That Sugar Film

THAT SUGAR FILM is one man’s journey to discover the bitter truth about sugar. Damon Gameau embarks on a unique experiment to document the effects of a high sugar diet on a healthy body, consuming only foods that are commonly perceived as ‘healthy’. Through this entertaining and informative journey, Damon highlights some of the issues that plague the sugar industry, and where sugar lurks on supermarket shelves. THAT SUGAR FILM will forever change the way you think about ‘healthy’ food.

The first time I went to see this movie the tickets were totally sold out, which in itself made me happy to see such a lot of people so interested!

Of course, I really enjoyed the movie and I was pleased to still find a few things horrifying, a couple of my highlights were:

– An interview with an American teenage boy who had completely rotten teeth due to a Mountain Dew addiction. Apparently this phenomenom is so bad in the region, it has been dubbed “Mountain Dew Mouth”. Dentists have found the effects of the soda are strikingly similar to the effects of methamphetamine or crack on the teeth!! This poor boy was in so much pain and faced the removal of all his teeth from the voluntary dental van that comes to town when it can. Was he still drinking Mountain Dew? Yes, yes he was — just goes to show the addictiveness of sugary sodas laced with caffeine. Just. Awful.

– An Australian family of four sit down to tuck into six 1.5kg bags of sugar with spoons to illustrate their sugar intake for one week through “healthy” foods. One week!!

I’m eating the same amount of calories as I did before, and I’m not feeling full.

– The amount of weight Damon put on despite keeping his calorie intake count and his exercise THE SAME.

It was also particularly interesting watching the change in personality as Damon got further into his experiment, his fuse was a lot shorter, his mind was fuzzy and fatigue set in quite badly. I know the mental changes are definitely the thing I enjoy most about clean eating.

Anyway, I highly recommend the film and I can’t WAIT to watch it again with my kids (not sure how I’m going to trick them into that), and hopefully they will stop whinging about how their lives would be so much better if only they were allowed cereal.