By TIERNAN O’NEILL – Web Writer
Obesity and poor nutrition are rampant in today’s First World society. The Australian documentary, Hungry for Change, examines this epidemic.
Natalie (Carla Nirella) looks at the nutritional information of a weight-loss powder container.
Created by directors James Colquhoun and Laurentine Ten Bosch, the film, that was released straight to DVD just over a year ago, revolves loosely around Natalie (Carla Nirella), an unhealthy, middle-aged woman who is insecure about her body to lose weight. Her main goal is to lose weight and look better so that she can impress Jason (James Colquhoun), her workplace crush.
Natalie’s recovery journey serves as a vehicle by which various nutrition, health and addiction experts inform viewers of the dangers of dieting and the role that major food companies play in this cycle.
The purpose of Hungry for Change is not so much to inform, in fact, as it is to scare the viewers into purchasing the experts’ products, or following their ideas, as ways to cure themselves of obesity.
The filmmakers use different propaganda techniques to try to force the viewer into believing their lofty ideas about nutrition. Testimonials from several “formerly fat” people all advocate the benefits of going on a juice cleanse or detoxification of your body. Meanwhile, experts on film try to convince the viewer to move away from dieting and toward juicing instead, without mentioning that juicing is technically still a diet.
This whole documentary felt like an infomercial for the Juice-O-Matic 300. It’s seems appropriate, considering that half of the experts depicted have their own product or section at stores like Bed Bath & Beyond.
Even though the film is pushing a product, it does address important health issues in modern-day society. One example, is the way that the food industry, abuses their customers’ trust. According to Raymond Francis, the President of Beyond Health International said, “MSG and free glutamates are used to enhance flavor in about 80% of all processed foods.”
One of the experts in the film, nutrition journalist and author Mike Adams contends that the food industry lures customers in for profit.
“The food companies engineer addictions, I believe, into many of their foods,” Adams said. “If you addict a customer, you have a customer, for life.”
Adams also argues in Hungry for Change that such highly altered ingredients such as, high-fructose corn syrup, are no better for humans than are many prohibited drugs.
“Cocaine probably isn’t good for your health. But it coca leaf tea is perfectly safe for your health,” Adams said. “But you wouldn’t want to snort the highly refined cocaine from the coca tea. Eating high-fructose corn syrup is a lot like snorting cocaine. It’s the highly refined, concentrated, isolated, chemically manipulated version of something that is found in corn.”
Colquhoun and Bosch’s Hungry for Change is a mixed bag. At times it’s hypocritical, especially when it claims that dieting isn’t very effective at all even as it pushes for juicing as a solution to obesity, and when most of the experts give their testimonies, they are pushing for their own product.
Nonetheless, the film raises important issues. It tries to alert viewers to the traps of eating unhealthy. Rather than urging viewers to ingest a cocktail of various pills and medicine as a way to stop being overweight, it proposes the refreshing solution of eating healthy and avoiding processed foods. Hungry for Change deserves credit for tackling the obesity epidemic, and for doing so, for the most part, with grace.
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