ENG101: First-Year Composition (Nielson/Murphy)

This is a different kind of movie about food. Unlike several other documentaries of the genre that often focus on singular aspects and issues related to food, this feature length film takes a broader look and explores the impact that our food choices have not only on our own health, but also on the health of our planet as well as on the lives of other living species on earth and shows how everything is intrinsically interconnected.

An expert in molecular gastronomy analyzes food sensation, reward, offering unique insight into what our relationship with food is based on, how memory of odors and flavors is connected to critical periods of our growth, and what triggers choice and consumption.

In response to the widely seen documentary Super Size Me, this video follows two college students as they eat only fast food for a month—losing weight and lowering their cholesterol levels in the process. The trick? Aaron and Ellen stay within portion sizes appropriate for their body types.

Sugar Coated examines the various public relations tactics that the food industry has employed over the years to beat back accelerating concerns about the toxicity of sugar. Its starting point is a secret PR campaign the industry devised in the 1970s to deflect attention away from developing health concerns about sugar. It then traces how in the years since the industry has honed its PR tactics to counter mounting scientific evidence about the dangers of sugar.

In the end, Sugar Coated leaves us with two crucial questions: Will the PR specialists of the multibillion-dollar food industry continue their amazing run of success and allow Big Sugar to keep sweetening the world's food supply? Or will today's heightened level of public awareness about the relationship between sugar consumption and skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and fatty liver disease in children prove to be too much for industry spin to handle -- ultimately forcing the same kind of reckoning we saw with Big Tobacco?