Russo didn’t claim that nutritionists recommend eating McDonalds as part of a balanced diet. He said he and McDonalds Corp believe that it can be eaten as part of a well-balanced diet. To me, that means not eating it every meal and not eating a large amount of it when you do have it. By it’s very definition, a well-balanced diet is one that contains a variety of food and is within the recommended daily limits in regards to calories and fat. If you do over-eat or indulge in too many fatty/greasy/calorie laden foods, then you’re not following a well-balanced diet. If you are moderate in your eating habits you can include the occasional McDonalds meal without adversely affecting your health. Therefore there’s nothing blatantly untrue about that statement.
Russo did not claim to have acted on the issue of obesity a few years ago, he only claimed that they started taking it seriously a few months ago. I did not interpret his statement to mean that they had been offering salads and nutritional panels for “a few years”, just that the issue has become more of a concern for them. I imagine it would have taken McDonalds a long time to develop new menu items, source them, test them and finally implement them Australia-wide, and I see no reason to doubt that the issue has been on the table (so to speak) for a lot longer than the new products have been available.
That’s the point! Spurlock and his movie have people saying that McDonald’s is Eeeevil when the fact of the matter is it was his diet that caused his health problems. That’s what his detractors are pointing out but many people don’t want to hear it, least of all Spurlock himself. Yet Whaley is the one being labled an attention whore? :dubious:
What’s more is Spurlock has gone back to eating burgers a few times a month, just not from McDonalds. I’m sure he’s had enough of those. I’m sure he also knows that if he ever does start eating McDonalds again, his free publicity is likely to go poof.
Spurlock and the movie do not claim that McDonalds is evil. Spurlock, in the movie, blames his weight gain and health problems squarely on his diet and lack of exercise, not on McDonalds.
If you haven’t seen the film then quit making pronouncements about what it says or doesn’t say. McDonalds is just a symbol in the film. Spurlock is saying this is what happens when you eat crap and don’t exercise. The source of the crap is not the point.
Still misreading my words, I see. Here they are again: “Spurlock and his movie have people saying that McDonald’s is Eeeevil when the fact of the matter is it was his diet that caused his health problems.” This is not any sort of proclomation against the movie but rather the audience! Specifically, the part of the audience that leaves thinking, “Wow! McDonald’s is Eeeevil!” This is where the source of the crap is that point and what Spurlock’s detractors are addressing.
IIRC, he said on his Daily Show interview that he still eats there occasionally. This is only hypocritical if you mistake his message as “Don’t eat fast food or McDonalds, ever”, which it is absolutely not.
He has specifically said that he’s avoiding McDonald’s but I don’t know if it was on the Daily Show or not. There’s a link in the second or third page of pizzabrat’s trainwreck of a Pit thread but I don’t have time to look it up at the moment.
Duderdude2: exactly. That’s the point that DtC keeps missing.
A clip of The Daily Show interview can be found at Comedy Central’s official site. Spurlock talks about a Pavlovian effect from the smell of their food but not eating. Was there more than what Comedy Central has?
So what? He’s not telling anyone else not to eat at McDonalds. I fail to see any hypocrisy in simply being sick of McDonalds himself. I repeat for like the 50th time: Sperlock does not attack McDonalds in the movie.
No, the point you keep missing is that people who have actually seen the film do not come out with an impression that Sperlock was attacking the McDonalds. Theb only people who have the notion that the movie is a hatchet piece on McD’s are people who have not seen it.
Ok, so can we be in agreement then that “eating every meal at McDonalds” isn’t what made him sick? It’s “eating every meal at McDonalds while following rigid experimental parameters” that made him sick.
Parameters like:
Eating every item on the menu without regard to what you want to eat, or what is healthy
Eating meals even if you’re not hungry
Supersizing when asked rather than when you wish to
Eating the entire meal, every time, rather than stopping if you’re sated
It seems apparent to me that it was these rules that caused him to become ill, not the quality of McDonald’s food. Go into ANY good restaurant, and you’ll be asked, would you like an appetizer, entree, dessert, coffee, etc… eat all that every single day every single meal and you’d be sick as a dog too. Unfortunately, he used McDonalds and fast food as his target so they’re fighting back.
Thanks to everyone above who said nice things about my personal decisions. I haven’t been perfect this week but I have been a LOT better. I have been cooking quite a bit and keeping to healthy, unprocessed foods most of the time. I have cracked my habit of needing to stop for a treat in the cafeteria or on the way to/from work successfully.
Drinking more water – well, it’s a good trick to lose weight to feel full. I’m not where I’d like to be on the water, but I am trying to drink more to stop drinking so much soda (though I never drink anything but diet soda). I haven’t had a Diet Coke all week, which is my ‘other’ addiction.
I have also exercised quite a bit using my new Dance Dance Revolution set and that is going very well. I like it and am getting better at it, and am already able to keep going longer.
I think it’s quite relevant that this sort of self-examination was the moral of the film. The moral was not that McDonalds is bad, but that corporations are there to make money, not take care of you – so you have to take care of yourself.
I think the majority of viewers came away from the movie with this moral.
Good luck with your new eating plan - I’m doing a similar thing myself, after seeing the movie. It’s been hard to give up some of the crap I’d been eating, but I feel a lot better for it. I hope you’re feeling the benefits too?
Well the quality of the McDonalds food was part of it but he says it was his self-imposed “rules” that made him sick. He doesn’t blame McDonalds in the film. Between this and the pit thread I’m getting exhausted from arguing with people who haven’t seen the movie misrepresenting what it says.
The film is about personal choices. It’snot about McDonalds. It doesn’t blame McDonalds. Can we get that straight, please?