Not sure if anyone has seen this yet? My friend told me about it and I plan on seeing it. It should be a mandatory film in all health classes and as a pre-requsite for joining a gym.
Vegita ~ Prince of all Sayajins
My fiancee and I watched it 3 weeks ago. It is both informative and entertaining. The funny thing is, she has lost a lot of weight and is trying to lose a little more, but her one “vice” was McD’s. I say was b/c she went to McD’s for lunch 2 weeks ago and then just couldn’t bring herself to eat it. She ended up feeding it to the dogs and then feeling bad b/c they were slugs the rest of the day and she attributed it to feeding them the McD’s. Now she won’t even go near one and has started lossing weight again.
One thing to note that is conveniently not really emphasised in the movie is that he goes from some activity in his lifestyle to absolutely none when he starts the month. Basically he does everything to make it as bad as possible.
The movie isn’t really a documnentary as much as Farenheit 911 is a documentary. It’s more spin and fuel for trial lawyers. If you look up some history on Morgan Spurlock you’ll find that he’s very much a fan of trying to get certain institutions/people sued.
I saw it this past weekend. I would admit that he basically makes it as bad as possible. I don’t know anyone that eats McD’s 3x’s per day for 30 days but I am sure that there is someone that does. It made me ill just to watch him eat that crap. Makes me not want to eat there. Mission accomplished!
Hey guys, check out this link. This guy did the same thing Spurlock did, only kept exercising and used some restraint. He lost 8 lbs, and his cholesterol improved.
http://www.truthinfitness.org/projects/mcDonalds/journal.html
Thanks smallnomore,
I really despise people spending so much effort on decieving people. I sent a link to my friend so he could see firsthand that supersise me is a propaganda piece. Thanks again,
Vegita ~ Prince of all Sayajins
propaganda piece says it all.
I wouldn’t jump quit to say propaganda, I saw the movie and he stated his rationalle for the inactivity in one of his interviews with the various health-related experts. The doc (I think) stated that obesity was the result of poor diet and the lack of exercise, citing that the avarage overweight person walk ~2000 steps per day. His experiment included the inactivty effect, so he wore a pedometer and made sure he didn’t exceed the average.
[quote]alphuris wrote:
One thing to note that is conveniently not really emphasised in the movie is that he goes from some activity in his lifestyle to absolutely none when he starts the month. Basically he does everything to make it as bad as possible.
[quote]
So, what you’re saying then is that he becomes the Average American for a month?
I think that’s a better experiment: actually living the same lifestyle
and watching the effects rather than just throwing in a bad diet in with a somewhat healthier activity level. Why not go all out?
I think the point is if it were about Mcdonalds food being bad, you would have to isolate it to see how much of it was actually the food. Having him change his lifestyle makes us guess if it was 90% food 10% lifestyle, 50%/50%, or 10%/90%. The other guy who did it and stayed active wasn’t in very bad shape after one month, that leads me to believe that one can counteract the negative effects of the food with the proper lifestyle, at least in the short term. This is good info because if I eat one meal at wendy’s a week, i’m not at all concerned about my health of looks.
Vegita ~ Prince of all Sayajins
My $0.02 -
Before I was aware that such a movie was in the works I had already decided to “go subway” - I don’t need to movie to tell me that “junk food” or “fast food” is not good for you.
BTW - I’m 6’ 210 and 37 years old.
After three weeks of eating Subway for Lunch M-F my body rejected fast food fries. I tried to eat some on a Saturday driving up to my brother’s home, but could not do it - they were unacceptable to me anymore.
In the last month I’ve lost 4 LBS! (big deal) - but I look alot different. I attribute my change to jacking up my workout - NOT Subway.
Do I blame any of the fast food companies out there - NO; I chose to eat their food for the last 25 years.
It’s a choice - not some big global conspiracy. I wondcer how much of that weight Morgan Spurlock would have gained had he kept all the other factors of this life the same?
He also gave some rational as to why he picked McD’s over all of the other fast food places out there. Basically stating that McD’s had a lot of locations around where he lived as opposed to the other fast food places.
I wouldn’t jump into conclusions that this documentary is as bad as 9/11. But, I do think it lies on the boarderline.
Thing is that he stop his normal activity and did it exactly what your average New Yorker does.
Now if you eat Mickey D’s and work-out you may have diffrent results.
I do think that there is some vality of his documentary…
I think he closely mimicked the lifestyle of a lot of people, the very people that might need to wake up more than the folks here. I know people that think walking through the mall is strenuous. While many people don’t eat at McDs three times a day some people do eat there more frequently than a lot of us would hope.
It’s an extreme example but not totally “out to lunch”.
