I have not seen this movie yet but from what I am reading on this post it sounds like a normal thing for a lot of people. I know MULTIPLE people whose only activity is walking to and from their cars to go to work. Along with the very infrequent and unstrenuous walk or bike ride. These same people will eat some type of fast food for every meal. Usually breakfast is skipped or replaced with soda. Every other meal is fast food. At night they might have a couple beers and a frozen pizza or chips. So to those who say this doesn’t happen, I am very sorry to say that it in fact does happen. I just did a quick head count and I can think of at least 7 people who do this. Friends, old roommates and co-workers. I am sure there are more. These are guys and girls in their early 20’s. Some are fat some are not. But none of them no jack about health and fitness. One guy gets very high and mighty and proud of himself when he drinks a whole jug of fruit juice in one day instead of having multiple pops and also thought he was the epitome of health when he had a shake with wheat grass in it. Sorry for the long post but I just wanted to let everyone know that there are people like this out there.
Regardless of health issues, fast food was never meant to be your sole income of macro and micro neutrients. All this guy has done is make fast food companies splurge out with ‘healthy options’ to make people more dependent on fast food joints. Great.
Those healthier options do help promote some thought, don’t they? Ideally they can serve as “gateway” foods, moving people towards a healthier middle ground.
I know people who eat junk food or fast food daily, and consume multiple pops per day. It is not unusual.
This might sound a little vague as its been a while since I watched the film…
Wasnt the point that some fat people sued McDs for making them obese but McDs was let off as the fatties couldnt prove that “McDonalds food alone had caused the problem”? One of the Mc’s managers is quoted as saying their food is “healthy”.
Morgan then adopts the same lifestyle as those fat people i.e. the low exercise levels but eats nothing but McDs to show its effects and to prove that obesity is caused by McD’s.
I think the point made by others in this thread is a good one- you really screw up when you take the soda (or carbonated beverage to us Englishmen) and fries.
J
My health teacher is showing all of her high school classes this movie, we just started.
He did one good thing, scientifically speaking. He ate 100% McD stuff. There’s nothing to corrupt the cause-effect sequence. On top of that, he did it for a month. Quite a sample.
(Sure, it’s extreme. But it does the job too. I went two time at McD’s since I saw this movie, and it was because of work settings, not free choice.)
[quote]MrChill wrote:
He did one good thing, scientifically speaking. He ate 100% McD stuff. There’s nothing to corrupt the cause-effect sequence. On top of that, he did it for a month. Quite a sample.[/quote]
Except he also severely limited his level of physical activity. You only manipulate one variable at a time.
He did do several things all at once that if you really want to use scientific method well he should have changed 1 factor, documented it over a period of time, rinse repeat.
I used to stop occasionally especially if I was on long distance trips but anymore I buy a diet pop, a bag of beef jerky, and a water and chew on the jerky while I drive. Usually one of the big 6 oz bags will last me 3-4 days of traveling.
McD’s just makes me sick most times.
[quote]hardcore_balla wrote:
He did do several things all at once that if you really want to use scientific method well he should have changed 1 factor, documented it over a period of time, rinse repeat.
[/quote]
To add to that, he would have not ruined his credibility if he didn’t use paid actors to pose as “Doctors,” none of them were doctors. It was interesting, the factoids and such, but the documentary wasn’t truly unbias, or unplanned. The puking after just eating a McDonalds’ meal, et cetera…
A lot of it was added for effect.
I watched the show and loved it. I think it brings up many good points and there’s no reason to look deeper into it than what it is…A man ate Mcd’s 3x daily with no exercise for 30 days and had severe health problems. That’s it. Don’t read too much into it and take it for what it is.
To me, it didn’t really seem anti-Mcd’s. Just anti-unhealthy lifestyles. If any show gets people to wake up and make better choices to be healthy, I’m all for it.
I myself LOVE their dollar double cheeseburgers but haven’t had one in over a month. That’s a choice.
It did bother me that he couldn’t get an interview with anyone from the head offices in over 16 tries.
It did bother me that the nutritional value of their food wasn’t posted and most managers didn’t know where to get it, (but if a person needs a nutritional value chart to know a Big Mac is bad for them, they have more to worry about IMO).
I also heard this story of another guy, (I’ve searched and can’t back this up though) did the same experiment but ate healthy at McD’s and lost weight.
