Review: Fed Up

City Paper grade: B-

The familiar voice of Katie Couric doesn’t help the fact that Fed Up has the look and feel of a TV newsmagazine report. It does, however, beg the question of why such appropriately pointed fingers don’t make their way into the evening news more often. As she underlines in the opening moments of Stephanie Soechtig’s effective, rudimentary issue doc, Couric has been reporting on America’s obesity epidemic for most of her broadcasting career. So why hasn’t anything been done to fix the problem? A parade of talking-head experts gather to blame a complacent, often compliant, government swayed by lobbyists from corporate food interests, fast food, sugary cereals — sugary everything, in fact. Sugar takes the blame for making us fat, even those of us who don’t know it; yes, there is apparently such a thing as “Thin Outside, Fat Inside,” a condition where the seemingly slim still have layers of deadly fat engulfing their organs. So take that, skinny. Both political parties come under fire, from anti-regulation Republicans to Michelle Obama’s focus on exercise over healthy eating thanks to support (read: pressure) from food companies. Soechtig makes the case that sugar is the nicotine of today, that the cigarette industry’s warning labels and shame-faced execs lie in the future for present-day sweets-peddlers. The ammunition is already in hand — the film includes jaw-dropping footage of a McDonald’s exec testifying before Congress that the company doesn’t market to children, that Ronald McDonald simply “informs and inspires through magic and fun.”