First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine April 2013)
There is a new documentary called FED UP,
that takes a look at the global problem of obesity and obesity-related diseases
(In other words “Why are humans fat?”). Some years back the first consumer
oriented documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, made waves and created awareness
of the issue surrounding climate change. In, FED UP, the filmmakers continue
with this tradition with a hard-hitting challenge over the misconceptions (and
food industry-sponsored misinformation) about diet and exercise, good and bad
calories, fat genes and lifestyle.
One of the biggest misconceptions about
sugar is addressed in the film. According to the film’s scientific consultant
Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrinologist, author and president of the Institute
for Responsible Nutrition, “when it comes to obesity, fat may not be our friend
but it’s not the enemy that sugar is.” This view is gathering support from
doctors all across the world.
To further understand this issue, we need
to look at statistics in the United State of America (USA) as there is very
little first-hand historical information available in Namibia. In the USA, 17%
of children and young people aged between two and nineteen are considered
obese. Another study predicts that today’s American children will lead shorter
lives than their parents. This must be very scary, and should be considered in
the Namibian context because we are starting to follow the same eating habits
of these developed nations.
However, we must be careful in blaming our
problems on obesity nor fat. “The food industry wants you to focus on three
falsehoods that keep it from facing issues of culpability. One, it’s about
obesity. Two, a calorie is a calorie. Three, it’s about personal
responsibility,” according to Lustig.
“If obesity was the issue, metabolic
illnesses that typically show up in the obese would not be showing up at rates
found in the normal-weight population. More than half the populations of the US
and UK are experiencing effects normally associated with obesity. If more than
half the population has problems, it can’t be a behaviour issue. It must be an
exposure problem. And that exposure is to sugar.”
The film further goes on and claims that
fast-food chains (Wipmy, Nando’s, to name a few Namibian brands) and the makers
of processed foods such as dairy and meat, have added more sugar to “low fat”
foods to make them more appetizing and tasty. Thus the producers are making
“healthy foods” appear less dangerous and we tend to eat more of them because
of their perceived “healthiness”.
In many societies, nutrition problems are
most often associated with low-income groups, but this “sugary problem” is
affecting all levels of society. In the film, they suggest that big business is
poisoning us with food marketed under the disguise of health benefits.
One of these diseases, early-onset diabetes
which is associated with exposure to cane sugar and corn syrup, was virtually
unknown a few years ago. At the present rate approximately one in three
Americans will have diabetes by 2050. “Obesity costs very little and is not
dangerous in and of itself,” says Lustig, who works with the UK’s Action on
Sugar campaign. “But diabetes costs a whole lot in terms of social evolution,
decreased productivity, medical and pharmaceutical costs, and death.”
The film-makers say it is not in the
interest of food, beverage or pharmaceutical companies to reduce sugar content.
“It’s too profitable,” says Lustig. The pharmaceutical industry talks of
diabetes treatment, not prevention. “The food industry makes a disease and the
pharmaceutical industry treats it. They make out like bandits while the rest of
us are being taken to the cleaners.”
One of the important points that Lustig
makes is that: “Food producers are going to have to be forced. There’s only one
group that can force them, and that’s the government. There’s one group that
can force the government, and that’s the people.”
Truly inspirational words for the consumer
groups and Consumer News Namibia Magazine.
