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| Duane A. Lienemann UNL Extension Educator |
This film is produced by activist Laurie David and Yahoo’s Katie Couric, made its exclusive debut at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend and has already kicked up a PR battle with the food lobby, which is working to counter the movie’s message - “The food industry, like Big Tobacco, bears great responsibility for the nation’s health woes.” The film, in its attempt at discussing obesity in our society and particularly children, focuses the blame on sugar and in particular high fructose corn sugar. That is what got my attention, along with who are the producers of this film.
It was of high interest to me that one of the producers of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is the producer of this film. She now has homed in on other targets: corn producers and the food industry. According to the producer reaction to the movie has been “wonderful,” noting that all of the showings at Sundance sold out. - “People seem very emotional, and people have said to us that this movie has completely changed the way they look at what they’re eating,” She went on to say, “We really hope this movie is going to start a movement.” This will likely add fuel to the fire on corn syrup and agitate a movement that was started years ago and had lost steam. Look for this debate and attack on corn to make a big spike.
The film features several Washington celebrity interviews - many conducted by Couric, who narrates the film - include former president Bill Clinton, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. There are a handful of other government officials featured in the film, including Richard Carmona, who was surgeon general under George W. Bush, and David Kessler, former Food and Drug commissioner under President Clinton, as well as a long list of doctors and health advocates, including Michele Simon, author of “Appetite for Profit”. According to Katie Couric -“People seem to come out of the theater angry and shocked. I think it’s making a real impact.” For you that do not remember; Couric, when she was the CBS anchor, was largely responsible for our recent loss of antibiotics in livestock because of her misguided, critical and biased reporting on antibiotic use in animal agriculture several years ago that ignited a firestorm.
The film’s production team has a track record when it comes to elevating policy issues. David, a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council, is known for her role as one of the producers for “An Inconvenient Truth”, the 2006 Oscar-winning documentary featuring Al Gore that caused a surge of interest in climate warming and used the scare tactic of drowning Polar Bears, New York and Florida under water and both icecaps melting to name a few. That “politically convenient” film was responsible for the push for carbon credits and regulations aimed primarily at agriculture and in particular animal agriculture. Not surprisingly the Natural Resources Defense Council is notorious for defending the rights of animals and plants over the rights of humans. If they had their way, civilization would be returned to a primitive state. Incidentally, the NRDC is funded by the ultra-radical Tides Foundation and Tides Center.
“Fed Up” would represent her first box office release since, though she was a consulting producer on another scare film “GMO OMG” in 2013 which is an aggressively uninformed “documentary” about the corporate duplicity and governmental callousness that the movie says drives the production of genetically engineered crops—which are, in the films view – “such barely concealed poisons that are routinely killing and/or causing disorders that will lead to the death of civilization”. And not to be outdone, “Fed Up’s” director, Stephanie Soechtig, is known for her 2009 documentary “Tapped,” which sparked a greater debate about the environmental impact of bottled water. That particular film examined the role of the bottled water industry and its effects on our health, climate change, pollution, and our reliance on oil. I think you are getting the drift!
While the food industry has not reacted to most of the negative documentaries that have cropped up in recent years, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, one of the country’s most powerful food industry groups, is going on the offensive this time. The group issued a press release in last week’s Sunday papers responding to the premiere, purchased Google ads to direct people to a landing page touting food industry health initiatives and tweeted about the project Tuesday, calling it “advocacy masquerading as documentary journalism.” They also put a website that is designed to answer questions not only about this film but also GMO’s in the food chain. http://www.gmaonline.org/layout/785 .
While "Fed Up" is only the latest documentary to excoriate the modern food system, it joins many that have gone before in perpetuating misperceptions and scientifically unsupported assertions about sugar. Although a definitive cause has yet to be determined, the film would have you believe that a single dietary villain (sugar) is uniquely responsible for obesity in America. However, just as decades of research has revealed beneficial and complex roles of dietary fats in healthful diets, the science on sugars is evolving, and answers for many important questions about the role of sugars in health continue to be investigated. Do you have any idea how many food products that corn syrup and other sugars are part of? Hold on to your seed corn caps- it may be more than wind that is going to raise them!
The preceding information comes from the research and personal observations of the writer which may or may not reflect the views of UNL or UNL Extension. For more further information on these or other topics contact D. A. Lienemann, UNL Extension Educator for Webster County in Red Cloud, (402) 746-3417 or email to: dlienemann2@unl.edu or go to the website at: http://www.webster.unl.edu/home
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