Supersize Me!

My father-in-law, wife, and I watched the Morgan Spurlock movie "Supersize Me" last night. It is a documentary that took on the issue of obesity in America and basically blamed McDonald's (and the fast food industry in general) by having the documentarian (Spurlock) going on a "McDonald's-only" diet for a month and documenting the effects on his health. The end is not very surprising; he gained twenty-some pounds, his blood chemistry was wacky, he had mood swings and overall generally felt ill.

I believe that fast food is but one component in the obesity puzzle. The portions Americans eat, in fast food joints or sit-down restaurants or at home, have spiraled out of control. This documentary could easily have highlighted the effects and could have been an effective tool in educating people about this aspect of the problem.

But it doesn't.

Why? Because unless you have absolutely no ability to think critically, you have to see right off the bat that he set the diet to "prove" that McDonald's is a selfish evil corporation peddling poison to citizens. He had very simple rules for his experiment:

• The only foods he ate would be from McD's.
• If they asked him to supersize it, he would.
• He was going to have at least once each item on the menu
• He would have three meals a day, breakfast lunch and dinner.

Doesn't sound like much except for the supersizing part. Most fast food joints upsell their product to increase profit. No one is forcing the customer to take that option; they often do, but he set it up as a rule that he'd accept the large portions when asked.

His diet ended up being approximately 5,000 calories a day. The fact that this was fast food meant that a larger proportion of the calories were comprised of fat than other more nutritious components of what would have been a healthy diet, but most people who consume 5,000 calories a day will gain weight. I'd like to know what would happen if you took an average American and gave them a diet of 5,000 calories for a month what would happen to them; on top of that, the person must not exercise. Morgan Spurlock did not do additional exercise and even documented with a pedometer how much walking he did in his day while walking down the sidewalk to a nearby McD's for his meals.

Instead of highlighting the evils of fast food, what he actually highlighted were the evils of overeating. Is ice cream evil and horrible? Would I prove it by going on a diet of Breyer's for a month, breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Or would it be just highlighting that overindulging for a long length of time is bad for you, period?

The documentary had a large amount of good information regarding obesity in America and statistics on the fast food industry. I felt the driving publicity stunt of following his "McDiet" detracted from what could have been a good message for your health; stop overeating and eat more healthy foods. The fortunate part of the experience was that Morgan didn't give large amounts of screen time to his "vegan chef" wife who tried to convince him of how abominable his experiment was and how he was killing himself on meats. And McDonald's food. But mostly the meat was bad.

The movie was also a little dated but that isn't necessarily the movie's fault. The epilogue pointed out that supersize is no longer offered; it was removed from menus shortly after the movie premiered. They took a little pride in believing it was because of the movie (maybe it was, I wouldn't be surprised). But the movie had other information that portrayed a kind of conspiracy that isn't there; McDonalds claimed to have their nutrition information online, but as of the time near the filming of the movie less than half of households have access to the Internet. He visits multiple restaurants and most of them can't produce a pamphlet of the nutrition information.

Internet access continues to grow; it's virtually assumed that the average citizen in America has Internet access, if not at home then at schools and libraries.

The nutrition information issue; I could believe that it's hard to find information in most restaurants, but McDonald's is the wrong one to pick on. I find a nutrition table now on the papers covering the serving trays. The wrappers have information on the items they contain. The part that confused me a bit was that I could have sworn that in some of the scenes portrayed in the movie had McDonald's workers holding containers with the nutrition label on them. I was pretty sure it was in there because I remember thinking that the movie wasn't that old if it had that information printed on the boxes and wrappers...I could be wrong but haven't verified this with a re-watching of the documentary. The facts to me point out that McDonald's and many other fast food restaurants make health information available and Americans simply don't care and ignore the information. The food isn't bad until you overeat and overindulge for your lifestyle.

Another mystery in the movie was Don Gorske. I admired fact that they had him in the movie despite the fact that I thought he was actually a case against Morgan's hypothesis. Don Gorske has eaten over 23,000 Big Mac's in his life. Despite eating 2 Big Mac's a day, this six-foot-two average guy is 185 pounds and has a cholesterol of 140. While he was a topic in the movie, there was never an explanation or exploration to why this guy wasn't four hundred pounds with a waxy drip of cholesterol sliding from his earholes as was implied was in Morgan's future if he stayed on this diet for another two months.

Overall the movie was food for thought and I recommend watching it not for the commentary on fast food as much as for being a good example of how to undermine your message with an elaborate staging of a situation that amounts to a rediculous publicity stunt. Had he not spent a month force-feeding himself a diet that he said, as he was putting the burgers and fries into his mouth, made him feel ill then his conclusions might have held more weight. As it stands I thought that his otherwise good message only gained any attention because it made a popular and wealthy corporation bristle at some bad publicity.