Comments on: Super Size Me

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 00:10:43 +0000

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.)

By: brandy

brandy — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 23:21:59 +0000

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.

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:16:29 +0000

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.

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 19:29:53 +0000

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….

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 19:20:42 +0000

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.