Every day we are bombarded by marketing, and our diet is one of the main targets. We are flooded with messages trying to get us to consume more fast food, sugar, potato chips, soda, and anything else the industry can come up with. On Friday night at 7PM, Meaningful Movies takes a look at the food industry and its marketing practices with the film “Feeding Frenzy: The Food Industry, Marketing & the Creation of a Health Crisis”.
Here’s a synopsis from the film maker:
“Over the past three decades, obesity rates in the U.S. have more than doubled for children and tripled for adolescents — and a startling 70% of adults are now obese or overweight. The result has been a widening epidemic of obesity-related health problems, including coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes. While discussions about this spiraling health crisis have tended to focus on the need for more exercise and individual responsibility, Feeding Frenzy trains its focus squarely on the responsibility of the processed food industry and the outmoded government policies it benefits from. It lays bare how taxpayer subsidies designed to feed hungry Americans during the Great Depression have enabled the food industry to flood the market with a rising tide of cheap, addictive, high calorie food products, and offers an engrossing look at the tactics of the multibillion-dollar marketing machine charged with making sure that every one of those surplus calories is consumed.”
The film features industry analysts, health experts, and advertising scholars, including Marion Nestle, Kelly Brownell, Sut Jhally, Brian Wansink, and Michele Simon.
The film has received critical praise. Here’s a sampling:
“Joining Supersize Me and King Corn as one of the decade’s very best food documentaries, Feeding Frenzy covers important and, as of yet, unchartered territory as it turns a keen and critical eye on the marketing practices of the food industry. A must-see!”
– Justin Lewis | Head of the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University
“Powerful, important, and damning. Zeroing in on the corporate practices of the multibillion-dollar food industry, this film adds a fresh and essential perspective to current debates about corporate power, food, and health. Watch this film and show it to your students!”
– Erica Scharrer | Chair of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
“Given the sheer power of today’s consolidated food industry as a marketing behemoth, it’s a relief to have the critical eye of Media Education Foundation dissect what’s being sold to consumers as a healthy food system. In their new documentary Feeding Frenzy, Sut Jhally and a savvy set of experts and practitioners unpack the contradictory, confusing, ubiquitous, and deeply problematic discourses of agriculture, food, and health, raising critical questions about responsibility, choice, and power without succumbing to the moral panic of many other films. This will be a powerful tool for the public, the classroom, and political discourse.”
– Alice Julier, Ph.D. | Program Director & Associate Professor of Food Studies at Chatham University
“So many videos on food focus on production, but not as much on the market and consumption side. Feeding Frenzy does a fine job of explaining how our food environment is manipulated to get us to buy and eat more than is good for us.”
– Dr. Christine Barbour | Department of Political Science at Indiana University.
Please join us at Sustainable Renton HQ, 970 Harrington Ave NE, Renton, WA 98056, Friday night at 7PM for this interesting film, and great conversation afterwards! See you there!
-Preston
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