| FatHead | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
|
| Directed by | Tom Naughton |
| Produced by | Page Ostrow Susan Smiley |
| Written by | Tom Naughton |
| Starring | Tom Naughton Chareva Naughton |
| Music by | Tom Monahan |
| Cinematography | Tom Naughton |
| Editing by | Tom Naughton |
| Distributed by | Morningstar Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | February 3, 2009 |
| Running time | 104 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Fat Head is a 2009 American documentary film directed by and starring Tom Naughton.[1] The film seeks to refute both the documentary SuperSize Me, a Sundance Film Festival award-winning film, and the lipid hypothesis, a bedrock of nutritional science for decades in the United States and much of the Western world.
The first part of Fat Head focuses on ways the film SuperSize Me stretched credibility or used questionable reasoning. Though the debate that the two films encapsulate will likely continue for a long time, Naughton employs transparency in his effort. An article in the Houston Chronicle reports: "Unlike Spurlock, Naughton has a page on his Web site that lists every item (including nutritional information) [2] he ate during his fast-food month." [3]
The second part of the documentary focuses on the science and politics behind the nutrition recommendations given by the U.S. government - largely based on the lipid hypothesis which Fat Head claims is in error on all three of its main propositions.
The film claims that the lipid hypothesis has no basis in scientific fact. According to the film there has never been a single scientific study that has linked a high fat diet to increased rates of heart disease. During the film several doctors and dieticians were interviewed and they all stated that according to the latest research in heart disease it is inflammation (typically caused by high blood sugar) and not a diet high in saturated fat that causes heart disease and heart attacks.
The film makes many controversial claims,[4] but, it details the scientific studies that support them [5] and it conveys and clarifies the often complex concepts in the scientific controversies it deals with in a way that is targeted to the general public.
During the film, Tom goes on an all-fast-food diet, mainly eating food from McDonald's. For his daily dietary intake, he aims to keep his calories to around 2,000 and his carbs to around 100 grams per day, but he doesn't restrict fat at all. He ends up eating about 100 grams of fat per day, of which about 50 grams are saturated. After a month eating that way, he loses 12 pounds and his total cholesterol goes down. Due to the trans fats used in fast food products his HDL does go down, but overall, his lipid profile, and other markers for health, improve quite a bit. His personal experiment does seem to agree with the evidence cited in the film that suggests that the lipid hypothesis is not only incorrect, but perhaps is contributing to the problem it seeks to remedy.