Katie Couric strode impressively onto the documentary scene this week with Fed Up, a film premiering last Sunday at the Sundance film festival. Fed Up explores the underlying and often invisible forces driving the childhood obesity crisis, and brings the idea of food as a vital political issue to an ever-growing mainstream audience.
In her first departure into documentary journalism, Katie Couric co-produced Fed Up along with Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David; Couric also narrates the film. Director Stephanie Soechtig (Tapped) works with historical footage and news stories to argue that food companies, with government assistance, have created and then fanned the fames of the ongoing childhood obesity crisis.
The documentary ‘lays bare a decades-long misinformation campaign orchestrated by Big Food and aided and abetted by the U.S. Government.’ Fed Up argues that like the tobacco industry of yesteryear, the food industry uses systematic misinformation campaigns to sell products with known health risks. The result? A generation of kids expected to have shorter lifespans than their parents.
To sign up for updates on Fed Up screenings, go here.
For further coverage of this brand-spanking-new documentary on the food scene, read more here:
- Sundance: A Food Documentary That Hopes to Start a Movement
- Katie Couric makes documentary debut as producer, narrator of ‘Fed Up,’ premiering at Sundance
- Food industry gets defensive about Sundance documentary ‘Fed Up’
Couric reportedly hopes the documentary will serve as a call to action, regarding food industry accountability. The TV-news-anchor-turned-food documentarian told one AP reporter, ‘We really hope this is going to be a wakeup call.’
So say we all!
Image credit: hamburger photo via Shutterstock.
