Fed Up (2014)

Thirty years ago, Type 2 diabetes was almost unheard of, whereas today it's a global epidemic.  In America, two out of three people are overweight.  At the same time, health clubs, diet fads, nutrition books, and weight loss reality shows have proliferated.  Why is obesity now the greatest form of malnutrition?  It's easy to say that diet and exercise are the answers, that we just need more will power.  That people are lazy, or that genetics or family or cultural eating patterns are key.  This documentary suggests that these approaches are dead wrong.  They lay the blame at the feet of the food industry, their marketing strategies, their industry-funded "studies" with blatant conflicts of interest, their lobbyists, government subsidies, and so on.  All of which is to say that obesity is not just a personal problem, it's a national-corporate-systematic attack on us.  For a compelling book-length version of this argument, see Michael Moss, Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (New York: Random House, 2013).  I watched this film on Netflix Streaming.