Filmmakers 'Fed Up' with sugar

Food manufacturers are responsible for fuelling a sugar dependency in America that is creating an obesity epidemic, and it's spreading around the world, the makers of the new documentary "Fed Up'' charge.

Director Stephanie Soecthig teamed with narrator and journalist Katie Couric to create the hard-hitting look at why millions of American children are growing up obese despite media attention and government guidelines. The principal culprit is sugar, they say, which is added to many products, including ketchup, pasta sauce, salad dressing, breakfast cereals, juice and energy drinks, baked goods, yogurt and even baby formula.

Laurie David, who won an Oscar for producing "An Inconvenient Truth,'' Indigo CEO Heather Reisman and Regina Scully (``Miss.Representation'') are executive producers of ``

"Katie Couric has been following the issue of diet, exercise and obesity for 30 years in different ways and notwithstanding all the news of this over so many years in fact Americans were getting fatter and she thought it would be interesting to excavate this problem and really understand what is going on,'' said Reisman ahead of a screening at Toronto's recent Hot Docs Festival.

Soecthig followed several families for more than two years and includes some heart-wrenching footage in which obese children document their uphill battle with the bulge.

``We found them in various places, in church groups, through schools, doctor's offices,'' Soecthig said. ``At one point we're following 10 different families. We give them video cameras and ask them to document their daily life. We got really lucky because we had some amazing children that really personified the underlying problems, the marketing and the policy issues.''

The filmmakers challenge people to forgo sugar for 10 days. That includes foods with added sugars and liquid sugars, such as sodas, bottled teas, fruit juices and sports drinks, as well as artificial sugars and sugar substitutes. Artificial sweeteners slow metabolism and make you crave and eat more food.

"I've already done it because I wanted to see what it was going to be like,'' David said. ``I could not believe how I felt. It curbed my appetite. I wasn't craving food all day long. And I had more energy and I felt cleaner. It was an amazing difference. And I don't eat that much sugar.''

The film opens in Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa on May 16, and in Halifax, Victoria and Winnipeg on May 23.