What I Watched -- Fed Up

I went with T to see Fed Up, the latest docu-drama to attack America's agribusiness system of mass food production, which is, if the whole collection of films is to be believed, going to kill us all yesterday.

Perhaps that's overstating it a little bit.  All this "food" won't kill us yesterday, and probably not even tomorrow, but without a doubt it will make us fat, diabetic, lazy, and stupid.  Wait, no, that's Google that makes us stupid.  So just fat, diabetic, and lazy.  Oh, and cancerous.

Enough with the joking around.  Fed Up is the story of sugar in the American diet, and it is a serious problem. There is nothing about consuming sugar in the quantities that we do which is good for you.  Obviously.  We need some sugar for fuel, but we waaay overconsume it.

What I like about this movie, other than its nutritional truths (I think, although I don't know the science that well), is that it doesn't demonize one political party while canonizing the other.  Government is in the pockets of corporations.  True.  And that's true of virtually all politicians.  Thanks for pointing that out.

What I also liked about it was the rather short segment where they compare foods side by side.  Can of soda? 140 calories, 39g sugar.  Same quantity of OJ? 153 calories, 29g sugar.  Cranberry juice? 165 calories, True, you get more vitamins and minerals from the juice than from the soda (which is basically water, sugar, salt, and chemicals), but not enough to make it a healthy go-to beverage.

Bottom line: nothing particularly revelatory, but an excellent reminder.  As Michael Pollan says, "eat food, not too much, mostly [vegetables, although whole fruits are okay]."