After watching ‘Fed Up', it is fairly understandable why the problem of obesity stands so acute nowadays. The food industry corporations do their best to increase their profits by selling more processed junk food. Their practices are definitely subject to serious consideration by both consumers and politicians. What I found weird was blaming the corporations for all the sins. They told a hundred times something like "It is not your fault that you are obese, it is the corporations." But whose responsibility is it to watch over self? Of course, of each of us. The fact that they are taking the responsibility off the shoulders of overweight people makes them helpless. If it is not their fault that they have become overweight, then they cannot do anything while the corporations are selling junk food to them. If we want to become healthier, we better encourage people in taking responsibility for their lives.
Response
This film has had an important message that could be missed, but it should not be. It speaks about obesity and how corporations increase sales of the junk food which makes our health go down and the fat in our bellies grow up. It often shows how bad the situations nowadays is and how the policy should be changed for better, but it lacks emphasis on another crucial component of this battle for health. The social and political actions should mainly aim not at showing how greedy or bad is the food corporations, but rather on what can an average citizen do about all this.
The problem of obesity is like a coin – it is twofold. Like any other issue, it has two sides. From one – the consumers who buy food, from the other – food corporations which supply it. Now the main efforts of the activists are drawn towards changing the second side – what corporations should supply. There is some success in applying this type of approach, but as we can see it is not very effective. This is because we engage in a fight in an enemy territory. You cannot make someone behave differently just because you say it is better this way – you have to make him want to behave the you want. The evidence of this can be found everywhere – starting from the controversial moves of food corporations on volunteering in fighting obesity to schools full of junk food with no alternatives. And there is a relatively little effort in turning the tides by changing the attitude of the customers towards junk food. The attempts are being made to open people's eyes on the issue of junk food, but showing problems is eventually not enough. In case of cigarettes, such approach worked because you choose to smoke or not to smoke, but in case of food you do not choose to eat or not to eat – you have to eat anyway, the question is what will you eat.
The most of the effort should be guided in providing people with answers to their issues. You fight the armed enemy, not by telling the peoples’ enemy is bad, but by arming your army. This should be done with respect to food. The main problem stands in the hardships of a healthy diet – namely its cost and complexity. The cost of processed foods is one of the main cards up the food industry's sleeve, and it would be very effective to provide cheap, healthy alternatives to junk food as shown in Fed Up (20:50). Providing people with a variety of easy and fast prepared healthy foods will also contribute strongly to this struggle. I’m not trying to say that it is ineffective to try to change policy regarding the regulations imposed upon food industry, but that we have to consider all that means and search for more effective ways in promoting a healthy diet.
References
Fed Up. Stephanie Soetchig, 2014. film.
