Documentary: Director eats fast-food for 30 days

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Wow -- eating at the Golden Arches for a month can get you sick. I never would have figured...

 

Story

 

Film records effects of eating only McDonald's for a month

 

NEW YORK - Normally sane actors have been known to gain or lose huge amounts of weight for their art. Think of Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary. Directors, of course, never have to undergo such torture. Or so it used to be, until Morgan Spurlock had a bright idea for a film project.

 

The first clue to his particular misery comes in the title of his documentary, which has become the darling of this year's Sundance Film Festival. It is called Super Size Me: A Film of Epic Portions and it is a sometimes comic but serious look at America's addiction to fast food.

 

Spurlock, a tall New Yorker of usually cast-iron constitution, made himself the guinea pig in this dogged investigation into the effects of fast food on the body. He ate only at McDonald's for a month - three meals, every day - and took a camera crew along to record it. If a server offered to super-size his order, he was obliged to accept - and to ingest everything, gherkins and all.

 

Neither Spurlock, 33, nor the three doctors who agreed to monitor his health during the experiment were prepared for the degree of ruin it would wreak on his body. Within days, he was vomiting up his burgers and battling with headaches and depression. And his sex drive vanished.

 

When Spurlock had finished, his liver, overwhelmed by saturated fats, had virtually turned to pate. "The liver test was the most shocking thing," said Dr Daryl Isaacs, who joined the team to watch over him. "It became very, very abnormal."

 

Spurlock put on nearly 12kg over the period and his cholesterol level leapt from a respectable 165 to 230. He told the New York Post: "I got desperately ill. My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I've never had in my life ... It was amazing - and really frightening." And his girlfriend, a vegan chef? "She was completely disgusted by me," he said.

 

Making the film over several months last year, Spurlock travelled through 20 states, interviewing everyone from fast-food junkies to the US Surgeon General and a lobbyist for the industry. McDonald's, for whom the film can only be a public relations catastrophe, ignored his repeated entreaties for comment.

 

Spurlock had the idea for the film on Thanksgiving Day 2002, slumped on his mother's couch after eating far too much. He saw a news item about two teenage girls in New York suing McDonald's for making them obese. The company responded by saying their food was nutritious and good for people. Is that so, he wondered? To find out, he committed himself to his 30 days of Big Mac bingeing.

 

The film does not yet have a distributor and, given the advertising clout of McDonald's, that may prove problematic. But the critics at Sundance seem to have been captivated. Certainly, the film is blessed by good timing. Obesity has in recent months captured headlines as America's new health scourge. The humour of the approach - and Spurlock's own suffering - obviously helps.

 

At the festival in Park City, Utah, he has had teams handing out "Unhappy Meal" bags on the streets with a few "Fat Fun Facts". For instance, one in four Americans visits a fast-food restaurant every day. And did you know that McDonald's feeds more people around the world every day than the population of Spain? The makers have self-rated the film "F" - for "fat audiences".

 

McDonald's has finally been forced to comment. "Consumers can achieve balance in their daily dining decisions by choosing from our array of quality offerings and range of portion sizes to meet their taste and nutrition goals," it said in a statement last week.

 

Spurlock claims that the goal was not to attack McDonald's as such. Among the issues he highlights is the willingness of schools to feed students nothing but burgers and pizza. "If there's one thing we could accomplish with the film, it is that we make people think about what they put in their mouth," he said. "So the next time you do go into a fast-food restaurant and they say, 'Would you like to upsize that?' you think about it and say, 'Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll stick with the medium this time.'"

[Nighthawk 0]

Sure, beat up on McDonalds, you hippy bastards.

 

I think I'll show this movie to my brother, though, cause he's a fat fuck.

[Sandman9000 0]

One more reason as to why I don't go to Mickey D's anymore.

 

::Buys the triple burger from Wendy's, dies of a heart attack pulling out of the drive thru::

[BifEverchad 0]

One more reason as to why I don't go to Mickey D's anymore.

 

::Buys the triple burger from Wendy's, dies of a heart attack pulling out of the drive thru::

Fuck it, Wendy's is better anyways.

[NYU 0]

He ate only at McDonald's for a month - three meals, every day

 

The entire reason for his failing health. Of course if you eat food that should sparingly be ingested three times in one day for a whole month, that is going to happen. I would actually care if he got the same results from eating at McDonald's 3 dinners a week while otherwise retaining his normal eating habits and fell under the same condition.

Actually, THAT'S not even really his problem. If you desired to, you can eat relatively healthy at McDonalds. Egg McMuffin, hotcakes, or parfait for breakfast - salad with chicken and vinegarette dressing for lunch - hamburger/cheeseburger/grilled chicken sandwich/etc. for dinner. Throw in a small - occassionally medium fries - and you're not hurting yourself too bad. But in the article, it says that when the cashier asked, he ALWAYS super-sized. Having all those salty, fried potatoes and sugary drinks is just asking for trouble.

 

The experiment was done with bias intended. He WANTED to prove that McDonalds could make you sick which is why he constantly supersized. The only ones that supersize all the time are the same fatties that are blaming the restaurant for making them fat in the first place. And clearly, we can see just how healthy they are.

 

If the guy wanted to, he could have actually made an interesting documentary that would actually prove something. With moderation, COULD you theoretically eat at McDonalds for 30 days? Instead, he set an experiment that was doomed to fail.

[Nighthawk 0]

Seemed more like he was trying to warn those fatasses not to supersize all the time, rather than saying McDonalds is a purveyor of poison. Because he said this:

"If there's one thing we could accomplish with the film, it is that we make people think about what they put in their mouth," he said. "So the next time you do go into a fast-food restaurant and they say, 'Would you like to upsize that?' you think about it and say, 'Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll stick with the medium this time.'"