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A sugary slide to bad health

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That Sugar Film (Nu Metro)

Director: Damon Gameau

Starring: Damon Gameau, Stephen Fry

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Australian film maker Damon Gameau’s method isn’t novel. Morgan Spurlock did the same thing with fast food in Super Size Me in 2004. But Gameau’s execution is engaging, funny, horrifying and has the “no way” shock factor.

That Sugar Film should be seen by every parent in the world, every doctor who bizarrely gives a child a lollipop for coming to see him, and every great auntie and grandpa who says: “Ag shame, give him a sweet, what’s the harm?” The harm? Huge, as we all know, but refuse to acknowledge.

Gameau, who wrote, starred in and directed this film, gets a team of doctors and nutritionists to sign up to monitor his body’s response when he decides to start consuming 40 teaspoons of sugar a day for two months.

The trick is that the sugar is all hidden sugar. The sugar in your breakfast cereal, the sugar in ready-made sauce for your chicken, and so on.

By the end of breakfast on day one, he’s already eaten 11 teaspoons of sugar – and that’s just his muesli, yogurt and fruit juice. Not once does he eat a chocolate bar or knock back a fizzy drink.

A report compiled by Credit Suisse Research Institute a couple of years back titled Sugar: Consumption at a Crossroads suggested that an average person consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar a day. In the US, it is 40 and the UK recommended that Britons should get down to five a day if they wanted to keep their teeth.

Shockingly, if all the items on the supermarket shelf with sugar in them were removed, there’d be only a fifth of items left.

For illustration, Gameau eats just the equivalent granulated sugar in each item instead of the item – scary, graphically scary. He also offers the statistic that a family of four in Australia eats an average 61kg of sugar a week in their food. What?

Well before Gameau gets to the 60-day mark, his liver has turned to fat – in a short 18 days.

His waistline grows, adding on centimetres of that dangerous belly fat our doctors warn us about and he’s feeling terrible – listless and grumpy.

Rich in facts and interesting case studies, great music (Depeche Mode’s I Just Can’t Get Enough is the theme tune), presentations from Stephen Fry and Hugh Jackman, and fun techniques to keep it from being a talking heads documentary, you’ve probably heard most of That Sugar Film’s gospel before. If you haven’t stopped eating sugar yet, this film might just be the motivation you are looking for.

It will definitely stop you from dishing out treats to the children because it’s sugar that’s making our children chubby. The proof is in the pudding.

*PERSONAL NOTE

As a born-again nonsmoker, I can tell you that giving up sugar is just like giving up smoking. You have to want to do it deep down in your soul and you have to stick to it. Ex-smokers wouldn’t dream of having one, ever. Unfortunately, the same is true of sugar – like cigarettes, it is a “more is more” drug for most of us. So none is better.

I gave up sugar about 18 months ago. I read a book by an Australian, Sarah Wilson, and for some reason I can no longer remember that I once thought: “I wonder if I can?” I could, I did and I (mostly) still do, though every now and then I’ll eat a slice of cake (and regret it later).

I learnt to read labels – anything with more than 5g per serving of sugar doesn’t go in the supermarket trolley any more – so no sauces, fruit juices, cooldrinks, chocolates, biscuits, breakfast cereals, baked beans or ready-made marinade.

Also, maltodextrin, dextrose, sucrose, fructose and any other variation on these is sugar by another name. So is honey, agave and sweeteners.

The best trick? Shop at the veggie and meat sections, and ignore the middle of the supermarket

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