The documentary Fed Up must be one of the most important releases this year. Narrated by Katie Couric and directed by Stephanie Soechtig, the documentary uncovers the political agenda and the influential forces surrounding the food industry:

Released in theaters on May 9, the documentary Fed Up untangles the roots of obesity in America's youth. Directed by Stephanie Soechtig and narrated by Katie Couric, Fed Up does not shrink from telling viewers how the government's decades-long capitulation to Big Food and its lobbyists has fostered an epidemic of excess pounds. The national focus on diet, diet foods and exercise is not abating the obesity epidemic and actually making it worse, charges the film.

Examples of capitulation to Big Food are many in the film. In 1977, the McGovern Report warned about an impending obesity epidemic and suggested revised USDA guidelines to recommend people eat less foods high in fat and sugar. The egg, sugar and other Big Food industries, seeing a risk to profits, demanded that guidelines not say "eat less" of the offending foods but rather eat more "low-fat" foods. Ka-ching. They won over the objection of Sen. McGovern.

In 2006, the United Nation's World Health Organization (WHO) released similar food recommendations and then Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Tommy G. Thompson actually flew to Geneva, according to Fed Up, to threaten WHO that if the guidelines stood, the U.S. would withdraw its WHO financial support. Again, Big Food won.

The U.S. government plays both sides of the obesity street -- admonishing people to eat right while pushing the foods that make them fat -- because of the USDA's double mission of protecting the nation's health and protecting the health of the nation's farmers. According to Fed Up, the low fat movement allowed the USDA to maximize those split loyalties.

First, in order to maintain taste in low-fat foods (which tend to be bland once the fat is removed), sugar became the evil stand-in. Much of Fed Up examines the role of excess sugar in obesity, metabolic disorder and food addiction, especially in soft drinks. (The film's exposure of Big Food's financially-driven infiltration of public school lunchrooms with junk food is astonishing.) But the low-fat craze had another pernicious effect. All that unused fat had to go somewhere, says Fed Up, and it ended up in the dairy industry's cheese operations. Even as the USDA recommended "low-fat" diets, it worked with the industry group, Dairy Management, to "cheesify" the American diet and even worked with Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy's and Domino's!

The trailer:

As a personal side note, me and my wife try to eat healthy. For example, there´s this lovely jam from St. Dalfour that´s all natural and is lovely to put on the oatmeal in the mornings. For thoose rare occasions I use it, I consume a Stevia based ketchup. However, I´ve noticed that some food manufacturers now would like to jump on the Stevia train and make us believe on the package that this is the only sweetener used in the product. Not seldom, when you look closely at the list of ingredients, you might discover that it´s blended with other sweeteners, so be cautious.

In closing, I´d like to mention Finlands´s program The North Karelia Project, that begun in 1972. In short, they reduced the amount of salt and fat used in diet, and as a result got healthier hearts.

Via A Cup of Jo.