulin, inflammation, and heart disease is well established at this point.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915008008381
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704240/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16936531
>On anything resembling a normal cuisine the relative share of carbohydrate vs. saturated fat really doesn't matter much.
Vegetarian diet isn't a normal cuisine. Vegetarians tend to reduce protein intake and compensate with something else. The easiest substitute being carbs. If you aren't actually increasing your vegetable intake and eating quality food the vegetarian diet can be very unhealthy. A couple vegetarians I know are technically obese.
>I hate to break it to you but the Taubes shtick is laughable garbage.
I don't know who Taubes is. The guy who convinced me is Dr. Lustig from the "Fed Up" documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
This is one of the main themes of the documentary Fed Up - the food & beverage industry have sold us a lie about the US obesity crisis (people are obese because they don't exercise enough) - while downplaying their involvement (hiding\obfuscating sugar in the nutrition information of "healthy" options, lobbying to have Pizza classified as a "vegetable" portion in school meals, etc). It's worth checking out: http://fedupmovie.com/
Thanks for the movie recommendation. I will check it out. Fed Up was also good.
I'm on the opposite camp and think Fed Up is not a good movie to watch and seems the author (Kuric I think) had a bone to grind mostly with the fast food and shitty food industry.
I remember a scene about a mother going to the store, and buying 'light' oreos/chips/other stuff, and giving that to their kids instead of the regular ones to their kids and then complaining he didn't lose weight and taking as a conclusion that 'dieting' and 'exercise' doesn't really work. Never considered that maybe a carrot stick or an apple would be better, she would just buy diet soda/cookies/chips.
obesity, even if not at this levels, is an understated problem, and seems to me the US is one of the worst hit.
If you can, I'd recommend watching "Fed Up" [0], a documentary which tries to show that the problem is a bit more complex than just people being lazy ("light" food being effectively worse, complete lack of food education, lobbying at it's worse etc). As many documentaries, it has a rather clear agenda, but it's interesting nonetheless.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fed_Up_%28film%29
Should watch the documentary fed up.
Covers a number interesting stats that show increase in sugar and other cost cutting products growth is growing with obesity.
I have lost over 100lbs in 2 years once weighing near 300 from hard work exercising, risky metabolism boosters stacks with ephedrine (not banned in Canada), interval training constantly monitoring my heart rate during workouts especially cause of ephedrine and changing my diet.
I have kept it off for 3 years without having really exercising in the past 3 years by lowering carb and sugar intake and removed all fast food. Still eat out and don't watch any calorie or fat content
Exercise alone won't help. Exercise in western/ euro coultures didn't gain popularity till mid 1900s. Obesity rate has exploded since then. More people are going to the gym and exercising yet even more population is even fatter...
Dr. Lustig's views are not consistent with mainstream scientific opinions on the subject.[1] I would be careful about using his work to justify things.
[1] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-the-movie-fed-up-make-sense/
There is a new documentary called Fed Up, produced by Katie Couric, that I'm pretty sure will say that sugar is the most likely cause of the diabetes epidemic. I have it on preorder.... out Sept 9th.
http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home
The anti-gluten free diet people drive me nuts! No one is forcing anyone to go gluten free.
I had dinner last night with friends, one of who has had really bad allergies for many years. Really bad. Starting a year ago, her doctor started removing things from her environment to see what might be causing the problem. You guessed it: when gluten was removed from her diet her allergies cleared up within a month.
My wife and I eat mostly gluten free because we believe that modern wheat (which is really a different food now) causes inflammation in some people. I spend zero time trying to get anyone else to go gluten free, because except for my family I don't much care what other people eat.
So, if you like wheat products, enjoy!
BTW, you have not seen the new documentary "Fed Up" about the food industry then please do so. This is the movie the food industry (super powerful lobby in the USA, probably even more clout than the defense industry) does not want to see, so you may have to exert extra effort to find it playing.
Interesting article. I usually view fast food consumers as people who are poor, working multiple jobs, and don't have time for preparing healthier and much less expensive meals themselves. (The excellent documentary "Fed Up" makes this point.)
That is, for my wife and I part of being affluent is having time to enjoy preparing fine meals ourselves. This article made me realize that a lot of people who are well off financially are not well off as far as having lots of free time - thus the market for companies like Sprig, etc.