I know Morgan Spurlock ate at McDonalds exclusively for a month and became unhealthy. Is it possible to eat exclusively at A fast food place, no matter which one, and be healthy? I know he added some rules, such as having to supersize if they asked him, but what if the only rules were to eat healthy items?
You’ll need to define ‘healthy.’
I think salad, baked potatoes and chili from Wendy’s could fit most definitions. Various items from Subway, too. Does Panera count as fast food?
Is fast food unhealthy? Yes, but both less so and more so than people think.
Fast food tastes good and used to be cheap. The cheapest way to make food taste good is to use lots of salt, fat and sugar. Fast food is generally low in fibre. A healthy diet contains adequate fibre and five daily servings of vegetables. This is hard to do with fast food.
But if you eat healthy 90% of the time, the other 10% doesn’t matter at all. If you eat a big pile of sugar just before or after exercise, your body will use it to build muscle and restore glycogen. Timing is important.
Sandwiches and burgers aren’t terribly unhealthy. They are filling, have lots of protein. If you minimize the bun and don’t choose fatty toppings, they aren’t that bad at all. The fries and rings are what get most people since portions are big and nutrients small. Milkshakes can be very high in sugar and calories. Portions can be huge.
If eating fast food means burgers, large fries and sugary pop everyday, this is unhealthy. There will be a rise in blood lipids. If young and exercising a lot, you could mostly compensate for this.
If eating fast food everyday means diet pop, a salad and burger; it is unhealthy in the sense of lost opportunity - you could be doing better.
If eating fast food everyday means Wendy’s chili and a glass of milk, or the handful of nutritious and fibrous choices, you could do much worse.
A few years after Supersize Me came out, a high school teacher from Iowa went on an all-fast-food diet for three months. He lost 60 pounds and his other health metrics improved. Weight loss is not about what restaurant you go to. It’s not even primarily about what menu items you choose to buy. It’s mainly about how many calories you eat.
If you’re concerned about overall long-term health rather than short- or medium- term weight loss specifically, then your choice of menu items matters more. McDonalds and other fast food restaurants do have healthy choices (fruits, oatmeal, salads, grilled chicken wraps, etc.), even if they aren’t the most popular items on the menu.
Morgan Spurlock force fed himself until he vomited.
He was eating 5,000 calories a day on his fast food diet, he weighed about 185 lbs which means he was eating 27 calories per pound per day. Which is the kind of calorie to pound ratio you expect in people training for triathalons, not for a regular person. Most people eat in the 10-15 calorie per pound per day range.
The Iowa teacher ate closer to 7 calories per pound of bodyweight by comparison.
The Supersize drinks were probably the worst part of the diet. I know from threads here that people just love soda/pop/soft drinks/“coke,” but I just don’t get it. Washing your teeth in sugar and then swallowing hundreds of empty calories may be one of the worst common unhealthy habits. I would say the fried foods (which may have more than 0 nutritional value) would be next, with most sandwiches not being too bad.
Personally, I have a very high caloric requirement, which makes such a diet costly and difficult with cheaper fast food. My weekly food budget for a family of 4 is less than it would cost to have one fast food meal out every day, and when the others partake I usually decline. But I think I could easily design a fairly healthy fast food menu if there were no restrictions.
I mean, I effectively did this at various times while I was in the Navy, attending schools in America, but stationed overseas (so I’d be living out of a motel room for weeks at a time while taking a course only offered CONUS). Even now, I eat fast food every other day. Granted, I sneak some other stuff in there like store bought ice cream and cliff bars (those are a great staple: barely palatable, but palatable nevertheless), and none of what I eat would make the cover of healthy eating. What do I drink? Coke Zero. Not just mostly, but only. Okay, okay: that’s an exaggeration. Sometimes, like when I get McDonald’s or eat out, I drink Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi because places don’t always have Coke Zero.
<—straight face.
As for health, my cholesterol was a little high on my last set of labs, but other than that I’m Doing just fine. My weight is very much in the “men’s medium” size range, and while I could tell you my resting heart rate, I’d have to kill you if I did.*
*That’s a joke…? 
Back when i was 18/19, i was working two full time jobs and went to college full time (full time at this college was 3 classes).
I survived almost exclusively on fast food for a year, maybe a year and a half. Save for a few nice homemade meals at the parents on holidays.
I was really active, and whenever i go to the doctor, even now (12 years later) everything seems to be exactly where it should be.
He ate way too much food. The fact that it came from McDonalds was mostly irrelevant.
Specifically too much processed carbs, sugars, fats, and sodium. McDonalds is a great vehicle for that, but you don’t have to eat that way at McDonalds, and you can mistreat yourself that way at other restaurants.
But note the word “Supersize” in the title. He was subjecting himself not just to their food but to their Supersizing marketing campaign. It’s clear that it’s this that was the real problem.
After all, the title isn’t “McDonalds Me”.
