"Hungry for Change": more advice to eat natural foods; also, a shift in movie business models

“Hungry for Change” (2012), by James Colquhoun, Laurentine Ten Bosch and Carlo Ledesma, is another documentary preaching the virtues of eating natural plant foods. And it does do a little more finger-pointing than some other films at this kind, at food companies for misleading the public on the health consequences of eating processed foods.  But mostly the film is about eating habits and their relation to self-concept and self-love.

   

We are both overfed and undernourished, all the speakers (including Kris Carr, David Wolfe, Joe Cross, Mike Adams, and John Gabriel.  We evolved in a world where famine was expected, so our bodies are hard-wired to believe, when consuming fats and sugars, that we need them for the future.  But the famine never comes.

  

The film also takes the position that concentrated sugars (or fructose, as in corn products) are like drugs. They give the analogy of the coca leaf, which is used in South America naturally, but which produces a dangerous substance when concentrated.

  

The film says that obesity is a solution for social exclusion, with reasoning that is a little harder to follow. 

  

I remember, as a young adult, the common belief that men can expect to gain weight and develop guts after getting married, because they have someone to cook for them.  This was the 1970’s and would sound sexist now.  There seemed to be so much moral emphasis on keeping partners in heterosexual marriage interested in one another, yet the changes with premature aging (starting with weight gain) would logically make someone less attractive.  Yet, it is the refusal to "feel" for people when they "deteriorate" that becomes the moral issue.  

    

Indeed, if we ate only healthful unprocessed plant foods, would we age much less rapidly?  The film does talk about the relationship between diet and not only weight but skin tone and hair.  Could a man look almost as young at 45 as at 25?  In the modern world, men often not only gain weight, but go bald not only in the pate (because of heredity, supposedly) but also the legs.   Is all of this the result of too much concentrated sugar, leading to irregular insulin production and eventually diabetes?

   

I’m not sure I follow the arguments that even sugar substitutes contribute to Type II diabetes, but airline pilots are said not to be allowed to consume them because of neurological effects. 

   

   

The official site is here  (for Permacology Productions and Foodmatters).  The production art resembles that of “Forks over Knives” (May 13, 2011). 

  

I watched the film on Netflix streaming. But Docurama rents it on YouTube for $2.99. 

There is a news story circulating that competition from video streaming and personalized, even amateur film, will force Hollywood to change its business model, producing fewer but only super-expensive films to be shown in super auditoriums for over $100 a ticket, like a Broadway show.  The old fashioned movie industry, even independent film, is getting supplanted by Internet TV.  The link is here.   How will this affect the festivals? Just look at the mix of films I review here.   

  

Pictures: from the HRC National Dinner, October 2013.  No Cornish game hen!
 
Let me add, I never watch NBC's "Biggest Loser".