Fat Head (2009)

How sad is this?

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Sets things out as a typical cheap documentary on weight and diet.Quickly becomes a confusing watch full of notorious quack doctors, a mysteriously body-conscious presenter, and lovely 'naturopathic' propaganda to combat the veggie 'propaganda' the documentary criticises and parodies.One plus- it's a great example of misinterpretation, anecdotal BS and all kinds of bias! As soon as he begins trying to 'tackle' the world's best medical consensus like calorie deficit=weight loss, saturated fat/cholesterol= high bad cholesterol/atherosclerosis and insulin intake (via insulin genic foods like animals)= impaired weight loss. Then he does experiments with raw numbers that clearly prove medical consensus and disprove the presenter's BS (if you ignore the clueless opinions he wraps the numbers in).

Not all parents can manage keeping themselves on a healthy diet with daily exercise. What they bring to the table won't create a healthy life style for them or their children especially if they get used to it, then food like McDonald's is no longer a treat. Tom Naughton from Fat Head has tried low fat diets such as Pritikin until proved unhealthy when founder Nathan Pritikin died from Leukemia as a result. Naughton claims that low fat diets are depressing, since most of the brain is composed of fat, saturated fats are necessary to make the brain happy. But Naughton speaks from personal experience. Tom is also a father his film isn't focused on childhood obesity, but as a parent should Naughton be concerned by the epidemic. While many parents are suing McDonald's over childhood obesity, Naughton support McDonald's side instead by attacking Super-Size Me.Naughton enjoys fast-food, consider obese by the government's BMI standards, but exercises every day; so he says. Based off the current McDonald's nutrition facts, Tom Naughton claims that Morgan Spurlock calorie count from Super-Size Me made years before this movie was wrong. So without seeing the Spurlock's official food log, Naught tries to prove that fast food doesn't make you gain weight with exercise by going on an all fast food diet despite his doctor's advice, but doesn't clarify if his diet will be a month long like Spurlock's. Tom Naughton is just a computer programmer, part time comedian, who has only made this documentary, and most importantly Naughton is a parent. Whereas award winning documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock has made over fifty documentaries and was not a parent at time of his movie; I know Naughton's looking for a challenge, but when he said if Spurlock stayed on the McDonald's diet he would have lost the weight from Super-Size Me faster than the four months he was on a vegan diet, Spurlock overshadowed him. If McDonald's is the reason Spurlock gained that weight in the first place, why would more McDonald's be the solution? Above all Tom Naughton is in support of something that does cause obesity on daily basis, but Naughton is no Ronald McDonald restaurant mascot, he's a parent who brings the food straight to the table. Instead of making this film, Naughton should've focused his "baloney" on his own kids to see where that takes him.

This film is everything that a Documentary should be...accurate, educational, entertaining; even funny in parts (i.e. some of the animated scenes). You know, everything that most modern documentaries aren't. So many documentaries today are really more docu-ganda films than documentaries. Often times we get only half of the facts or the facts are conveniently re-arranged to suit the needs of the person behind the camera so that they can spew it out at us and have us just simply follow them like the lemmings that they treat us like.Obviously Tom Naughton isn't a doctor or a scientist, he is a comedian. As a comedian, he puts a funny spin on the facts that he presents. He backs those facts up by calling in actual experts. I like also how he quickly deflates the common denominator myths on the streets of major cities. He interviews random people from all different walks of life and asks them the basic questions. Each and every one of them overwhelmingly knew the dangers of eating bad things in excess. I would wager a guess that not each and every one of them just happened to be wealthy so the "poor people are dumb" argument very quickly falls apart.He openly admits a number of things in the making of this film. He goes into how we are all classified as certain things on the BMI scale. He is technically classified as obese even though he certainly doesn't look like it to me. He is also active, he works out regularly.The idea is very simple, he eats McDonald's three times a day, every day for 28 days but he continues to do a lot of walking. The end result is that he has lost weight, his HDL/LDL Triglycerides are all well within the normal range as was his cholesterol. He also goes on to point out that Morgan Spurlock would've had a hard time eating all of the calories that he said he did based on the (by the way very openly available) dietary information provided by McDonald's. No one pressured Tom into ordering more food; I believe that one McDonald's asked him if he wanted a large something and he said no, it was over, that's it! Morgan pointed out that he was asked numerous times in Supersize Me if he wanted to have his meal Supersized and he goes on to say that the bulk of those times was in Texas. I don't live in Texas but I visit there once a year. In all the times I've gone (back when they had a supersize) I was never once asked if I wanted a meal supersized. There is another fast food chain where I live that constantly asks however.I really enjoyed how we are told in Supersize me that 25% of adults are obese. We see Tom on the city streets filming and it took him days to find all of these obese people. It seems logical to me that if there were that many overweight adults, he would have seen them a lot sooner.He also comes up with an interesting question, challenging the number of calories that Spurlock actually consumed. When he attempted to get a food log from him, his people said they'd get it to him but they never did. I think it would've been interesting to see what was in it. Fat Head is pretty informative and a whole lot of fun. Take the time to watch it and it will amuse you at the very least. I like that it tries to make people accountable for their own health and well-being. It isn't the job of the U.S. Government or society in general to police what your children eat…it is your job!

I'll click "contains spoilers" because the movie is a load of garbage (from the perspective of science) so pointing that out will probably spoil if for you. Sorry.I agree wholeheartedly with the other reviewer; this is the worst example of biased junk science I've seen in quite a while. Not a single person actually working in research related to diet is involved in this movie in any way. ALL of the "experts" are diet gurus hawking their books (most of which also misuse the literature). As an "expert" is introduced it is always with the cover of their book prominently displayed. The film maker apparently doesn't know what "peer review" means. There are many experts that could address his pithy little comments but they are probably off doing actual science.Sprinkled throughout this movie are weird tangents hinting at an Ayn Rand-esque philosophy. The film maker completely ignores the behavioral science literature showing connections between advertising and education level and social position and making poor personal choices in health care decisions. He spends quite a lot of time standing outside fast food restaurants waiting to be "forced to eat their food" in an attempt to show that personal responsibility is the ONLY thing effecting obesity in our country. But he's a comedian with a camera and I guess he thought that those scenes would sound the death knell for... oh who knows, it's just ridiculous.Also increasing HDL by increasing lipid consumption happens at the cost of increased triglycerides which are pro-atherogenic. If he'd read any actual science he might have known that. He certainly didn't mention his triglyceride levels which are part of the lipid panel his doctor discussed.All of that said; "Supersize Me" also had huge problems from the perspective of his thesis compared to what he actually did. Both of these movies are comedies in my opinion, unfortunately they're popular comedies that some people take seriously.