Raeleigh Thomas

Professor Julia Wylie

NUTR 1020

30 November 2023

HLTH 1020 Foundations of Nutrition Project: Nutrition Perspectives

This documentary is about the social concepts we have when it comes to eating

and losing weight. It shares how as a society we think we are moving forward but we

are actually not doing much. It shares so we can change our lives simply by following

basic things like buying local and reducing our sugar with making meals and not

buying processed foods. This documentary shares real life experiences of how you get

to the point of obesity and how hard it is to get out of that life style because from a

young age things are eaten, and the body started an addition and it’s hard to break

addition. It shares that the idea of losing weight and becoming “healthy” isn’t simply

the idea of “eating less and exercise more.”

The documentary I chose was Fed Up by Laurie David & Katie Couric. The

reason why I chose this documentary is because that was the one that stood out to

me. For me there are many di erent reasons why you can be “fed up” with food and I

had the assumption that they would go over why us as humans are “fed up” with food

and how it can cause a negative impact on our lives and our bodies. Laurie David &

Katie Couric have a very powerful background meaning that they aren’t simply the

normal type of women who care about your health and nutrition.
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 Laurie David is someone who is very into “environmental and political issues”,

she is someone who really care about humans and the world that we surround

ourselves with and the one we live on. She once said in an interview “this is not about

perfection. That’s what hurts the environmental movement - holding people to a

standard they cannot meet. That simply pushes people away.” I really enjoy this

statement from her because it can so relate to nutrition. Nutrition is something that

should be very important and everyone should care about but it has become this social

norm of eating perfect, looking a certain way, etc and the actual nutrition apart has

been taken out.

Katie Couric is a women who is a journalist, co-founder, and an author. Katie has

been on several TV & News stations like NBC, CNN, ABC, etc. Katie has been able to

share “important social issues like gender equality, environmental sustainability, and

mental health”. Which is great because again it’s another person who is diving in deep

to the nd the real problem or underlining topic instead of talking about the surface

level of things like other producers do or have an opinion instead of simply the straight

facts.

This documentary has so many di erent people in the lm and from di erent

backgrounds which is great because you can see that it’s not a certain type of people

that are in di erent stages of obesity. The documentary was produced in 2014,

watching it there are been several di erent things that ring true today. They started o

the documentary by saying that the saying we always hear “eat less and exercise

more” is actually something that is very contradictory because over the years they have

been able to nd so many Americans that, that isn’t true. You have these kids in this
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documentary sharing their stories about how many people around them are telling

them to do those 2 things are they aren’t seeing a change and so these kids feel like

failures and they bring themselves down because of that.

Many times in my life, I have had some people have that mindset expressed to

me and I like those kids I too would look at myself as a failure when my weight

wouldn’t go down and it would go up. I was exercising everyday and eating less but

nothing worked. While watching this documentary, I realize I went about it the wrong

way when I did try and lose weight because those I was eating less I was still eating

highly processed and over powering sugar foods which didn’t do anything for me and

my body.

Dr. Robert Lustig in the documentary points out that it’s crazy that our society

says “you are what you eat” and that diet with exercise is what will x the problem but

yet babies can be born obese, and he asks “you want to tell me they are supposed to

diet and exercise?” He is suggesting that if those mantras that our society is saying is

true then we would see a di erent but we aren’t so it must be something with how our

food is being made. Inside the documentary, they talk about how we have a ton of

sugar in our foods and when we eat sugar mainly what happens - we are tired, slow,

and we are STILL hungry so what do we do eat and eat and eat to try and get rid of

that hunger - which means “that is the result of the biochemistry but not the cause

(20:48).”

How we can x it is through is by watching our processed foods, our food

industry is really adding sugar to over 80% of our food and we start having this food

when we are young so we become addictive (29:14) to it and our body craves those
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 things so when we start o with more natural foods we can have a better outcome.

When Michelle Obama came out with let’s move campaign, the food industry

approached her and “worked” with her to make a di erence. This documentary shows

that even though the food industry worked with Michelle, they didn’t really do anything.

The food industry told US that they would take 1.5 trillion calories o the market selves

but this documentary shared that by doing so only takes 14 calories away from

American citizens which in their own words “does nothing (45:38).” The food industry

started coming out with low fat to no fat foods but when you compare the sugar

amount to original products and low fat products, they have the same sugar content

which changes nothing and we can still see that in our world today.

In the documentary it shares how the US has this idea in our minds that buying

natural food and fruits and vegetables is more expensive which is why there’s not

much purchased but how that idea is wrong and in our textbook a paragraph shares on

page 604 it shares that “a healthy dietary pattern can be a ordable and t within

budgetary constraints.” It also shares with us that “spices and herbs can improve food

avor while reducing added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium.” Which the

documentary focused on that as well how we can use more natural foods inside our

eating habits to help us. The documentary focused on how you will never see a child

that is obese and a t parent together, and in this textbook it shares with us that parent

“exposure to a variety of foods and beverages, early in life, promotes a child’s

willingness to consume and enjoy a variety of foods throughout each life stage.” It really

shows how vital parents play a big role into helping children and obesity and how we

can start the end of obesity cycles.

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 I learned so much about nutrition after completing this assignment to where it

really opened to my ideas of how wrong I was to think certain things and how I can

change my mindset moving forward with being nutritious. I learned that I need to

reduce my mentality of “eating less and exercise more” and change that to eating more

locally grown food and look for those instead of simply giving in to the most convenient

option, processed foods. I will start choosing to cook meals at home because I have

noticed a di erence in the past when I care to eat more nutritious, I feel better and

that’s when I see the biggest di erence. I also want to have kids someday so starting

now will be more bene cial for them so I can break the processed cycle that is in my

family.

References:

“Laurie David.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Nov. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Laurie_David.

Smith, Anne M., et al. Wardlaw’s Contemporary Nutrition: A Functional Approach. McGraw
Hill LLC, 2024.

Warner, Kara, et al. “About Katie Couric.” Katie Couric Media, 29 Nov. 2022, katiecouric.com/
about-katie-couric/.

Soechtig, Stephanie, director. Fed Up. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceRFvhlcsiY.

Accessed 1 Dec. 2023.
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