Service stations have turned into gas stations/convenient stores, stocking every brand of soda, chips, and frozen foods one could imagine, and with no restrictions with advertising and lower-cost ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup in the foods, the corporations wisely look to glitz their products with billion dollar advertising campaigns to make sure your children know their product, by every color on the box to the plastic-wrap you need to peel off of the tray. The topic it touches on is one I've been telling people about for years, when my friends and I engage in debates about food and the health of America, in that poor-quality, processed food is ubiquitous beyond belief. Fed Up, after all, is a competent and intensely watchable documentary, illustrating a growing problem in America. How anyone could see any of this information to be new or groundbreaking is beyond me, but I continue to digress. In addition, ad campaigns of the food industry were not given very detailed restrictions, allowing corporations to peddle food to kids that had little to no nutritional value and result in health problems from an early age. The industry responded by releasing many products claiming "low fat," "reduced fat," and "no fat" products which, despite their ostensible health benefits, literally taint their possibilities for being nutritious by adding massive amounts of sugar to compensate for the flavor fat provided. Couric examines how America has seen numbers and their pant-sizes explode in the last couple decades, after the McGovern Report in the late seventies attempted to implement harsher food restrictions and advertising campaigns on the food industry. Fed Up is narrated by news anchor/talk-show host Katie Couric, who brings her perky-mannerisms and clarity to the table when discussing the food industry's peddling of high-sugar products, in addition to illustrating the tremendous influx of diseases like diabetes, heart problems, and obesity in America. Did everyone forget the documentary Super Size Me, which garnered nearly-unanimous praise and just came out ten years ago? What about Food, Inc., another documentary concerning what we eat and where it comes from, or even its follow-up documentary A Place at the Table, released last year? As stylistically sublime and efficient as Fed Up is, it's not new information, but, maybe like the recent NSA/wiretapping controversy, maybe we just need a friendly reminder with more bells and whistles. However, it bothers me that reviews of the documentary praise the film as something groundbreaking and that its discoveries and examination of the food industry is shocking. Fed Up is a clearly well-meaning documentary, and its producers, director, and parties involved obviously bear emotions on the food industry that are perfectly in-line with the title of the documentary they are making.
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