Zucchero! That Sugar Film

That Sugar Film is one man's journey into the effect of eating the sugar that is hidden in food marketed as healthy. There is increasingly awareness that we live in the age of sugar with the population of our planet suddenly consuming massively more sugar. There are links between this new diet and obesity and mental illness. Warning bells were sounded in 2009 by childhood obesity expert Prof Robert H. Lustig at the University of California, whose youtube lecture went viral.

Damon Gameau's playful exploration of this crucially important subject is a big wake-up. He packages it in a palatable, family-friendly form, the perfect counter-punch to the food industry's current marketing of sugar. Gameau follows in the footsteps of Morgan Spurlock's gonzo doco, Supersize Me, where Spurlock offered himself as a guinea pig to look at a diet of Maccas. Here, Gameau puts his body on the line to look behind the health claims of fruit juice, flavoured yoghurt, muesli bars, breakfast cereal and more; a diet only of food marketed as healthy and natural but brimming with heaped spoonfuls of unwanted sugar.

Hugh Jackman's sand paintings of the history of sugar is the first of many bite-sized pleasures that make up this rollicking journey of discovery that is guaranteed to disturb your eating habits. With food corporations more in denial than the tobacco industry, tell-tale signs are products marked 'lo-fat' or '100% natural'.

What Gameau reveals about the fructose-laden fare cynically marketed to us at the cost of our health is nothing less than shocking. The film also stirs the pot about obesity, behavioural problems in children, and even rocks the foundations of consumerism. He is the canary in the coalmine and we must give thanks for the warning.

With great songs and great graphics this film is truly sickening, albeit with an upbeat ending. Suitable for all the family, That Sugar Film is compulsory viewing for anyone who has children or anything else to live for. This is THE one film to see … before you die!

Fun film that truly opens our eyes to how the presence of sugar in our modern diet affects our health, both physically and emotionally. Sugar is in all processed foods even fruit juices. So we need to know how it affects us. Director Damon Gateau puts his health on the line to test what happens to our bodies and mood when we consume 40 teaspoons of sugar a day, which is the average amount in our modern diet. We become involved with his personal experiment and it's all presented breezily and with humour. The finale is an incredibly clever jingle/song that sums up the doco brilliantly. All performed by Gateau. The framing of the film with the birth of his child and how he develops his own "pregnant" stomach is hilarious! This movie could change your life!

In this documentary, film-maker Damon Gameau becomes his own guinea pig and spends 60 days eating healthy foods with added sugar. Before this process, he had eradicated sugar from his diet so the contrast is even more pronounced. Over the course of the 60 days he puts on considerable weight, experiences mood swings and notices a drop in overall motivation.

What I found so alarming about this film was that it didn't play things easy and simply expose the dangers of excessive sugar intake. Gameau doesn't consume any junk food whatsoever, such as fizzy juice, sweets or ice cream, he instead purely sticks to food marketed as healthy. It's this more than anything that sets off alarm bells because this route seems to most people a route to weight loss and improved physical well-being, yet as the film demonstrates it actually leads to obesity and mental damage. Time and again we are shown the volumes of sugar that is hidden in so-called 'healthy' foods and it makes you pause for thought. What comes out loud and clear is that sugar is clearly a socially acceptable form of addiction and the sugar industry have been instrumental in minimising public information on the dangers their product presents. It's very interesting to note that over the course of his 60 day experiment Gameau eats no more calories than he did previously, yet he puts on almost a stone in weight. One of the key lessons, therefore, is that there are calories and there are calories, i.e. sugar calories affect the body decidedly differently to the way protein and carb ones do.

The approach taken by the film is very much of the fun and informative variety. Sometimes the humour doesn't work so well but in the main this approach is good in that it is very accessible. After all, this is a film that you would want children to watch and learn from. There are a couple of star cameos with Hugh Jackman giving us a brief history lesson about man's relationship with sugar and Stephen Fry pops up to explain some of the science behind it. On the whole, I found this to be an excellent wake-up call about a subject I had hitherto given minimal thought to. There is a lot of very valuable information in this film that could be genuinely life changing if applied to your day to day life, and I reckon that is as good a recommendation as anyone could need.

