That Sugar Film

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Damon Gameau, Documentary Film, Film review, Food Industry, Health and wellbeing, Sugar, That Sugar Film

Sweet and deadly

Now this is a film which is right up my street, as I am enormously interested in the politics of the food industry and how it deliberately dupes us and deceives us – and even more interested in matters related to health and wellbeing.

Damon Gameau, an Australian actor and film-maker did not really tell me anything I didn’t already know (because I read a lot of books about the subject) but, my did he tell it entertainingly!

It is because this film is not just talking heads stuff by the prophets of doom that I rate it so highly. Neither does it fall into the other side trap of being all pizazz and flashy dumbed down soundbites without any reference and substance.

Instead, there is a very assured tightrope walked between giving lots of facts, having various experts talk through the science of how the body metabolises sugar, in its different forms, all accompanied by `turns’ by various luminaries, including Stephen Fry, giving us some of the scientific information in a more engaging and witty way.

There is even, I kid you not, a star turn rock star number with Gameau as a kind of Presley/Alvin Stardust/Rocky Horror combo sugar devil in an outrageous pink jumpsuit leering seductively at a group of babes dunking themselves in chocolate mousse! This by the way is Gameau at the end of his 60 day 40 teaspoons of the stuff ‘normal Australian sugar consumption’.

Behind all the fun `sweeteners’ though, is a shocking story (one we DO know, though, it seems, ignore) Gameau engages in a particularly shocking experiment to show the devastating effects of sugar.

Gameau’s diet had been completely sugar free for three years, and he had not drunk alcohol for about ten years. He ate a particularly healthy, wholefood diet. At the start of the film he is clearly someone glowing with vitality and energy, and when tested by nutritionists and medics, was pronounced extremely healthy, with no markers for fatty liver, heart problems, or raised blood lipid levels and the like.

The `experiment’ was that for 60 days he would keep to the same calorific intake, – normally most of his calories came from healthy fats, protein and complex carbohydrates – but would consume the amount of sugar and hidden sugar (processed foods) eaten and drunk by the average Australian – 40 teaspoons a day. But he would not do this by consuming junk food, instead, it would be by the consumption of food wrongly supposed to be `healthy’ – for example, fruit juice, smoothies, `high energy’ muesli bars and the like.

Part of the lie we have been fed is that ‘calorie control’ is where it’s at – but calories from different food sources do not metabolise the same way – the calories in sugar behave differently in the body than the calories in fat and protein

By 18 days in, this vibrant trim man was looking more than a little pasty and jaded, puffy around the eyes, which had lost their sparkle. His skin and hair looked dull, he was visibly developing a paunch. He was also suffering mood swings. Part of the brief for the experiment was that he would keep up his normal good exercise patterns. The `normal sugar consumption of the average Australian’ diet was eating into his energy, creating those sugar rush manic surges followed quickly by listless slumps and the inevitable (cocaine like) cravings for more of that white death stuff. He was finding it hard to exercise, as he lacked the energy.

Even more alarmingly his liver was showing signs of damage after 18 days – liver cells dying, releasing their contents, becoming cirrhotic, the signs of fatty liver disease. Fortunately, at the end of the 60 days, and the resumption of his old, healthy diet, all the bad effects had gone after a couple of months, though Gameau did say that the first week of cutting out the addictive sugar (it affects brain chemistry and hits the `reward’ centre of the brain and its neurochemistry exactly like cocaine) was pretty tough, and he certainly had `cold turkey’ symptoms

If Gameau and the visible evidence of the shocking changes sugar produced on him are not enough to make spoon on its way to sugar dish pause, there is the heartbreaking 26 tooth extraction on a Kentucky boy, just shy of his 18th birthday, caused primarily by a variant of Pepsi called Mountain Dew, which he had imbibed since he was 3.

Also explored tellingly in this film are the obvious parallels between big tobacco and the sugar industry. Just as the tobacco companies leaned muscle and spurious science funding scientists to do research to deliver skewed results to disprove links between smoking and disease, so the sugar industry does exactly the same.

This is a wonderful, hard hitting film, delivering its punches of fact wrapped nicely in a ….lethal candy coating. `Sweet,’ being so much linked to pleasure and reward, is hard wired in our brains BECAUSE in nature readily available fructose , is RARE, so we are programmed to want it, and respond to it, as a useful source of energy which can be stored as a long term energy resource, as fat. The problem for us of course being that now, fructose is readily available and what was an evolutionary advantage is now the sweet kiss of death.

