Fed Up Film Analysis

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Are we Fed or Fed Up? "Fed Up (Soechtig, 2014)." narrated by Katie Couric, focuses on the growing link between sugar consumption and the obesity epidemic. The film aggressively attacks the food industry, advertising, and the government who, it claims, all contribute to the U.S. sugar-dependent, obesity problem. The film sets out to prove the government, and food industry is knowingly causing an increase in the amount of obese children. It reserves its most critical comments for government advisory panels who make and enforce food and health policy, and its failure to properly regulate the food industry. They claim lobbyists for the sugar board have been instrumental in the removal of negative statistics from research papers worldwide. Instead …show more content…

The children range in age from 12-15 and their issues from simple obesity to needing gastric-bypass surgery. The children are fed fast food in school cafeterias, with government labeling of pizza, fries and tomato paste as vegetables. Stores have candies and snacks at children’s eye level, and at home they eat the standard offerings of processed foods. One of the other things this film shows is the complete lack of support for these families in the area of proper diet education. A couple of the parents talked about the doctors encouraging them to seek help with nutrition, the doctors did not have any useful advice on where to get this …show more content…

The film presents this set of facts, “Eighty percent of American high schools have contracts with soft drink companies, with fifty percent of school cafeterias serving fast food” Fed Up (Soechtig, 2014). The Center for Consumer Freedom criticizes Fed Up, warning that people should equate calories in with calories out and the media helps by promoting the lack of exercise and over-eating as the cause of obesity. The film counteracts this to a degree with Maggie Valentine. She is the twelve-year-old in the film who weighs 212 pounds. She swims four days a week, runs, walks her dogs, and at the end is seen learning how to kayak. Her mother attempts to feed her a good diet at home, of low fat products, and Maggie tries to make good choices at school, but is hindered by what is offered in the cafeteria. She exercises, eats what the food companies tell her is good and still fails, so who then is to blame? The movie hypothesis it is the food companies, advertising and lack of government regulations concerning children and how they are exposed to junk food brainwashing everywhere they

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