Shelbey Hunter Nutrition
Shelbey Hunter Nutrition
Shelbey Hunter Nutrition
Shelbey Hunter
Prof. Paul Robert
Scientific Foundation of Nutrition
4/28/2021
Nutrition Perspectives
‘Fed up’ is a documentary made by film maker Stephanie Soechtig and journalist Katie
Couric and in the film, they are investigating why obesity seems to be growing even with many
American exercising and eating less. It has especially become a problem among children. The
documentary cites multiple statistics from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) including that
“nearly 100 million Americans (60% of all U.S. adults) today are either overweight or obese”(3)
and also that “The number of obese Americans has doubled since 1980.” (1) They interviewed
many experts and politicians who are trying to solve this crisis. As the film continues you learn
about the number of sugars in processed food, especially food that are “diet, fat free, or reduced”.
The effect of advertising and commercials including how they target children and convince them
that what they are promoting is good for them and that as long as the exercise, they won’t get fat
from their food product. Not only that but these companies are even making deals with schools
to serve their food in the lunch room. This is rather massive lie that is slowly killing these poor
children. Because these children are trying to stay healthy but still want to enjoy their favorite
snacks, they turn to the reduced fat, diet beverages, and fat-free products. However, what these
children didn’t realize is that those products may have no fat but the fat was what was giving the
food flavor, so what does the company do to make sure that their consumers will continue to by
their food? Sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. Due to the amount of sugar in these process food,
children and adult are eating an unhealthy amount of sugar but they don’t realize that they’re
1
‘Fed Up’-Nutrition Perspective
eating so much sugar. They think that as long as they stay away from cakes, cookies and other
obvious sugar food, that they’ll be fine. That’s not true though. Any food that has been process
will more than like have some form of sugar in the product. Many attempts have been made to
regulate America’s food industry, like banning sugary beverages and sugary food, telling the
percentage of sugar in said food, showing research of the effect of sugar and more! But the big
names in the food industry always stop them from happening. Just when anger and frustration
seem ready to explode out of the viewer, a light of hope is shown. While the government and
health departments fight the food industry, small organization and local farmers/teachers are
teaching and showing children how to eat healthier and showing the amount of sugar in process
foods. Encouraging children and adults alike, to take the time to eat and cook whole food such as
fruit, vegetables, whole wheat and grain. While the fight to regulate processed food is an uphill
Stephanie Soechtig and Katie Couric are the main brain behind the documentary. While
neither of them has any professional nutrition training, they took the time to interview many
professions and professionals in the field. They did their research and they did them well. I even
took the time to look up the multiple bills that were mentioned in the film, the percentage and
This film was released in 2014 and it is definitely something that is still applicable today.
While schools are being smart about how to pay and cook healthier meals for the children,
making them less likely to make to deals with the devils themselves and more people are staying
away from processed food, sticking with whole organic food, these food corporations are still an
issue that needs to be dealt with! These companies are as bad as the tobacco and cigarette
companies! There was once a time when it was believed that cigarette was healthy. So, what
2
‘Fed Up’-Nutrition Perspective
happened? Research was shown about the negative effect of the tobacco and anti-cigarette ads
were played after every cigarette ad. Smoking became banned in multiple places including inside
airplanes. The tobacco industry made a deal to take down their ads and put warning labels on
their packages. Due to these changes, smoking has been greatly reduced.
This is what needs to happen in the food industry! It’s possible for this to happen! It may
have taken 50 years to get the tobacco industry to break and admit that their products were bad
for people’s health but it happened! It’s been 30ish years with the food industry now but I have a
feeling that they’ll break downs soon. They can only deny that their food is not what is making
In the textbook, there are entire chapters devoted to explaining the labels required to be
listed on every consumable item in the grocery store. There are also sections which talk about the
laws that establish those kinds of regulation. What the book fails to mention is the ethics of the
food industry; probably due to said food industry themselves. The textbook talked a lot about the
importance of nutrition especially the smaller nutrition variety. The documentary kind of touch
this topic before moving along but it is definitely something that should have been talked about
more in-depth.
While I understood the importance eating healthy and getting the healthy amount of
nutrition and vitamins, I don’t think it really got through to my head until I saw the children and
adult in the documentary struggling to be healthy. The empty calories that junk food has can
greatly affect the consumer in a negative way and you aren’t even getting any nutrition out of it!
Another thing that stuck out to me was that the people in the film had the same belief that I had
for a little while. That it was expensive to buy healthy food. That junk food was cheaper! When I
heard them say that, I felt horror at how wide spread that belief was! We been tricked into
3
‘Fed Up’-Nutrition Perspective
thinking that eating healthy is something that only people with money can do! This is something
that we have to unlearn! It is possible for people to eat healthy no matter the wage class! It’s just
like what we had learned when we did the 10$ Challenge, it’s possible to buy cheap healthy
food! We just need to pay attention to how much we really need to buy, go to the store frequently
www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html.
3. “Obesity Is a Common, Serious, and Costly Disease.” Centers for Disease Control and