Roosevelt House hosted a screening of Fed Up, a documentary on the obesity epidemic produced by Katie Couric and Laurie David (producer of An Inconvenient Truth) and directed by Stephanie Soechtig. The film exposes the food industry and chronicles the lives of three obese children struggling to lose life-threatening weight. In riveting interviews with Michael Pollan, Dr. Mark Hyman, and former President Bill Clinton, who credits a vegan diet for keeping him alive after heart problems, Fed Up lays bare a decades-long misinformation campaign orchestrated by “Big Ag” and aided and abetted by the U.S. government, the result of which is one of the largest health epidemics in history. The movie points the finger at the sugar industry, aiming to debunk the theory that a lack of exercise alone is to blame for Americans’ expanding body mass index.

The screening was followed by a conversation between Katie Couric and Dr. Thomas Farley, former commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the 2014 Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health at Hunter College.

The Joan H. Tisch Public Health Forum is funded by a grant from The Steve Tisch Foundation, The Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Foundation and the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.