Documentary Analysis: Fed Up

Snap! My can pops as I prepare myself for a glorious taste of bubbly sugar in a can. I had already drunk six cans of coke that day; with no clue my cholesterol was already 23 grams higher than the average 18 year old female. Sugar, as alcohol and tobacco, warrants some form of societal intervention argue Robert H. Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis, scientists in the Public Health Department at the University of California, in their article, The Toxic Truth about Sugar. These researchers are in belief that these sinful grains are the cause to the heightened obesity weight throughout the globe.

Introduction Robert H. Lustig’s article “The toxic truth about sugar” centers around the author attempting to prove the truth in the title. The negative health effects of today’s sugar consumption can no longer be ignored he argues. It's time to act against sugar like we've acted against tobacco and alcohol. From the article the problem with sugar isn’t just weight gain. Authorities consider sugar as 'empty calories' — but there is nothing empty about these calories.

Although sugar is seen as the public’s number one enemy. Nancy Appleton a writer who wrote Suicide By Sugar, blames the government and certain food industries for creating advertisements promoting bad sugars. But also in charge of creating the child obesity epidemic in America, endangering young children’s health in the U.S. Since some foods have artificial sugars, sugar decreases the quality of life in the U.S. Stated by the Journal of the American Heart Association Internal Medicine, “People who consumed more than a quarter of their daily calories as sugar… twice as likely to die” (Health, Richards). This statistic by a credible source pulls the audience in because they are part of that population who intake sugar and can die faster by consuming it.

Sugar, the pure substance that leaves most people damaged and clueless. Many are suffering due to sugar based diseases and illnesses. Of all people, teens don’t understand what sugar does to the body. Most definitely, people need to know what sugar does to us. Sugar is quite harmful to the human body.

When the 1970s introduced High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), a cheap sweetener alternative to sucrose in a fructose-glucose liquid form (fifty five percent fructose, forty two percent glucose, and three percent saccharides), it brought extensive numbers of health problems with it (Bray, 2004 & Johnson, 2010 ). Prior to the 70’s, on average, sugar contributed to four percent of daily caloric intake, however over the past four and a half decades, this statistic has increased to whopping sixteen percent, leading some scientist to consider it an “addiction” as they observe the sugar substitute wreak havoc on humans’ bodies worldwide (Butler, 2011). Along with hooking those who indulge sweets to it, High Fructose Corn Syrup also leads to obesity:

Did you know that a sugar is a host to many kinds of terrifying diseases? Having a high sugar diet may lead to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, and stroke. People are eating more sugar than ever because about every food company is adding sugars to their products. About eighty-five percent of all grocery store item have added sugar in them! Sugar is terrible for people 's health and nutrition.

Corn is in a lot of food. For example McDonalds has put corn syrup in all their products. A lot of corn syrup is not healthy and if you ingest too much corn/corn syrup it can slowly cause you to be obese. An abundance of confusion has complicated the use of high fructose corn syrup since it was introduced as an industrial sweetener – a replacement for sugar, but when the product manufacturers replace the sugar with corn syrup it’s adding more sugar into that product because there is lots of sugar in corn syrup. This caused a huge increase in the obese population.

HFCS: how it relates to us According to an article “The truth about Sugar” by Rachael Gorman, obesity rates in America have doubled over the last 20 years. Many studies have linked drinking sugary beverages with this increased obesity. An article posted by Harvard titled “Sugary Drinks and Obesity Fact Sheet” states that one out of three children in the United States are obese. Sugary drinks play a role in this rising epidemic.

Source 1 Source: book Title: Victory over ADHD Author: Merlin, D. Publisher: Healthy Living Publications Place of publication: Summertown, Tenn Year Published: 2009 Citation: Merlin D Accessed: 20th February 2015

Hamilton’s relevance is rooted in its ability to educate. Lin Manuel Miranda did not create a musical “inspired by” the life of one of America’s founding fathers, but rather created a musical that takes the facts of the life of one of the founding fathers and presents it in a new medium. By following the actual events of Alexander Hamilton’s adult life, Hamilton gives the audience the opportunity to experience a defining point in our country’s history in a way that crosses generational and educational barriers. Up until this point, educating yourself on the lives of the founding fathers would require reading historical accounts of their lives, like Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, or watching a documentary.

Added Sugar Article Reflection In the article from USA Today “Eating too much added sugar may be killing you,” Nanci Hellmich reports that people who consume too much added sugar are at higher risk of death from heart disease than normal people. Hellmich says that too much added sugar affects your body in negative ways and leads to heart disease and death. She supports her claim by stating how many calories from added sugar the American Heart Association recommends getting from added sugars each day, then reveals how many calories from added sugar one regular soda contains, then shows many different statistics about people consuming lots of added sugar having higher-than-normal death rates from heart disease.