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These 5 movies on Netflix will open your eyes about how food is really made
The 1 hour, 32 minute documentary makes the first point clear through perky, bright infographics and interviews with nutritionists and scientists about sugar's effect on the body. Soft drinks are highlighted as especially problematic, as Americans are now drinking their calories at a faster rate than ever.
But "Fed Up" doubly emphasizes how dangerous sugar is by pointing out how ignorant we are of its effects. There are heartbreaking interviews with overweight children and their parents, clueless why diet and exercise aren't helping the kids lose weight. One such child is a 14-year-old considering gastric bypass, a highly invasive surgery. One parent, when asked how she's helping change her son's diet replies that she's feeding him healthier meals: serving him lean Hot Pockets instead of regular. It's a sad illustration of how little we know about what we eat.
What role does the federal government have in the current obesity problem? "Place at the Table" investigates the Obama administration and its role both in child hunger and child obesity, focusing primarily on the federal school lunch program. Although $2.68 is allotted to school cafeterias per child for food, "Place at the Table" asserts that, accounting for labor and administrative costs, schools report between 90 cents and a dollar per child.
Even more disheartening is that for many students, the meal provided from the school is all they'll eat that day. As cafeterias feel pressured to cut costs by using additives and skirting nutritional requirements, students face the paradox of being both underserved and overfed with cheap, dangerous foods.
Dr. Campbell and Dr. Esselstyn speak with people who have completely reversed their health after adapting their diets, recovering from breast cancer, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
Perhaps the strongest evidence, and best part of the documentary, comes from an extended look into East Asia: China, the Philippines, Korea, and Japan. Heart disease, diabetes, and many types of cancers were absent for most of their long histories, appearing only after the introduction of Western fast food in the modern age.
The above image is from a chicken production plant and illustrates the problem at the core of the answer to that question. The shift away from localizing our food and towards mass producing it is destroying our diets by making cheap, unhealthy food plentiful and easily accessible while making healthier foods an out-of-reach luxury.
"Food Inc" implicates a number of organizations in this: the FDA, the fast food industry, supermarkets, Tyson, Wal-Mart, and ultimately, the consumer. Speaking to a number of experts, "Food Inc" reveals how consumers are largely unaware of everything from where food comes from, to what it contains, and how much it actually costs. The answer to everything comes down to corn: a hugely subsidized crop chemically rearranged and placed into products as (seemingly different) as french fries or lemonade.
95 pounds in 61 days.
Phil Staples, an obese truck driver from Iowa with a BMI of 58, adopted a radical plant-based juicing diet and became a viral sensation after his radical weight loss. Weight loss documentaries are nothing new, but "Fat, Sick, And Nearly Dead" treats its subjects with more compassion, showing that although weight loss entails a decreasing waist line, it isn't a linear narrative. Staples and his journey to health is characterized by a number of false starts and missteps, characterized both in this film and the follow-up, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead 2."
Seeing weight loss from a messier, less judgmental perspective is ultimately more inspiring because it's so much more relatable. While all these documentaries ask you to reinterpret food and its production, this has you reinterpet the people asked to radically change their bodies – just because it's for the better, doesn't mean it's any more difficult.
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.
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