Let me add, I never watch NBC's "Biggest Loser".
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
"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".
Let me add, I never watch NBC's "Biggest Loser".
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