FitSugar

Fat: What No One is Telling You

FitSugar — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:30:00 -0700

As obesity is such a widespread topic in the media these days, it can be hard to take an objective look at the issue, especially for those who are not faced with the problem, rather than looking at it as a character flaw or a complete lack of self-control.

The film Fat: What No One is Telling You takes you through several personal encounters with obesity. It also explains our psychological responses to food, and shows how external pressures (oversized restaurant portions and the unending barrage of food advertisement) make fighting fat so difficult, both on the personal and national levels. The film premieres April 11th on PBS at 9pm ET, but you can watch a preview now on PBS.org. You know I'll be watching!

Thin the Movie: The Reality of Eating Disorders

FitSugar — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:45:00 -0800

Eating disorders affect 5 million people in the U.S. More than 10% of those diagnosed with anorexia nervosa will die from the disease. Seeking to put a human face on these sobering statistics, acclaimed photographer Lauren Greenfield went inside a Florida treatment center to tell the stories of four women who are literally dying to be thin.

The devastating documentary film titled Thin, reveals her findings. It is captivating and you are drawn in by the heart-wrenching stories of these girls and their painful struggles as they each try to recover.

You can purchase Thin, a groundbreaking book about eating disorders. Greenfield's photographs are paired with extensive interviews and journal entries from twenty girls and women suffering not only from their eating disorders, but from the personal struggles that lead to the disorders in the first place.

Two Healthy Flicks Now on DVD

FitSugar — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:00:19 -0800

You can give your next at home movie night a healthy focus; two of my favorite docs of the year are now out on DVD.

Enlighten Up!: Filmmaker Kate Churchill, a yoga devotee, takes yoga cynic Nick Rosen on a wild ride through the range of yoga styles to see if the ancient art has universal power. Both filmmaker and subject are affected by the process. Available for purchase ($22) or add the title to your Netflix queue.
Food, Inc.: The underbelly of the food industry is exposed in this documentary narrated by Omnivore's Dilemma author Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser of Fast Food Nation. Arguing for sustainable food production, the film's antagonist is not the farmer or the carnivore but multinational corporation Monsanto. Purchase ($14) the 94-minute film or Netflix it.

Must See Movie: Food, Inc.

FitSugar — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:00:00 -0700

With the amount of food recalls seeming to grown annually, it is easy to feel that our food system in the US is broken, and after watching the 94 minute documentary Food, Inc., you learn that it truly is.

From the opening shots of the supermarket, we begin to learn how corn and the fast food industry have changed the way Americans both grow and eat food. While the movie repeats many of the facts from Michael Pollan's informative book, In Defense of Food, the facts are just as interesting the second time around. Food, Inc. also delves deeper into the chemical giant Monsanto and its role in destroying the family farm from the seeds on up. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation shares the narrator role with Pollan, and these two tear down the food industrial food system starting with corn and moving quickly to the meat industry. The film is peppered with interviews with farmers - chicken, corn, and soy - whose lives have been dramatically altered by multinational corporations' interest in commanding the food chain. The film is disturbing to say the least, but it ends with tales from Polyface farm, a family operation that makes food seem wholesome again. I left the theater charged up to make changes not only in my daily diet, but to petition the government to give power back to their regulatory arms, the USDA and FDA, to help keep our food supply safe. The Food, Inc. website has a petition to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. After watching this documentary, you may never look at food the same way again.

Check out the trailer after the break.

Does the US Pay More Attention to Obesity or Anorexia?

FitSugar — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:30:00 -0700

We refer to obesity as an epidemic and talk about anorexia as an eating disorder, but both illustrate our extreme relationships with food. Disordered eating is a regular topic in Lifetime movies and TV talk shows, and there are occasionally real-life documentaries of young women battling anorexia. When a fashion model suffers from an eating disorder, we hear about it in the news.

Obesity has been making news headlines for the past decade or so, with a heavy hand coming down on fast-food restaurants. Obese individuals have made their stories public with several reality TV shows, and there's a push for parents to take responsibility for teaching their kids' healthy-eating habits.

In a recent interview, Vogue Editor in Chief Anna Wintour surmised her thoughts on eating issues in the US.

I'd just been on a trip to Minnesota, where I can only kindly describe most of the people I saw as little houses. There's such an epidemic of obesity in the United States, and for some reason, everybody focuses on anorexia.

Ironically, Minnesota is one of the healthiest states in the nation. Do you agree with Anna's comment about everyone focusing on anorexia?

