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Sick to death of dieting? Watch this film, free online.

Perhaps at no other time in our cultural history have we been as preoccupied with the way we look physically. It’s an interest (bordering on obsession) that not surprisingly coincides with an increasing epidemic of obesity among adults, children—even pets.

623-03765537d Masterfile

Perhaps at no other time in our cultural history have we been as preoccupied with the way we look physically. It’s an interest—bordering on obsession—that coincides with an increasing epidemic of obesity among adults, children—even pets.   Diet and exercise is the best answer we’ve been able to come up with to tackle our expanding waistlines. And yet, as most of us are painfully aware, trendy diets rarely work: their effects are temporary and after we've lost a few pounds or simply given up on the whole project we often return to the habits and patterns of eating that put us in our fat jeans in the first place. Many of us have also figured out that you can work out every day and still feel like you're stuffing 10 lbs of sugar in a 5 lb sack when you get dressed in the morning. Diet drama: It's enough to make a gal want to bury her head in a pile of cupcakes.  A new documentary is attempting to shift the focus from the endless cycle of eating to be skinny to eating for overall health, however. Called Hungry for Change, the documentary, which was made by filmmakers and nutritional consultants James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch (Food Matters), is free to watch online until March 31. 

Complete with interviews from a host of popular nutrition and health experts—it ranges from academics such as Dr. Christiane Northrup to lifestyle gurus such as Dr. Alejander Junger author of the detox diet book, CleanHungry for Change focuses not only on what we’re eating as a culture but it also explores the reasons why. 

For example, one reason we may choose to tuck into a blueberry muffin that’s roughly the size of an airport pillow and contains not one blueberry in its mix, may be due to the chemical makeup of convenience foods that are engineered to keep our minds and bodies in craving mode, suggest the experts in the film. 

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The 90-minute film, which targets the familiar ‘bad boys’ of our convenience food culture—high fructose corn syrup, MSG, aspartame, to name a few—may offer yo-yo dieters some relief from the cycle of self-hatred. It’s not our natural urge to store fats that’s the problem it suggests, it’s the way that state is exploited through the use of highly addictive chemicals in so many processed foods. 

As one expert put it: “We’re not eating food, we’re eating food-like products.” And those products, perhaps not unlike cigarettes suggests the film, are crafted to keep us wanting more. 

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To watch the film, see the link here.

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