Greetings again from the darkness. Ever since Morgan Spurlock provided us with a gut check on the evils of McDonalds with his 2004 documentary Super Size Me, movie goers have shown a real appetite for information on food and nutrition. We have since had informative and entertaining documentaries on wheat, corn, fat, organics and gardening. This latest sweet film comes from Australian director Damon Gameau. He takes the Spurlock approach and personally becomes a lab rat to expose the effects of too much sugar. His mission is 60 days of eating "typical" sugar intake through what would ordinarily be considered "healthy" foods. In other words: no ice cream, candy or soda.

Mr. Gameau introduces himself as a healthy guy who exercises regularly and eats a diet of mostly fruits and vegetables. His girlfriend is 6 months pregnant as he begins this 60 day experiment into the world of sugar. There is a quick history lesson on how sugar became a food staple, and fellow Australian Hugh Jackman explains the pivotal event that occurred in 1955 – a Dwight Eisenhauer heart attack. This spurred debate between US doctors who blamed it on high fat, while the British doctors attributed it to an excess of sugar. The low-fat revolution began, and was actually responsible for the increased amount of sugar in our processed foods. We learn that a full 80% of the standard products on grocery store shelves contain added sugar.

A panel of medical experts provides the necessary tests upfront that set the baseline for blood work, enzyme levels, liver function, weight, etc. The comparison 60 days later is frightening, but it's Gameau's daily journey that provides the real insight and biggest eye-openers. He doesn't spend much time focusing on any particular brands, though Pepsi (Mountain Dew), Coca-Cola and Jamba Juice each takes some serious jabs. Instead we witness his mood swings and lack of motivation for exercise.

British actor Stephen Fry explains the Glucose/Fructose make-up of Sucrose and we are given an overview of how our bodies process this – including a briefing on the role of insulin. As the days go on, we witness Gameau's weight gain and he explains his lethargy and most surprisingly, his mental inconsistencies. He has bouts of cloudiness in a mind that was once clear. It's this and the dramatic change in his liver that delivers the real scare.

It seems clear that all calories are not created equally (a calorie from an apple is not processed the same as a calorie from a Snickers), and that food companies have put much effort into hiding, or at least disguising, the amount of sugars added to the massive amount of processed food consumed each year by the average person. Perhaps Diabetes and Obesity and tooth decay are not thought to be immediate enough threats to cause a shift away from the convenience of processed food. Mr. Gameau shows just how dramatic and severe the changes can be in only 60 days. So imagine 5 years. 25 years. Just how much warning do we need?

Taking a page out of the Morgan Spurlock Super Size Me documentary book, recognisable Australian actor Damon Gameau has here delivered a witty and informative documentary that might take a few to many turns into situations and scenarios that don't work out fully, but still comes out on top thanks to a unique and thoughtful way of displaying the effects that sugar has had on mankind.

Utilising great use of CGI and talking heads, support of some name actors like Hugh Jackman and Stephen Fry and with a relatable and affable charisma, Gameau undoubtedly thought long and hard about how he would make the documentation of his 60 day sugar filled diet into something interesting and fun, all the while being quite shocking in many aspects and he succeeds in turning a dry subject matter into an easily watchable and digestible whole.

I like many others could count myself as someone that thinks little about the effects sugar has on my life or my future life as it seems like a harmless and enjoyable addition to our diet. What Gameau does so well is showcases how even so called healthy snacks/drinks like Smoothies or breakfast meals are actually just as bad for you as most so called "bad" food and drinks. It's also shocking to see statements and information backed up by the physical transformation of Gameau over the period of the film and even the biggest doubters of the films message would struggle to deny the obvious change in the body of someone consuming the average amount of sugar per day that you and I could well be doing also.

While it's not a ground breaking piece by any means, That Sugar Film is still a very enjoyable and thought provoking piece of documentary filmmaking that would be a valuable addition to children's education on the sugar intake effects and also a must see films for all those that might just love there Mountain Dew a little too much.

3 ½ tooth extractions out of 5