Ive seen the movie and morgan spurlock is very much anti corporate america, and very much so anti mcdonalds. The scene where they show him throwing up he eats, double quarter pounder(730 calories 63grams of fat) , supersize fries (520 calories 25g of fat), supersize Coke (310 cals and 83g of sugar) and a f**king strawberry milkshake (1110 cals!!! and 41g of fat with 61g of sugar). Come on that is well over 150 grams of simple carbs, and who knows how much fat. That meal contains 2670 calories IN ONE MEAL! now is that what the average person eats when they go to mcdonalds? No by the way all nutrition facts came from mcdonalds.com and the supersize values came from the large sizes since supersizing is no longer available… oh yeah the 32oz shake has 25g of protein, thats a plus 
Haven’t seen it, but there is thing that bothers me. I don’t know anybody who buys McDonalds for other reasons than being relativly cheap/burger. I personally despise it, although some of the types are ok if in an urgent need of proteins and remains as the only option available. I just don’t get how people can actually get addicted to it. Maybe the taste is better in America, I don’t know. Any of you internally fighting to stop eating there?
[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.
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.[/quote]
Entertaining. Not too impressive to me though. Fast food’s bad-duh. Like you said he stopped all activity. And he ate 5000 calories a day. He gained fat and experienced some health problems. Duh. The same thing would’ve happened (if perhaps to a lesser extent) following his girlfriend’s vegan diet to the tune of 5000 calories a day with no exercise.
[quote]THICKnSICK wrote:
Ive seen the movie and morgan spurlock is very much anti corporate america, and very much so anti mcdonalds. The scene where they show him throwing up he eats, double quarter pounder(730 calories 63grams of fat) , supersize fries (520 calories 25g of fat), supersize Coke (310 cals and 83g of sugar) and a f**king strawberry milkshake (1110 cals!!! and 41g of fat with 61g of sugar). Come on that is well over 150 grams of simple carbs, and who knows how much fat. That meal contains 2670 calories IN ONE MEAL! now is that what the average person eats when they go to mcdonalds? No by the way all nutrition facts came from mcdonalds.com and the supersize values came from the large sizes since supersizing is no longer available… oh yeah the 32oz shake has 25g of protein, thats a plus [/quote]
The average person definitely eats an extra value meal-sandwhich and fries. Perhaps a diet coke and skips the milkshake. It’s still a lot of calories
Personally, the documentary made absolutely no impact on my eating habits either. I went to McDonalds rarely before seeing it and I go rarely now after seeing it. When i do go, I don’t think of Supersize Me.
Anybody read “Fast Food Nation”? It makes “Supersize Me” seem like a valentine card to the fast food industry. I’d recommend it.
Nick
[quote]lostinthought wrote:
It did bother me that he couldn’t get an interview with anyone from the head offices in over 16 tries.
It did bother me that the nutritional value of their food wasn’t posted and most managers didn’t know where to get it, (but if a person needs a nutritional value chart to know a Big Mac is bad for them, they have more to worry about IMO).
[/quote]
The fact that no one from McD’s would speak to him bothered me also.
In our local McD’s the back of the menus have the complete ‘nutritional value’ charts on them, and one is usually posted on the wall too, I think. You can also find the same info online with a couple of mouse clicks, here.
note Large fries 520 calories / 6 grams Trans Fats.
|/ 3Toes
My son who is 3 next month, does the mcdonalds badap ba dap dap, i’m loving it thing, when we drive past mcd’s. I don’t really take him there, cos its basically shit. Ok he has been once or twice, but he gets most of his ideas from going there from the adverts on Nick JR, in between the Wiggles and some other show.
As far as I know the only time he sees the ‘adult’ Mcd’s comemrcials, its just advertising some promotion. But the childrens channels adverts are Ron MCD telling kids to eat greens and drink loads of water.
Yet when he has been, he doesn’t want the little bags of fruit or some milk, he wants a friggin happy meal, and this drink called Fruit shoot that tastes like battery acid.
This sort of thing though, the Mcdonalds culture is taught from an early age, and sets kids up for life. I think.
Speaking of fries, that extra on the DVD is rather scary. Nothing grew on these fries, left at room temperature for weeks and weeks. No visible signs of bacteria or mold. Nothing.
What are these fries made of … plastic? (Joking)
But one has to wonder … if natures prime decomposers cant touch McD fries … what`s your body going to do with/against it ???
[quote]John K wrote:
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.[/quote]
Say you burn ~400 calories a day in incidental exercise, i.e. nonstructured stuff. That’s probably about an hour’s worth of walking, reasonable if one lives in a city or walks to a grocery store etc. Remove all of that, and you’re saving an extra 2800 kcalories a week, 12,000 kcal a month, 144,000 a year, which is about 3.5 lbs/month of fat gain… that’s significant.