Questions About "Supersize me"

Cafe Society
61

I’m completely nonplussed at this statement… I really don’t even know how to reply. Now I want to know if you saw the film.

The film focuses on McDonalds.
The film is named after a registered trademark of McDonalds
The subject of the film is what happened to the filmmaker after eating McDonalds food for 30 days
The majority of his facts, as quoted on his own website, deals with McDonalds
The vast majority of the movies time deals with McDonalds’ his eating at McDonalds, and the effects his stunt had on his health.
The color-scheme of the movie’s promotional material, the website, and his blog matches that of… McDonalds
There are pictures of McDonalds food on the home page of the films’ website, plus the Golden Arches, plus the words “McDonalds”
His blog about the promotional tour mentions trips to McDonalds all across the world, but nothing about “processed food” or “school lunches” or “food industry” or whatever else you are trying to convince me the film was about (while still not covering it)

However, there is a link to an “Help Change the Food in our Children’s Schools” link on the front page. I find the ratio of McD’s related items to non-McD’s related items on the website to pretty accurately reflect what was going on in the movie.

The film was about McDonalds. The film’s color scheme matches McDonalds’. The man ate at McDonalds (if he wanted to prove something about school lunches, why didn’t he eat school food for 30 straight days?) Regardless of the fact that he threw in some footage and language that wasn’t McDonalds related, it doesn’t change the fact that the thrust of the movie, from poster to content, from website to the mans very own words, was “eating at McD’s is bad, m’kay?”

No, it wasn’t about McDonalds in that the man didn’t provide a detailed history of the company, but it was about McDonalds in that the food chain dominates every aspect of this film to the near-exclusion of all other issues.

62

Nope. Not about McDonalds. That store was chosen only for its symbolism. The message of the movie is not that McDonalds is bad for (something no sane person would dispute). The message is that you have to take responsibility for your health and diet and that the prepared food industry is geared towards maximizing profits, not towards providing nutrition. Much of the movie is about how the industry scientifically engineers food to taste good and be addictive by exploiting genetically ingrained responses to fat, salt and sugar. The food is manipulated to maximize those things at the expense of nutritive value. The message is BE AWARE OF THAT. It’s really pretty simple.

63

There’s no need to patronize others; if it were that “simple,” we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

And for the record, I believe the movie focused far more on “McDonald’s is bad” than you’re giving it credit for.

64

I would second this, McDonalds is widely acknowledged as the most successful in the fast food industry, and also the most proficient at “upselling” their customers - why shouldn’t a commnetary focus on McDonald’s as a case in point.

Not many people eat three meals a day at McDonald’s but I would hazard a guess that there are a great many that eat fast food 2-3 times daily.

The only extreme (IMHO) that Spurlock went to was in eating at the same restaurant, not in the choices he made, as an individual meal, or taken as an independent day - each of his choices were “normal”

His intention appeared to be that we need to look closely at the choices we make, and that just because we don’t see unhealthy results from one meal, doesn’t mean all meals are unhealthy.

Have you ever seen the anti smoking ads that show how much tar a smoker consumes in a year - wasn’t Spurlock just using a similiar approach to good effect?

65

JohnT, based on your ill-informed summary of the film after your “nonplussed” thingy, now I must ask you directly:

Have you seen the movie, from start to finish?

66

Actually, I went on WeightWatchers last summer, and actually ended up eating at McDonalds and Whataburger a lot more than I did before. Lost 20 pounds in 3 months. Mind you, I was looking up nutritional information, orderign smaller portions than I used to, and going easy on the big macs and salad dressing.

I used to get the Crispy Chicken Cobb salad (with the breaded chicken), but without the bacon (Not particularly because of health concerns; mostly just because I don’t like mixing bacon up with other food) and using only about half a packet of the low fat dressing (again, not for health concerns, I just didn’t want that much dressing). Not sure if they still sell that salad though.

That said, a lot of the stuff presented in the film was skewed. The skewing becomes even more jarring because it’s skewed in one direction, while arguing against information skewed in the OTHER direction by McDonalds.

One example I noticed: McDonalds says that most nutrionists agree that it can be part of a healthy diet. Sporlock proceeds to contact a bunch of nutritionists, most of whom say they wouldnt’ recommend eating it more than once a month or so, a few saying to avoid it all together, and a few saying you can eat it every few days or every week or so. Sporlock then proceeds to use this to show that McDonalds was lying out of it’s ass, when the data wasn’t actually in disagreement with what McD’s stated.

The nutritionists DID mostly agree McDonalds could be a part of a healthy diet. McD’s just neglected to emphasize the very small part of the diet they said it should play.

Later in the movie, he mentions the salads that McD’s introduced, but mentioned that they all contained sugar. Now, I don’t know how much additional sugar they have, but all of the salads shows included things like tomatoes, which, the last time I checked, contained sugar to begin with, being fruit and containing fructose.

Also, once he ran through the menu once, he could have decided to stick to the relatively healthy options, like, I dunno, drinking Diet Coke instead of Coca Cola (that saves several hundred calories right there, though it still dehydrates you) or hell, even just water (OMG! No calories at all AND it hydrates you!). Instead he consistently went for the big burgers and the fries and the pies.

On a marginally related note, I just wanna give a smartassed WHOOP for Texas being #1 in fat cities. EVERYTHING’S bigger in Texas! :smiley:

Oh, and how many people here, after not having been to McDonalds in months or longer, after seeing this documentary, immediately went to McDonalds? raises hand sheepishly

67

lissener, you seem to focusing on whether people watched the film with horse blinders on and took detailed notes before you will address the valid points that those of us who feel the movie is shit bring up. What if I told you I went home last night and watched the movie again, twice, and now can now tell you everything about it from the name of the doctors he consulted to the color shirt he was wearing in each scene, would you then address the valid points, which are:

  1. How does grossly overindulging on something prove that mild indulgence of same thing is bad? Spurlock admitted no one does the 30 day thing like he did, but used it as an “example”? WTF? Isn’t that like spending a weekend on the sun to prove that tanning beds are dangerous to your skin?

