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Rating: 2 stars

All movies seen on 11/29/2011

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Fat Head (2009)

Directed by Tom Naughton

Documentary

Overview

A comedian replies to the “Super Size Me” crowd by losing weight on a fast-food diet while demonstrating that almost everything you think you know about the obesity “epidemic” and healthy eating is wrong.

Length 104 minutes

Actors

Tom Naughton | Chareva Naughton | Morgan Spurlock | Michael Eades | Gary Taubes | Peter Paddon | Sally Fallon Morell | Mary Enig | Mary Dan Eades | Al Sears | Eric Oliver | Jacob Sullum | Eric Feit

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

There’s some decent muscle in FAT HEAD, but it’s buried beneath fat, vitriol and supposed comedy.

Naughton seeks to disprove SUPER-SIZE ME in this documentary, but most of his arguments against Spurlock’s documentary fall flat. Naughton’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t allow for any change in McDonald’s practices post-SUPER-SIZE ME, and assumes that since that’s the way it was when he made the documentary in 2009, that’s the way it was in 2003 when Spurlock was filming.

Further, Naughton also says he can lose weight on a fast food diet, but then proceeds to modify the diet to take out carbs and starches, something Spurlock never did; that single fact immediately invalidates the first half of the film and the fact that Naughton ultimately loses weight. Naughton also supposes that just because we have free will and he found a few parents who will parent, that everyone will and kids will restrain themselves. Never once (as I recall) does he stop to promote education to help people make better choices.

The second half of the film goes on to stump for low-carb diets, but unfortunately all of that great information is buried by the glaring mistakes of the first half and the ending which completely invalidates the entire thing.

If Naughton had actually thought to conduct a valid 2-sided experiment, perhaps I’d praise FAT HEAD. Instead Naughton ruins his own arguments with just as much blubber as he claims Spurlocks’ film had.

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