English- The movie I am going to share with my friends and my family is the movie Fed Up (2014), directed by Stephanie Soechtig.
- My 5 questions are:
What are the purposes of filing young people in this film?
What does it mean to “eat healthier”?
Do we have choices in the food we consume?
The media have been reporting the issue and the cure to obesity for more than 30 years. How and why is obesity always a problem?
Though the food industry is playing a huge impact in determining one country’s GDP, is it worth not to inform people of the fact that they are suffering from obesity through false statement?
Before watching the movie, everyone thinks this will be a dramatic love movie or some funny series, due to the meaning of the title.
“Fed up” describes a feeling or an emotion of sicking off something, for instance, I am fed up with her complaints, which means I can’t stand and so tired of all the complaints that she tells me.
Being said so, every audience I share the movie with also has that mindset of expecting many different kinds of genres, from romantic, to science fiction, or horror movie, but no one expects the movie would be a documentary about obesity and food.
After watching the movie, everyone is shocked, surprised, but above all is the unbelievable feeling. Most of the expressions I have are “That can’t be real”, “Is it fake?” or simply “This one is lying”, and I do ask them the reasons for saying those expressions, they just mention if this is all true, then every one of us doesn’t have any childhoods.
Their answers made me think briefly about another angle. When we are so familiar with the images of candies, malt sugar, or ice cream from our childhoods, at least there was once that every one of us stealthily took our parents’ pocket money for ice cream, and if in the movie, it is said that children are poisoned from a young age with sugary foods, then whether they still had their childhoods.
Indeed it is not recommended for kids to eat sweets every day, or drink coke every night, still, the consciousness of the parents is important in teaching and guiding kids about the consequences of consuming sweets, or too much sugar into the body.
As the first in a string of films critical of the American diet, “Fed Up” is fast to take advantage of what seems to be its adversary. According to the film, added sugar, in every form-not only with demonized high-fructose corn syrup but also more natural-looking such as “pure” cane sugar-is close to one hand responsible for what one interviewee called the obesity wave that swept the world, as well as the sharp increase in diabetes.
Of course, the rise in sugar in refined food is just the tool that destroys us, according to director Stephanie Soechtig and journalist Katie Couric, who narrated and created an insightful and often angry video. The true perpetrator, “Fed Up” claims, is the company that sells high-sugar unhealthy food to the unaware population.
Almost every audience that I share the movie with always get shocked by the mindset of obesity is deliberately controlled by big businesses, and giving out false statements, such as the case of WHO in the movie, which was threatened to stop the research or else having their fee cut down.
Overall, though my friends are shocked by the information given in the documentary, they compliment the movie in filing young people who are suffering from obesity, which in their opinion, it is not only a good way to create the credibility for the movie, but also emphasizes how it is important of being fat.
I remember a detail in the movie to which the film portrays Brady, a 15-year-old white male. Brady said, “One guy told me the obese person was just made to be overweight, and I don’t think that’s true.” He said he had grown up eating fattening food as his parents did. His mother was complaining about some of the girls who ordered him to run so they could “watch his fat shake.”
All Brandy dreams of was shedding his weight so he can do other things like playing football. As Brady marches alone down the way, his mother narrates, “I truly hope he needs to lose weight, I just don’t think he knows how to do it.” Brady says, “I look at it like I’m struggling, and everybody else sees yet another fat boy.”
Looking at Brandy, I immediately feel all his pain of how hard it is to be obese and live under another person judge’s eyes because I used to be that kid once, and I tried to figure the way out of that by eating healthier.
There are many aspects of defining “eat healthily” from which you plan on your diet menu of not eating any starch, to eat fewer portions in the meal, or just simply eating fruits. I do agree one point in the movie that It is not hard to stay healthy to add some vegetables on the plate, however, it is hard to not remove the sugar once you get addicted. Therefore, eating healthy in this movie only stays in an aspect of eating less sugar or any fried food, still, it is hard, but due to a false fact at the beginning of the movie while the nutritionist proves that exhaling the calories out of the body more than consume doesn’t make you lose weight.
That leads to another problem of the movie to which many students blame that they don’t have many choices in choosing the food on their plates due to many objective factors from their culture of generations, the school, and sweets temptation. Being said so, every student who is suffering obesity at the moment should blame the schools for giving them no other choices besides fried food or is it just because they can’t order another food.
Indeed, students in general, and the student in the movie including, can blame the choices of the food at schools, but it is their responsibility to take the food and eat. One more hard thing I find about the movie is that there isn’t much information that mentions the responsibilities or any actions relating to raising the student’s mindset to stay healthy.
Responsibilities would be the very first thing that comes to mind of anyone when talking about obesity because it is a matter to which the food you consume, and what you would do afterward. Instead of mentioning about responsibilities, or any statistic for the solutions of propagandizing eating healthier, the movie directs us into an aspect to which it is the fault of the big businesses and the government to produce junk food and increase the obesity rate.
In the movie, Michael Pollan expressed angrily about this problem to which the government was unwittingly subsidizing the obesity crisis by subsidizing corn, making corn into high-fructose corn syrup and all other sugar that was found in packaged foods-maltodextrin, xanthan gum, etc. On the one hand, the government tried to subsidize the same food that makes us unhealthy, and on the other, they were trying to set requirements for school lunches for our children.
From my aspects, I both agree and disagree with this point of view. Under the view of a person who once worked in big restaurants, I do agree that sometimes the managers would use overnight ingredients for the purpose of saving up fees, though it is not recommended due to health safety. However, I disagree with the word “subsidizing” because if the big businesses are allowing those corn syrups to increase the rate of obesity, they are also one hand supporting in creating their families to be obese either.
In the end, it is a great documentary with controversial aspects to talk about obesity, even from now, obesity still, and always be a big problem for some personal reasons. However, I find it hard to understand why the movie didn’t interview famous people who were suffering from obesity at that time and showed them false statements. As far as I’m concerned, famous singer Sean Kingston, DJ Khalid, or President Donald Trump also suffered obesity in those years through their pictures on the Internet.
Overall, it is a recommended documentary for the kids to watch in order for them to raise their cautions in eating healthy, doing more exercise, and have a strict plan in choosing the food.