I have one disappointment – little mention is made about artificial sweeteners, which carry as many, and in some cases, MORE problems associated with their use. Sweeteners, and the perfidious ubiquitousness of THEIR presence, as food manufacturers respond to and create new possibilities for our desire for that sweet taste, are every bit as dangerous. Many, for reasons of weight control, have got as far as checking the labels and avoiding sugar in their processed food and drink, but are surrendering to the hugely profitable diet industry and ‘going diet food’. There have been plenty of studies about the artificials, but, again, these are not hugely funded because the funders are those big, powerful, vested interest concerns who of course are not going to be giving money to researchers to prove that their products are dangerous! A little mention is made of sweeteners in the Extras section of the DVD, but the lack of much information is likely to just see the sugarholics switch to sacchaholic behaviour, in the belief they might be sparing themselves from the dangers of fructose consumption. Not so

Bravo to Gameau, making such a brilliant documentary

He also authored a companion book, That Sugar Book, where a lot of the research studies are cited
That Sugar Book Amazon UK
That Sugar Book Amazon USA

I received the DVD as a review copy, from the Amazon Vine programme, UK. It will be released for sale on 27th July in the UK. A visit to Amazon USA site shows it is unavailable to view/buy. It probably just means that video rights have not yet been negotiated, but I smelt a conspiracy around the evil empire of sugar. Well, they suppressed studies showing the perfidious nature of the stuff, so surely, an indie film is small fry to them.

That Sugar Film DVD Amazon UK

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Forks Over Knives

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Colin Campbell, Documentary Film, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Forks Over Knives, Nutrition, The China Study, Veganism

Far more than a polemic for veganism on ethical grounds alone

Based in part on the results of a ground-breaking observational and epidemiological study on nutrition and degenerative disease in China, in the late 90s. by 2 leading scientists, one American and one Chinese, this film pulls no punches and does not pussy-foot around the links between obesity, diabetes, many cancers, coronary heart disease, osteoporosis and other degenerative conditions, and the typical Western industrialised McDiet. That is, a diet high in artificial processed foods, heavily laced with saturated and hydrogenated fats, corn syrup and other sweeteners, salt, meat and dairy produce from factory farmed methods, heavy on the additional growth hormones, antibiotics and fed on pesticide rich vegetation as the least offensive option. Several recent food scandals showed factory farming has also resulted in herbivores being fed ground up animal remains in order to boost weight, with predictable results.

Colin Campbell

This is a documentary and educational film which takes that study, and others, hooking up Colin Campbell, one of the aforementioned scientists, and author of the mainstream book brought out from those findings, The China Study, with work done with seriously ill patients, treated by radical changes in diet, rather than pharmaceuticals, by clinician Dr Caldwell Esselstyn

Colin Campbell, co-author of The China Study (the book which rendered more suitable for lay readers, that study, which took several years) and clinician Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn go further than linking our additive rich, tampered with, factory farmed chunks of flesh rich diet as the prime cause of the rise in degenerative disease.

Their evidence heavy material convinces that whether heavy meat and dairy consumption is processed or of more natural, traditional provenance, it is the high protein concentration itself which is the problem. There are some sobering cross-over lab studies cited around high levels of protein switching on and low levels of protein switching off tumour development. Sure, these are lab rat studies, and we do always have to question the validity of studies applied to one animal being extrapolated over to another species, but, sobering and thought provoking.

This is of course not new material – there have been many, smaller studies, reaching the same conclusion. What is interesting about The China Study – and this film based largely around those findings, is that both Campbell and Esselstyn, nutritional scientist and clinician, respectively, are not vegans on ethical grounds, or banging a drum for their dietary beliefs through vested financial interests. Rather, both of them, originally from farming (cattle rearing) stock, CHANGED their views because of the evidence they found – Campbell from a life-time in nutritional research, initially espousing the we need more protein line, and Esselstyn working at the start with seriously ill heart attack patients who were so far down the line there was little that could be done for them except a dreadful cocktail of surgery or drugs which were not expected to extend life beyond months. Years later, survivors both from his initial cohort, and later patients, tell their own surprised and miraculous (to them) stories of the rapid and positive changes in health caused by moving to a plant based wholefood diet.

Dr Esselstyn

As this short, direct, fierce and sensible film wears on, other reasons for vegetarianism are woven in, beyond the compelling evidence for personal health. These include some references to the ethical arguments, the arguments around the waste of resources in terms of land as the clearing of rainforests to provide arable land so that the developed world can continue to eat itself to unwellness continues apace. They lay out information about starvation in some parts of the world happening precisely because resources are going to feed the animals that will feed the haves, rather than the land being used for plant material to feed the have-nots of mankind directly. There are also the economic arguments about the unsustainable costs of healthcare in the developed world, as more and more expensive pharmaceutical drugs are seen as the cure for, or control of, degenerative and debilitating conditions which have been caused by our poisonous diet.

Not to mention tie ups between the interests of big pharma, big agri, and politics.

The film makes the telling case that logic, ethics, evidence, environmental concerns all point to a simpler answer. In the words of that other politics of food prophet, Michael Pollan

Eat Food. Eat Less of It. Eat More Plants

This is not a film presented by sweet hangovers from the love and peace brown rice, flowers in the ringlets and lentils era – this is hard edged, well argued, with plenty of evidence from all sorts of surprising people, including a group of fire-fighters, medal winning runners and a rather well-muscled martial arts experts, that wholefood plants based diets are for seriously fit people. In fact, I thought this film was putting a stake through the vampire heart of the steak-and-pharma industries.

Forks Over Knives Amazon UK
Forks Over Knives Amazon USA