Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead
Directed by Joe Cross and Kurt Engfehr
[Warner Bros., 2011, 1 hr 38 minutes]
The 2010 documentary Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead follows producer and director Joe Cross and three others with obesity or other health problems. At the beginning, Cross weights in at 310 lbs and has a waist measurement of 53 inches. He’s been sick for the last nine years with the skin disorder urticaria, and has been taking 15 mg of prednisone daily, along with other pills. After trying just about every diet strategy and medical procedure he decides to go on a 60-day juice fast.
Juice fasts are often criticized as some people gain their lost weight back shortly after eating solid food again, but Joe is determined to make this work. He chooses to consume fruit and vegetable juices instead of whole fruits and vegetables, since it’s simply easier to ingest and digest the juice. Joe realizes that since his body can heal itself on the outside, as it does when he gets a cut, it should be able to heal itself on the inside.
Cross is from Australia, but he decides to go to the United States, the fast-food capital of the planet, to start his fast. As he wanders through the streets of New York, he does an excellent job highlighting the problems Americans have with food, as well as offering related commentary from nutrition experts.
One problem discussed is that many Americans don’t get enough micronutrients, which include the vitamins and minerals required for the body to function properly. Micronutrients can be obtained from vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, while many other foods contain only macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, proteins, and fat. While there are also some macronutrients in foods that are high in micronutrients, there are no micronutrients present in many of the macronutrient-heavy foods that most Americans consume on a regular basis. According to nutritionist Stacy Kennedy, who appears on the video, the average American dinner is made up of 50 percent meat, 25 percent vegetables (including potatoes), and 25 percent refined carbs (such as dinner rolls). Joe believes that if he focuses his diet on foods high in micronutrients, he will eventually become healthy.
The creators of the documentary easily put a stop to the rumour that juice fasts never work as a long-term solution to obesity and poor health. They catch up with the participants a few months after filming has been stopped and they’re still doing well. Joe weighs in at 220 lbs (a total weight loss of 90 lbs), if off his medication and has stopped drinking alcohol, tea and coffee. He also consumes only unprocessed food. Phil, a truck driver who also suffered from urticaria is down to 298 lbs from 430 lbs, and plays sports and goes to the gym on a regular basis. Phil’s brother Barry is still drinking his juice, and he has lost 46 lbs and Siong, a woman who experienced migraines prior to the juice fast has found that her migraines have not returned. The stories of these four participants offer strong evidence that for most people, obesity and unhealthiness are choices, not prison sentences, and improving one’s eating habits will offer benefits to average-sized people (like Siong) as well as the overweight and obese.
The weight loss and the disappearance of health issues that the participants experience so quickly are quite shocking. But even more shocking are the interviews Joe conducted with American citizens on the streets of New York. When Joe questioned people about their diets, he found that most of them regularly ate fast food and restaurant food and almost no fruits or vegetables. Some of the respondents said that they didn’t feel healthy and seemed regretful about their diet decisions, but others said they would not care if they died at age 55 if that meant they had been able to eat the foods they loved whenever they wanted to.
Professor Ronald Penny claims that 70 percent of the diseases people develop arise from their own lifestyle choices. With the cost of a juice fast being only $14 a day when buying ingredients at Walmart, and $28 a day when buying ingredients at an organic specialty store (in comparison to the $30 per day one might spend on three meals of little nutritional value at McDonald’s), there’s no excuse not to at least try to be healthy, even if one’s income is low. As Joe says, even if someone tries a juice fast and doesn’t complete 60 days of it like he did, they still derive the health benefits from the amount of time they did put in.
Perhaps many North Americans presently do not care about living long lives, since their bodies are tired, sick and run-down, but if they were to become healthier by making healthy food choices, their extra years on the planet could be filled with much happiness and vitality. There’s still hope that some will make major changes to their lifestyles, since some of the citizens interviewed did recognize that their diet decisions should be different. Hopefully, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead has allowed more people to become aware of exactly how to eat in a healthy manner and has been able to inspire some viewers to try Joe’s simple, yet effective health-promoting methods.
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image: YaMaha91
