5 Documentaries That’ll Make You Hangry
Hangry, adjective. A volatile combination of hungry and angry. These five docu-films are likely to make you one, the other or both and bound to set your stomach — or conscience — grumbling until it’s satiated. The main theme running through them all is that people are passionate about food, willing to go to desperate measures to enjoy it, perfect it or take advantage of it. Feast your eyes.
1Fed Up, 2014
Sugar is the new tobacco. It’s addictive, it’s eroding your willpower to exercise, it’s ballooning your belly and spiking your risk of a sticky demise. By 2050 a third of the population will have diabetes. It’s the cause of the modern obesity epidemic in the western world and to cap it all off the US government is subsidising it all. At least, that’s what Fed Up argues, rather convincingly. Thank God we’ve got the sugar tax then…
Take-away: Think I’ll take my tea “white, no sugar” this time.
2 Cooked, 2016
Fast food is undermining the art of culinary creation. It must stop! Or at least slow down. Meals are occasions to savour not inconveniences to motor through. Here, via the themes of fire, water, air and earth, Cooked charts the evolution of food preparation and its ability to connect us universally.
Take-away: Ditch the ready meal and cook a casserole.
3 Jiro Dreams of Sushi, 2011
The pursuit for perfection is never ending. This is the story of Japan’s Jiro Ono, the world’s greatest sushi chef and owner of the modestly-sized Sukiyabashi Jiro restaurant hidden in a Tokyo subway station. At 85 and with three Michelin stars under his apron he’s still striving to improve, raise standards and advance the artistry of the California Roll.
Take-away: You really giving those scrambled eggs everything you’ve got?
4 Just Eat It — A Food Waste Story, 2014
Think the modelling industry is brutal? Food vanity is just as cutthroat. An alarming 40% of everything raised or grown is thrown away — if it’s not the perfect colour, shape or proportion for the supermarket’s pernickety standards it gets hurled in the bin. Lesson: waste not, want not.
Take-away: Bruised bananas make for delicious smoothies.
5 Chef, 2014
Okay. It’s not a documentary. Or nonfiction. But it is about food, glorious food and a timely feel-good food story to fill the long nights between episodes of Bake Off. A grizzled G. Ramsay-esque chef played by a potty-mouth Jon Favreau reaches the end of his tether, goes berserk at a career-crushing J. Rayner-esque food critic, quits then rediscovers his passion for frying up a feast out of an ’88 Chevy. Possibly not the healthiest, but you’ve earned a cheat meal.
Take-away: Food trucks > Swanky restaurants.
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