Hey now!
On Hulu right now, there are two really good movies that everyone should see.
The first one is Super Size Me, with Morgan Spurlock, which if you haven’t seen yet… Have you been under a rock?
Although I have seen it, I enjoyed watching it again. There were a lot of good scenes that I had forgotten about. Sure it’s a bit extreme just to prove a point that some may not even think pertains to them, and people say that “of course the food made him feel like crap because he ate so much of it. It’s fine in moderation!” The people that think this way are forgetting that just because someone doesn’t eat a bad food everyday doesn’t mean they will be immune to that foods effects on the body, it will just take longer to occur than a concentrated McD’s binge like Spurlock’s. The thing is that study after study has shown that the more fast food a person eats, the likelihood and quantity of diseases becomes greater and greater, and it doesn’t take as much of the poor foods to increase their chances as they would like to believe. It’s really not much different than slowly getting lead poisoning from steady long-term exposure.
As a side note, Spurlock also has a TV series called 30 Days in which he or other people commit to experiencing a completely different lifestyle for 30 days. Some examples include Morgan and his wife attempting to live on minimum wage, a homophobic straight man living in the gayest part of San Francisco, and an atheist living with a Christian family, etc…
The second movie is The Future of Food. I’ve only started this one recently and finished about half of it. So far there are some startling points about how large companies can have patents on seeds and even legally force farmers to grow (or not grow) specific crops and even particular strains of those crops, which in turn largely influences what food producers bring cheaply into our food cupboards. It’s just one of those movies that everyone should see, if only to be aware, but potentially to help influence their choices which can in turn support or not support certain industries.
That reminds me of a new movie called Food, Inc. that just came out. Check out the trailer:
I really like the point made that I’m casting a vote for a particular food company or type of food each time I put something into my grocery cart. If we stop giving votes to the big industries that are making us sick and fat, either they won’t be around much longer, or they may start to change the way they operate.
Here’s another trailer:
Its great to see a post from you pop up in my reader
I’ve missed your posts!!
“Supersize me” is crazy!! It has definitely turned me off fastfood. Love 30 days.. its a great show.
“Food Inc” looks interesting… I’m almost afraid to see it… I might never want to set foot into a grocery store again….but knowledge is better than ignorance.
Fat Head is another new food “mockumentary” – http://www.fathead-movie.com/
He goes after Spurlock from Super-Size Me as well as the FDA, AMA, etc…
Yeah, where have you been? Glad you’re posting again. Unfortunately I can’t get Hula to work for me over on this side of the Atlantic but I’ll check out the films eventually. The more attention brought on the food industry the better, though it’ll be a big task to compete with fast food’s advertising budget.
Anyone seen Fast Food Nation? I thought the book was good but haven’t seen the film yet.
flood
Hey, love the site. Just posted a link to you on my fatties are getting fatter post @ http://www.scribblesvurt.com I’m going to follow your feed. At last some sense on the subject of obesity!
I haven’t watched the movies yet, but the second one sounds like it mentions Monsanto’s “terminator seed”? Monsanto is just evil. I’m also e-mailing you a link to an article on Yahoo today about sugar and carbs causing wrinkles. Maybe appealing to people’s vanity will have more effect. Ignore the product pitches at the end of the article
[...] can find a trailer for the movie there, or on a previous post I [...]
Good luck trying to stop both the government subsidies for corn and soybeans and the protections for Florida and California fruit growers than ensure the overabundance of corn (and corn related products) and the higher costs of fruits.
Just wanted to throw in a word against Spurlock. His goal for Super Size Me was alright, but the way he went about it was perhaps wrong. He went over-the-top ridiculous in some of his claims, which precluded any possibility of reaching large numbers of people. It became him preaching to the choir instead of convincing people.
I haven’t seen the movie for a while, but just as an example of what I mean:
Near the beginning of the movie, he gets McDs for the first time and he orders a supersize meal – it then takes him over 45 minutes to eat it and it causes him to throw up. That is so obviously and blatantly ridiculous that many people stop taking the movie seriously right there.
There isn’t enough food to take 45 min to eat and still throw up – either he eats it quickly or he doesn’t throw up. I’ve seen immigrants from Iran and India that had never eaten fast food eat a supersized meal in about 15-20 minutes and not get sick. There are plenty of other instances in the movie of things that are just stupid exaggerations that make the movie unbelievable.