Fat Head (movie website) is a brand new documentary by Tom Naughton that started out as a hilarious and informative sendup of the Super Size Me documentary from a few years back. The resulting film is that, plus a lot more — it’s also a hilarious and informative sendup of the nutritional industry’s disastrous turn of the last several decades!
Now, I’m the sort of guy who will cheerfully devour books like Gary Taubes’ meticulous and astonishing Good Calories, Bad Calories, but that is simply too much of a long, technical grind for most folks (he was really addressing doctors and professionals in the nutrition industry). I can’t give that to my parents, for example. In contrast, this movie is a wonderful resource I can pass on to introduce others to what I’ve learned from people like Taubes.
Naughton features many of the big names we’ve come to recognize in this area, like the Drs. Eades, and Fallon and Enig from the Weston A. Price Foundation. And he consulted with people like Taubes — so even when he needs to simplify something, the result is nonetheless strong. Naughton cleverly, effectively, and humorously addresses topics such as:
- The many distortions and errors of Supersize Me.
- The “lipid hypothesis”, where it came from, why it’s complete crap, and what damage it’s done.
- Metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and the mechanisms of energy storage and use in our bodies — what the science actually says about how people get fat.
- Inflammation and heart disease, and how they really relate to cholesterol.
- How activists and special interests and their coercive efforts via government intervention are responsible for so much dietary mischief that’s hurting us.
And the look on his doctor’s face after seeing the results of a month of thoroughly flouting the standard advice of the nutrition industry was priceless!
While there is of course much more to say than can be packed into a film like this, Fat Head just became the first resource I’ll share with family and friends on this front — highly recommended!
