When Damon Gameau started working on That Sugar Film 18 months ago, ‘sugar awareness’ was only just starting to become a buzz word in media circles.
“A lot of my friends thought it was a bit of a fad diet, like another Paleo diet. But, I quoted enough scientists who said, ‘this stuff is real. We are having way too much sugar – it’s not a diet, it’s just about getting back to real foods and if we can cut back on added sugar we would see the health benefits,’” said Damon Gameau via a Skype interview from Los Angeles.
The Australian actor and director was in the US to promote That Sugar Film which opens there tomorrow as well as in South Africa. As of last week it it had been playing on the Australian circuit for four months when it became their highest-grossing locally produced documentary ever.
While the actual sugar-eating experiment of the film lasted two months (for that period he ate supposedly healthy food that was high in sugar content), it took nine months of post-production of special effects and editing to finish it. This is Gameau’s first feature documentary, and it is exceeding his wildest expectations in terms of how many people it is reaching: “I was aware that this message needed to get out as broadly as possible and needed to be seen by people who often would not see a documentary. That was the real challenge for us. It’s all well and good to make a documentary that a few people might go and see at a boutique cinema or it might play at a few festivals. That’s why we had so much animation and special effects and Hugh Jackman and Stephen Fry.”
He is most chuffed by how children are taking up the message: “In Australia, cinemas have been full of children, and that is something we dreamt of at the start,” he said.
While Gameau already had a healthy diet before the challenge, one he happily went back to after the experiment, he learnt a lot about why things happened: “I knew that eating proper food was good for me, but now I feel I can explain it better, I have the science down.
“Once people can get their heads around it why sugar makes them behave in a certain way, how it affects their body, how it helps them put on weight, things like that, once you can explain that, it helps and that’s been the point of the film.”
Gameau is adamant that: “Kids get it, they want to be healthy, it’s just easier when the message doesn’t come from their nagging parents.
“There’s such a big push now, such a huge social explosion, especially things like Instagram, kids want to look healthy, they get more ‘likes’ if there’s a nice shot of them with good, clear skin and they look healthy and vibrant.”
For him, the most interesting part about q&a’s done with children has been that most of them say they would cheerfully choose a healthier option to McDonalds if it was available: “I think there is an awareness that is changing. Obviously it will take a long time, but I think we are at the start of a fantastic food revolution and the kids are certainly getting educated.
“We’re at a tipping point where we can’t keep on getting fatter and sicker and children getting obese and type 2 diabetes”.
Not only did they film in Australia, but Gameau also travelled to the US, to a Kentucky town where Mountain Dew is the tipple of choice: “There is a sense in Australia that America is headquarters of capitalism in terms of the food industry. It felt natural to go to the source,” especially since he discovered more arguments for and against using sugar as an additive in foodstuffs in the US.
He has stayed in contact with the Kentucky teen he featured in the segment and thought about adding a post-film image of the young man’s new set of dentures (which he had to get after having all his rotten teeth removed) but decided against it: “I found out that he was still drinking seven cans of Mountain Dew a day, so it is actually masking a bigger problem, because he is still drinking the stuff,” explained Gameau.
While he tries not to totally demonise sugar in the documentary, he travels quite far to try to show the effects of too much sugar on a person’s health: “I’m sure it’s the same in South Africa, it’s a global problem. Everybody’s got too much sugar in their diet, the processed food industry is just full of sugar. I guess that’s why it’s resonating in lots of different countries, because everyone can relate to it.”