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One of the most popular family films in America right now, is a documentary about sugar. Made by actor Damon Gameau, That Sugar Film tells the story of a two-month–long experiment: What happens when a person eats 40 teaspoons of sugar every day?
“Sugar isn’t evil,” the film concludes, “but life is so much better when you get rid of it.”
But Gameau is not content to claim that added sugar makes us unwell. He also proposes that dietary sugar causes leads to bipolar disorder, makes children fail at school, may soon drive Australian Aborigines extinct, and it could be the source of runaway consumer capitalism.
What’s remarkable about the film is the way it passes off these radical ideas as scientific dogma. Critics say the movie is entertaining and informative, and full of disturbing and inconvenient truths about the way we live. But the film’s many weaknesses are hidden from viewers.
It’s very hard for us to know, for example, that Gameau’s panel of experts includes a supergroup of charlatans and cranks.
Isn’t it the job of movie reviewers to appraise the message of a scientific film in scientific terms? Why can’t they try to test its claims against the facts? Yet movie critics only ask how entertaining is the film, and how persuasive? These are measures of a movie’s craft, not of its truth.
Read full, original post: That *#^% Sugar Film