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Weekend Watching: Enlighten Up

FitSugar — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:00:00 -0700

Is the healing power of yoga universal? Does the daily practice of asana lead to physical and metaphysical transformations? The newly released documentary Enlighten Up seeks to answer these questions and many more in less than 90 minutes. Filmmaker Kate Churchill follows her yoga skeptic subject, former journalist Nick Rosen, as he seeks the true understanding of yoga. We watch as Rosen experiences the full spectrum of yoga. He takes class with Diamond Dallas Page, the creator of Yoga for Regular Guys, a former professional wrestler whose tag line is "Some T and A, with your namaste." Rosen has an audience with yoga elder B.K.S. Iyengar and Ashtanga guru Pattabhi Jois.

When Churchill follows her subject to India, as their expectations begin to crumble emotions begin to run high creating a new meaning for "hot yoga." Both the yogi and the asana novice will find this movie interesting and entertaining; I sure did. Enlighten Up will be playing in theaters across the country this Spring and here is a list of cities and dates.

Check out the trailer for the film when you read more.

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A Hard Day's Work Makes Your Workout Feel Harder

FitSugar — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:00:00 -0800

It's not just you. Exercising after a stressful day really does feel more difficult - with the key word being "feel." New research found that being mentally fatigued makes a cardio workout feel harder. After engaging in a difficult computer task for 90 minutes, study participants reached the point of exhaustion earlier than when they watched a dull documentary prior to exercising. Interestingly enough, the participants' actual cardio capacity was not affected. Seems like a case of mind over body, with the mind winning even though the body is still quite capable. Moral of this tale is: Don't avoid the gym after a hard day's work, your body really needs to move after experiencing all that stress. But do know that you might have to psych yourself up more than usual. Try taking a group fitness class and be buoyed by the motivation of the group.

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Movie Alert: In the Family

FitSugar — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:00:00 -0700

What would you do if you learned that you have the genetic marker, known as BRCA gene mutation, for breast cancer and you had a 95 percent of developing the disease? Filmmaker Joanna Rudnick decided to make a documentary film about the dilemma facing her, like having prophylactic mastectomies, and many other women who have been confronted with the information that they have the genetic disposition to develop the disease. Here's the trailer for the film that premieres tonight on PBS.

You can check your local listing at the POV website. My PBS station is playing it tonight, Oct. 1, and tomorrow as well.

The Skinny On: High Fructose Corn Syrup

FitSugar — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:30:00 -0700

When I started reading food labels, way back when, I must admit that I thought high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was made out of fruit, because of the "fructose," as well as corn. Now that I have been schooled over the years, I know that this sweetener is made from cornstarch that goes through a serious amount of processing.

The Corn Refiners Association has started the sweet surprise ad campaign to try to reclaim consumers' hearts and dollars. Corn and all its permutations have been getting a bad rap of late, from sources like the documentary King Corn and Michael Pollan's treatise on eating In Defense of Food. The parallel growth of HFCS consumption and the obesity epidemic is the stuff from which seemingly correct, but nevertheless faulty armchair science is formed. Recent studies have found that HFCS as an ingredient isn't solely to blame for the obesity epidemic, since the human body processes HFCS and sugar in the same way and that they have the same caloric load.

To see how high fructose corn syrup differs from sugar, just read more.

The truth is though that HFCS is not chemically the same as sugar. Sugar is sucrose and HFCS is made from glucose and fructose, but not a single molecule of sucrose. Fructose turns into fat in the liver, which is not healthy because it is not broken down earlier in the digestion process. Fructose has a negative impact on insulin and the hunger hormone leptin creating increased appetite. Even though HFCS is made from cornstarch degraded into glucose by using chemicals or enzymes degraded, then altered again with enzymes to convert fractions of glucose into fructose, it can still be labeled natural according to the FDA. This is as long as no synthetic fixing agents touch the sweet syrup in the manufacturing process.

The truth is that even after all that ecologically devastating processing, HFCS is cheaper to produce than sugar. In fact, the average American consumes 78 pounds of it a year and 500 of it calories a day. Cheap processed ingredients make inexpensive processed foods, and because they are cheap, widely available, with long shelf lives, more and more processed food is eaten. Leading to overeating foods that don't offer much nutritionally.

Once again, moderation is the key when it comes to any sweetener, processed or natural. Just like they say in those sweet surprise ads. If you need some corn in your life, why not just eat straight off the cob?

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Still Standing Up to Cancer

FitSugar — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:30:00 -0700

Just over a week ago, all three major networks simultaneously broadcast Stand Up to Cancer. The organization has raised $100 million since its inception and the funds will go directly to funding research programs to fight this deadly disease. Documentary film maker Errol Morris made this three minute video that captures surprising and surprisingly moving moments about how cancer has affected people's lives.

Maybe Lance Armstrong's return to bike racing will help raise even more funds for cancer research, but you can still donate to the cause at the Stand Up to Cancer website. Having friends and family that have succumbed to this disease, I can't watch this clip without crying. How about you? If you feel up to it, please share how cancer has affected your life.