Fed Up Documentary Analysis

Perhaps one of the most discussed topics in America over the past years is the obesity epidemic that has struck, not only the USA, but many countries worldwide. The documentary Fed Up, directed by Stephanie Soechtig aims to address the issue of rising obesity rates due to our increase of sugar consumption. The film also discusses the hypocrisy of the USDA, which tries to warn people of their dietary habits while simultaneously providing billions of dollars in subsidies to farmers to produce corn, which in turn gets made into high fructose corn syrup (i.e. sugar) and inadvertently making the matter worse. Ultimately though, the documentary names the Food Industry the main culprit. For the most part the movie has received positive reviews.
With regards to the documentary’s rapid editing of “talking heads, found footage, scary statistics, and cartoonish graphics” she says make the movie “a fast, coolly incensed investigation into why people are getting fatter”. Her only criticisms are, one: on the self-portraits by young people who suffer from obesity, saying that although they were touching and charming, “the documentary [didn’t] need their pain to make its points, and their participation can feel borderline exploitative”; and two: on the documentary’s use of “images of anonymous obese bodies”, which suggest that they have something to be ashamed of. On the other hand, Harriet Hall of Science Based Medicine, focused more on the facts presented in the documentary and strayed from discussing any editing elements of the