Ben, Heather & I went to see the movie Fed Up this week. Our motivation was that James was one of the colorists who worked on the movie, but the visual effect his work created wasn’t the only thing we took away from the theater.
Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, this documentary is brought to us by executive producers Katie Couric and Laurie David. Katie Couric also narrates. The movie’s basic premise is political – an indictment of the US government’s acquiescence to the food lobby that has led to grocery stores full of food with tons of added sugar.
I don’t know if the point of the movie was to suggest that the government change its ways, big business change its ways, or just to shed a light on how the relationships currently work and how those relationships affect what we are told about food. Nonetheless, we all learned something.
In the car after the movie, Heather said she always thought that all calories were equal so it didn’t matter whether she got those calories from French fries or from almonds and carrots, and green beans. Every time Ben has told her that vegetables matter, she has dismissed the idea because she believed what we’ve all been collectively told – calories in, calories out is the key to healthy weight. This movie showed her that nutritionally where the calories come from matters.
Although I read labels any time I buy packaged food, I typically focus on the ingredient list. Sometimes I’ll look at the amount of calories, fat content or carbohydrates. I guess I always thought that sugars never contained a percentage of daily allowance number because the label was just reflecting how many grams of the carbs were sugars.
Fed Up makes the point that due to the lobbying pressure of large food manufacturers, the USDA has not set a recommended daily allowance for sugar. This means that in the US labels never bear a percentage of the daily allowance of sugar because no such recommended daily allowance exists. This is quite a clever strategy for avoiding having to state on the label that one regular can of soda contains 40 grams of sugar and exceeds the World Health Organization’s (WHO) sugar intake recommendation for one day by 15 grams.
At first glance 15 grams may not sound like much, but 15 grams = 3.5 teaspoons or 60% of The World Health Organization’s recommended daily sugar intake for a whole day. The WHO advises that no more than 5% of your daily calories come from sugars. For the average adult with a normal body mass index (BMI), that comes to about 6 teaspoons or 25 grams of sugar per day. Now remember, one soda is 15 grams above the daily allowance. In other words, one regular can of soda contains 160% of the recommended daily intake of sugar.
Would it change how you feel about handing your child a soda if the label on the can listed the sugars as 160% of the recommended daily allowance? For those of us who try to make informed choices, having the information at out fingertips would make our job much easier.
And that brings me to Ben’s takeaway, and my passion – the only way you ever really know what’s in your food is to cook it yourself! In fact, that’s why we’re here cooking to thrive!
Not convinced that you can make cooking part of your lifestyle? Check out these posts:
www.cooking2thrive.com/blog/?s=benefits+of+cooking+part+3
http://www.cooking2thrive.com/blog/?s=benefits+of+cooking+part+2
http://www.cooking2thrive.com/blog/?s=benefits+of+cooking+part+3
Sources:
http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home
http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/DGAs2010-PolicyDocument.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-health-organization-lowers-sugar-intake-recommendations/
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have a material connection to the colorist mentioned, but no material connection to the companies, brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I did not write this post at the behest of said colorist. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
