‘Fed Up’-Nutrition Perspective

Shelbey Hunter
Prof. Paul Robert
Scientific Foundation of Nutrition
4/28/2021

Nutrition Perspectives
‘Fed up’ is a documentary made by film maker Stephanie Soechtig and journalist Katie

Couric and in the film, they are investigating why obesity seems to be growing even with many

American exercising and eating less. It has especially become a problem among children. The

documentary cites multiple statistics from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) including that

“nearly 100 million Americans (60% of all U.S. adults) today are either overweight or obese”(3)

and also that “The number of obese Americans has doubled since 1980.” (1) They interviewed

many experts and politicians who are trying to solve this crisis. As the film continues you learn

about the number of sugars in processed food, especially food that are “diet, fat free, or reduced”.

The effect of advertising and commercials including how they target children and convince them

that what they are promoting is good for them and that as long as the exercise, they won’t get fat

from their food product. Not only that but these companies are even making deals with schools

to serve their food in the lunch room. This is rather massive lie that is slowly killing these poor

children. Because these children are trying to stay healthy but still want to enjoy their favorite

snacks, they turn to the reduced fat, diet beverages, and fat-free products. However, what these

children didn’t realize is that those products may have no fat but the fat was what was giving the

food flavor, so what does the company do to make sure that their consumers will continue to by

their food? Sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. Due to the amount of sugar in these process food,

children and adult are eating an unhealthy amount of sugar but they don’t realize that they’re

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eating so much sugar. They think that as long as they stay away from cakes, cookies and other

obvious sugar food, that they’ll be fine. That’s not true though. Any food that has been process

will more than like have some form of sugar in the product. Many attempts have been made to

regulate America’s food industry, like banning sugary beverages and sugary food, telling the

percentage of sugar in said food, showing research of the effect of sugar and more! But the big

names in the food industry always stop them from happening. Just when anger and frustration

seem ready to explode out of the viewer, a light of hope is shown. While the government and

health departments fight the food industry, small organization and local farmers/teachers are

teaching and showing children how to eat healthier and showing the amount of sugar in process

foods. Encouraging children and adults alike, to take the time to eat and cook whole food such as

fruit, vegetables, whole wheat and grain. While the fight to regulate processed food is an uphill

fight that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.

Stephanie Soechtig and Katie Couric are the main brain behind the documentary. While

neither of them has any professional nutrition training, they took the time to interview many

professions and professionals in the field. They did their research and they did them well. I even

took the time to look up the multiple bills that were mentioned in the film, the percentage and

history as well and they were pretty accurate.

This film was released in 2014 and it is definitely something that is still applicable today.

While schools are being smart about how to pay and cook healthier meals for the children,

making them less likely to make to deals with the devils themselves and more people are staying

away from processed food, sticking with whole organic food, these food corporations are still an

issue that needs to be dealt with! These companies are as bad as the tobacco and cigarette

companies! There was once a time when it was believed that cigarette was healthy. So, what

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happened? Research was shown about the negative effect of the tobacco and anti-cigarette ads

were played after every cigarette ad. Smoking became banned in multiple places including inside

airplanes. The tobacco industry made a deal to take down their ads and put warning labels on

their packages. Due to these changes, smoking has been greatly reduced.

This is what needs to happen in the food industry! It’s possible for this to happen! It may

have taken 50 years to get the tobacco industry to break and admit that their products were bad

for people’s health but it happened! It’s been 30ish years with the food industry now but I have a

feeling that they’ll break downs soon. They can only deny that their food is not what is making

people fat for so long.

In the textbook, there are entire chapters devoted to explaining the labels required to be

listed on every consumable item in the grocery store. There are also sections which talk about the

laws that establish those kinds of regulation. What the book fails to mention is the ethics of the

food industry; probably due to said food industry themselves. The textbook talked a lot about the

importance of nutrition especially the smaller nutrition variety. The documentary kind of touch

this topic before moving along but it is definitely something that should have been talked about

more in-depth.

While I understood the importance eating healthy and getting the healthy amount of

nutrition and vitamins, I don’t think it really got through to my head until I saw the children and

adult in the documentary struggling to be healthy. The empty calories that junk food has can

greatly affect the consumer in a negative way and you aren’t even getting any nutrition out of it!

Another thing that stuck out to me was that the people in the film had the same belief that I had

for a little while. That it was expensive to buy healthy food. That junk food was cheaper! When I

heard them say that, I felt horror at how wide spread that belief was! We been tricked into

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thinking that eating healthy is something that only people with money can do! This is something

that we have to unlearn! It is possible for people to eat healthy no matter the wage class! It’s just

like what we had learned when we did the 10$ Challenge, it’s possible to buy cheap healthy

food! We just need to pay attention to how much we really need to buy, go to the store frequently

to buy fresh produce, and plan our meals ahead of time.

1. YouTube Movies. “Fed Up.” YouTube, 6 Mar. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceRFvhlcsiY.

2. “Childhood Obesity Facts | Overweight & Obesity | CDC.” Cdd.Gov, 5 Apr. 2021,

www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html.

3. “Obesity Is a Common, Serious, and Costly Disease.” Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, 11 Feb. 2021, www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html.