Here’s something to ponder would this documentary ever turn in to evidence in a frivilous lawsuit. It’s a scary thought.
I hope the laws will give us the right to choose whether we would want to eat Mickey D’s or not…
The experiment was only 30 days long.
Decreasing his activity from that of the average urban New Yorker who typically walks everywhere to that of the average American office worker who drives everywhere was a very deliberate attempt to emulate the lifestyle of “Joe Average”.
I wouldn’t think 30 days of driving around would have that much of an adverse effect on your health. I’m pretty sure that the daily junk food binge would be more devestating.
The film does provide another perspective. It features a guy who eats NOTHING bug Big Macs. Two or three McDonalds burgers PER DAY, EVERY DAY, for the last several years. It points out that this guy is healthy as can be, noting that he does not eat the fries.
If you think that the “Truth in Fitness” website shows that “Super Size Me” is propaganda, I think you are missing much of the point. When most people order from McDonalds, they probably do order one of the combos, with the large burger, the fries, and the pop. They often if not usually do super size the order. They don’t stop and think about the caloric intake, the simple sugars, the saturated fat, and so on. The nutritional information isn’t readily available in many of the locations. Most people don’t know what their calorie expenditure is, their LBM is, or measure their bodyfat.
It strikes me that the point of the film is that if the average, uninformed person falls victim to (1) convenience (2) ignorance (3) marketing (4) laziness (5) affordability (6) branding that there could be a huge price to pay in their health.
Sure it may be POSSIBLE to encorporate fast food into a healthy lifestyle. But given that the average waist size and weight has ballooned by a ridiculous margin in the past 50 years, you tell me how far of base he is with his experiment.
The average weight of an adult male is up 30 pounds! The average waist size is up something like 6 inches!
A demonstration that only 30 days of over-indulgence combined with under-activity can negatively impact your health seems pretty fair to me.
My question to anyone who buys anything from the fast food industry is, why? If you want a burger why not give your support to an independant house of grease? You want a beef burrito? taco bell doesn’t need any more support, so why not go down to Enrique’s taco shack? I think it’s safe to say that most of us here embrace a healthy lifestyle that discludes frequent junk food binges, right? So why would we want to support the largest pushers of this sort of crap? I stick to my diet the majority of the time. I’m not high and mighty though, I’ll indulge in 2, mabye 3 cheat meals a week. BUT, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna make these shit peddlers any richer than their greedy asses already are! I live in a small mountin town, and we have 4 independant burger joints, the same goes for mexican food joints owned by real mexican families. There simply is no reason, other than pure laziness because of the drivethrough, to spend money at ANY chain restaurant.
on the burger+fries+soda (not gonna call it pop):
I think this is the best way to describe it. Eating just the burger, around 500-800 (depending on the type) calories of trans fat, moderately glycemic carbs, and low grade protien is obviously not good, but not that harmful once or twice a week.
Combining 1200 calories of trans fat+bread+low grade protien with 200-300 calories of the highest of glycemic carbs (soda), is NOT EVER a good idea, unless you truly do not give a shit.
I went to see this movie about 2 months ago. I do think, yes, that alot of it is geared towards making MacD’s look as bad as possible. Though, I did walk away with a few points I found alittle disturbing.
MacD’s customers who eat more than one meal a week are considered a heavy user.
On average kids are seeing over 6000 MacD’s commercials a year.(Do the math, thats 16 commercials a day)
I know that people can argue most of the points in this movie, but in my opinion people need to address there diet and exercise habits and this was one outlet used to shed some light. And if just one person came away from this movie with some sort of enlightenment, mission accomplished.
my 2 cents
i haven’t seen the movie, but i’ll try to see it soon. from what i see the opinion here, i also have a little idea about this movie:
i live in australia, there is not just one fast food shop, McD, but also some others, like “Hungry Jack”, “KFC”, "Burger King"etc.and people not just eat those crap from these well known shops, but also eat from other small fast food shops. their eating style make them fat no matter how much exercise they do or not. they eat fast food for their main meals, and they also eat a lot of chocolates, ice-creams, soda, fruit juice…etc. most of the fat people i see doing no activities at all. they drive their cars around, not walking much. 2000steps per day? may be not so much in some case…
myself try to eat those fast food(not McD’s) 1 meal per day, continue for 1 week. i keep going to gym, training hard. and my waist up 2 inches in 1 week.
most of my friends keep eating craps after watching the movie. they know the truth, but most of the people don’t want to suffer, they don’t want to give up those taste-good fast food, and they keep getting fatter and fatter. they don’t have will power to change their lifestyle.
just my 2 cents.