Fat Head

This movie is a must-watch! (Rent it on Amazon instant video for $3.99 using the link on the right.)

Comedian and former health writer Tom Naughton's made "Fat Head" as a spin-off rebuttle to "Super Size Me". Naughton eats fast food for 30 days and actually manages to lose weight and better his cholesterol numbers! How? By using a little common sense: skip the soda pop, make sensible choices (well, as sensible as can be made in the fast-food setting), keeping calorie intake around 2000 per day, and getting some light exercise.

Just to be clear, Naughton isn't advocating that fast food is healthy, he explicitly says during the movie that is not the case. What he is demonstrating is that we need to quit the blame game: health and weight problems are not the fault of fast food companies or the government. This movie is very pro-personal-responsibility, which I agree with 110%.

I also loved that he presented GOOD information on nutrition and calls-out what we've been led to falsely believe. In other words: the government's food pyramid and high-carb low-fat diet are NOT the way to go! He features experts that I've enjoyed reading the books of, such as Michael Eades MD, Mary Eades MD, Mary Enig PhD, Sally Fallon, Gary Taubes, and others. It's nice to see that better information about nutrition is becoming more mainstream, yet it's still a sad state that the recommendations pushed by the government, American Heart Association, and others that are so outmoded and have been disproved, but they continue to recommend them.

My rating: 4½ / 5 stars. Watch this movie!

For more, check out Naughton's blog at: http://www.fathead-movie.com/

Food Matters

Last night I watched the documentary "Food Matters".

The information was interesting. A lot of what they talked about nearly everyone already knows, "you are what you eat". The experts in the film claim that eating well not only is a preventative measure, but also a healing measure for existing conditions. Some of the claims I take with a grain of salt, such as using intravenous vitamin C as a cancer treatment.

They do advocate for vegetarian diets; but they don't condemn eating some meat (real meat, not hotdogs and cold cuts). It is true that most people do need to eat far more vegetables, but I also believe meat (real meat from pastured livestock or hunted game) is part of a healthy diet.

The film also touched on how ingrained drugs are into modern medicine. They were sure to state that they weren't against drugs for immediate life-saving intervention or for pain relief; but they urged the use of dietary changes and vitamins for chronic diseases. The reason being, which makes sense, is that drugs treat the symptoms and not the root cause.

As far as entertainment and attention-getting value, I think they could have presented the information in a less repetitive manner. Pretty much the entire film was going back and forth between several different people that provided commentary and experiences on the subject of diet and natural healing.

Overall, I'd rate this documentary 3½ / 5 stars. It's worth watching.

"Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food." - Hippocrates