Saw the documentary “Super Size Me” last night. It’s about this guy who eats McDonalds food, the entire menu, 3 meals a day which he has to finish, and has to get a super size if they ask, for 30 days straight. Effectively, living off of McDonalds, and only McDonalds, for a month with his vegan girlfriend stressing about it.
The guy gained a considerable amount of weight in just 30 days, almost half the last week. It took him 14 total months to lose the weight he gained. God knows how bad his liver and kidneys were damaged through the whole process. He even suffered mild impotence because of restricted bloodflow. Aside from a myriad of other negative things, at parts it was just painful to watch, ecspecially when his new health problems became real and life threatening.
My initial reaction was to never eat fast food again, at least McDonalds, but I was even having second thoughts about my bi-weekly Chik Fila excursions. The guys sources, in movie, are only half there, and he throws around mad statistics, but I have yet to hear a challenge to his claims, therefore, I’m taking it as sound info with questionable accountability for now.
I really liked it and was really woken up to the nutrition problem this country faces in the form of obesity.
All I have to say to non-US residents is see this movie, and keep our food franchises the f$)%* out of your country!
Now, granted, to me Subway is a good one and is ok with moderation and responsible choosing of their menu. I, however, work out as a crutch for nutritional freedom, and even that is a stretch. I assume since I do strength training and cardio 3 days (sometimes 2) a week, that I can eat pretty much whatever I want. As I got more in tune with my body, I realized what made me feel bad, and what didn’t, so it got easier to tone down the blatantly horrible parts of my diet, mainly sodas. I merely switched to sugary, processed lemonaide though (not the Aussie kind, the Aussie-Pakistani kind), which has the same amount of sugar, or more, than sodas such as a Coke.
Anyway, pretty crazy stuff in the flic. Real sobering, and another wonderful challenge I can’t wait (no really) to have when attempting to raise kids in the future with good habits. Parents have their work cut out for them. Heck, I still haven’t quit coffee, although, I’ve switched to tea midday so I’m making better progress than my cold turkey approach with ciggarettes. I don’t need ciggarettes, but I do need coffee.
You don’t need coffee!
I haven’t seen it yet–is it on video? Anyway, I went to McDonalds about 7 years ago and vowed never to go back for 50 years. My kid’s almost 4 and all she knows of the McD’s down the street is that they serve food that makes you sick. No doubt someone will smuggle her some fries (they are good anyway). There’s one local fast food place that we rationalize because it’s pretty wholesome (Burgerville). Other than that, I’m pretty careful. If I’m going to eat something bad for me, I want to be the one adding real butter instead of shortning for example.
Ultimately, the fast food for me is Starbucks. It’s good coffee but makes you poor.
But watch out, Jesse… they’re trying to run a number on you here too.
The guy *did* eat only at McDonald’s for 30 days and got sick, but he *also* overate, and chose poorly of the things he did eat, and cut out his exercise too.
The likeliest goal I see in this campaign is to create an “evil object” type of target, probably for future litigation or legislation.
To affirm that it’s individual responsibility, rather than an external evil object, which was the root cause of this guy’s body changes, a researcher ate only at McDonald’s for two months, and ended up losing weight and improving cholesterol levels:
http://www.cei.org/pages/debunk/debunk_the_junk.cfm
There’s an interesting sidelight here… awhile ago I blogged the Whaley experiment so I’d have it handy next time I got some Spurlock urgings pushed at me, and the item drew a number of respondents, all of whom had a shoot-the-messenger approach rather than a consideration of the observable facts:
http://www.markme.com/jd/archives/006191.cfm
It feels religious to me sometimes… is it an article of faith that certain successful groups are evil? Is it okay to demonize others, without logic, if all my friends identify them as heathens? Open question, I know, but….
Saying you can lose weight and improve cholesterol levels if you just “eat right” at McDs is like telling me your aunt Bertha smoked until she was 102 years old. Just look at the people in McDs ads then walk into one and look at the people–I rest my case. It’s bad for you no matter how you look at it. Not only that, they make it worse in many choices. That is, they could made the food healthier without making it taste different or make it less competitive. (Now, I will agree most documentaries are not exactly unbiased.)
Anyway, I don’t mean to pick on McDs. However, they are bad news… but so are all the others. The thing that kills me is how it’s supposed to be “fast”. It’s not cheap either.
John, I believe he didn’t excersize because he was basing it on what your average american does. Eating everything, well that I had issues with, but truth be told when I get fries, I eat em all. Also that one guy at the end it revealed that he never ate fries, ate a burger every day.. and he had decent colestoral.
It’s all relative, but the fact is, if you eat burgers and fries more then once a week, your probably giving yourself a decent amount of damage.
I worked ten years in San Francisco health food stores and saw a lot of people who ate too much tofu, too… there’s a certain look, a certain way of perceiving the world, which reveals the damage a super-tofu diet can cause…. ;-)
(My theme: That “evil object” philosophy fails when confronted with the “everything in moderation” philosophy, yet “EO” approaches are frequently used when trying to pass laws to win lawsuits… a meme ain’t always what it says it is.)