Yes, I think he never said no to the staff asking him if he wanted more food or a bigger portion. I’ve been to a few restaurants over the years that are very far from McDonalds…high prices, different ambience, much better food with far more complexity in cooking, flavoring, etc. You know the type.
The portions are big (and tasty!), and they always ask if I want an appetizer. And another appetizer for the table? Would I like some wine? We have a lovely soup today (Usually something creamy). Which dressing for my salad? More wine? Shall we bring over the dessert cart?
If the filmmaker’s budget had covered it, I’d be very interested to know just how much weight he would have gained on a steady diet of large portions, appetizers, creamy soups, dressing-laden salads, wine and more wine, and heavy-duty dessert from these types of places. McDonalds was neither the first to try the art of upselling, and neither will they be the last.
Don Gorske has eaten 30,000 Big Macs (and little else) since 1972, and he’s quite healthy. His wife is a Nurse Practitioner of my acquaintance and while she still rolls her eyes at his dietary habits, she (and his personal practitioner) have both vouched for his overall fitness.
This was clearly laid out at the start of the documentary. He would order a regular size meal. If the staff asked if he wanted to Supersize it, he required himself to say “yes”.
Comparing what he did to others who eat regularly at McDonalds misses this critical point.
And it’s right there in the title!
You absolutely could. It all boils down to limiting your calories and minding your macros. And sometimes not eating the whole meal (you can very easily eat over 1000 calories in one dinner basket from Dairy Queen). It can be difficult though, and I wouldn’t personally recommend it for anyone.
The guy who made that stupid documentary ate enormous meals of non-nutritious food every day and feigned shock when he became unhealthy. Even with the unhealthy eating habits we have in the US (and many other countries), most people do NOT eat out every day.
Right, I know that’s the title. I haven’t seen the movie, and what I read about it was way back when it first came out, but I do seem to remember reading that the filmmaker made it at least as much about McDonald’s and the perils of fast food as he did about the perils of supersizing/upselling.
To my recollection, the filmmaker strongly suggested (even if he didn’t state it outright) that the problem was just as much McDonald’s food as it was the extra calories from upgrading to larger portions. My recollection–against, just a recollection–is that it was kind of an unfair conflation, but the result was that a lot of people interpreted the movie as a warning against fast food rather than a warning against ordering too much food and then eating all of it.
Maybe I’m wrong. As I say, it was a while ago. But f that was how the filmmaker crafted the movie, it might explain why even people who saw it might miss the (supposed) point.
There are grave doubts about Spurlocks claim. He was a alcoholic and drank heavily.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-big-mac-attack-or-a-false-alarm-1527114255
https://www.goldderby.com/forum/movies/is-super-size-me-a-fraud/
*
Here’s the thing: No one has been able to replicate Spurlock’s results, and even basic math disputes the claim that his McDiet consisted of 5,000 calories a day…Meanwhile, researchers from the Making Sure Movies Aren’t Stupid department of Sweden’s University of Linkoping tried to replicate Spurlock’s experiment by tasking healthy college students with the challenge of eating 6,000 calories of fast food per day, inadvertently also answering the question “What’s the easiest way to get guinea pigs ever?” At the end of the 30 days, the students had none of the liver or cholesterol troubles Spurlock reported.*
So Spurlock is a big Fat Liar.
Yes, several other tried the same trick and had no issues.
https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/this-university-professor-ate-at-mcdonalds-for-an-entire-month-she-didnt-end-up-supersized.html
Also a very lazy one.
When I was a lithe young bike messenger pedaling my ass (and heavy loads) up steep San Francisco hills, I wasn’t paid enough for fast food, but I daily consumed upwards of 5000 kcals of mostly carbs and fats bought cheap at Grocery Outlet aka Dented Cans, as well as quarts of sugared coffee flowing in corporate mailrooms, and much red port to attain sleep. I gained no weight. The physics diet worked just fine for me.
Spurlock didn’t even skateboard. What a schlub.
Thanks for the links, DrDeth. I like that cracked article especially. (It helped that it also took on Waiting for Superman, which annoyed me mightily the first time I saw it…)
This goes back a long way, like the early 30s.
Hamburgers once generally had the kind of poor reputation that hot dogs still are jokingly accused of: being composed of odds and ends, not all of them meat. Besides, they were mostly made in greasy spoons, hardly the peak of hygiene.
White Castle, the first hamburger chain, fought this by being spotlessly white and putting their grills where people could see the burgers being made. Even so, some people wondered about how healthy hamburger were.
White Castle’s owner hired a top scientist, who conducted an astoundingly unscientific study. He paid a medical student to eat nothing but White Castle burgers, hamburger, pickles, onion, and buns, and water. For 13 weeks. The poor guy ate 20-24 a day and went crazy from taste boredom but stayed totally healthy throughout.
An article about it can be found on Medium. You have to sign in, but it’s free.