  2. IIRC, doctors were “puzzled” at the poor state his liver (?) was in, saying they have never seen that type problem in someone just from eating bad food. Again WTF? Isn’t that called specious reasoning, to imply something is caused by something else without proof? How do we know this problem wasn’t caused by something else? How do we know the doctor isn’t full of shit? Maybe years of alcoholism caused his liver problem? Oh yeah right, he quit six weeks before the filming, so it couldn’t have been that. Did he stumble upon a medical breakthrough here? Will he win a Nobel Prize?

  3. What specifically did you learn from this film that you didn’t know before, i.e. what was the point, other than the food Americans eat is bad? No shit, Spurlock.
    This guy looks around at Americans, sees most are fat, does brilliant detective work to determine it is the food they eat plus poor exercise, and reports his stunning findings to a shocked and intrigued public. I’m sorry, that may stun Joe Sixpack, but I always thought the SD board was comprised of people a little brighter than average.

68

Yes, fast food typically is “bad” for you. Just like an Oreo or a big thick slice of birthday cake is “bad” for you. Is anybody really denying that? Or is just easier for you to argue against a point that no one is making?

Your obstinance in insisting that the McDonald’s salads are bad for you simply because they’re sold at McDonalds reveals your true agenda. Either you just don’t understand even the most basic elements of nutrition or you’ve never looked at the nutritional content of those salads. If you wouldn’t eat a salad with grilled chicken and whatever dressing you want (and as little as you want), consuming 200-400 calories and less than 10 g of fat, what the hell do you eat? And I mean you personally. What are you eating that is so much healthier than that?

I’m sure that if you saw the exact same salad, with the exact same nutrition, in a health food store, you’d call it healthy.

69

Hell, this thread and the Monopoly Pit thread convinced me to go out and get it last night.

70

I’m actually going to lunch for it right now.

Btw, if Spurlock used that many trademarked images of my company, I would personally deliver the lawsuit myself. Then again, we’re not in the news as much as MickeyD’s.

71

Heroin, bourbon, desserts - has anyone ever suggested making a meal out of these? Oreos and birthday cakes aren’t bad for you - as long as they’re viewed and consumed as superfluous yet enjoyable supplements to a main diet of three daily meals- which is just how they’re marketed. McDonald’s sells breakfast, lunch, and dinner - meals themselves, which have the nutritional equivalent of junk food.

72

No. He seems to one of those dudes that equate “understand= agree” in other words, if you understand the film, you also agree with the film. :rolleyes:

73

Yes. Had you read my posts, you would’ve caught that I read the film with two doctors who gave a bit of info about how he “doctored” the results by not allowing as to how fit he was before he started the experiment. The numbers he gave (LDL/HDL cholesterol, etc) were those of a well-trained athlete, not those of the average Yank.

74

Oh, and that wasn’t a list of things in the film, those were lists that showed that the film was based, sold, and marketed primarily as an attack against McDonalds in specific, “fast food” in general, and had nothing to say about “processed foods” or the other claims made on this thread.

75

Exactly. I love how opponents of this movie routinely say that Spurlock was being misleading by eating at McDonald’s three times a day. “Everyone knows you shouldn’t eat there three times a day.”

It’s a restaurant, right? A restaurant that sells food? You’re supposed to eat food several times a day. If you shouldn’t eat McDonald’s food regularly, that can only mean that it is because it is not good food for one’s health. But they aren’t marketing it as an adjunct to food - they are marketing it as the stuff you should be eating for your meals. They are also ubiquitous in America and are specifically maximizing the aspects of the food that will make you want to eat it frequently (and at the lowest cost to them for producing it) while sacrificing the aspects of it that are healthy.

If you know it isn’t healthy, and that you have to choose very carefully among the marginal menu items when you go there, why even go there? Why do so many people go there, or to any fast food restaurant on such a regular basis? I’m not sure that everyone does know that you shouldn’t go there three times a day, and no fast food place is doing a damn thing to get that message out, are they?

I thought the movie was great, and have no problems with any of it.

76

That isn’t true. He went out of his way to show how healthy he was before he started. He stated up front that he was a vegan, exercised, etc.

77

The sugar is in the dressing, which is little more than flavored corn syrup.

78

McDonald’s is a business. They would love it if everyone on the planet ate there three times a day, same as cigarette companies would love everyone to smoke, liquor companies want everyone drinking, etc. And yes, I see the difference- you need food to live, unlike cigs and booze. But that has nothing to do with the fact that this is not 1950- in America in 2006, we all know cigarettes will kill you, booze will kill you, and fatty foods will kill you, right? And knew it before this film was released right? If this came out in 1955, I would say right on, give this guy a medal, same as with Nader and unsafe vehicles back whenever that was. But if Nader came out today and said seat belts save lives, would you not say “No shit?” Same thing here.

79

I don’t think that everybody does know the extent to which prepared foods are manipulated to maximize taste over nutrition. McDonalds never mentions in its adverstizing that you can’t actually live on that stuff. A lot of people do think that hot pockets and McNuggets and frozen burritos are actually food, when in reality they’re a salty, fatty equivalent of candy. It’s especially insidious that this stuff is aggressively marketed at children.

80

Okay, let’s accept that, although it’s a bit of a dubiuos assertion.

Doesn’t that just lead to the question of why people, knowing fully and completely that McDonalds food isn’t really food that you should eat for meals, continue to go there? Further, if it can be equated with tobacco and alcohol, shouldn’t it be regulated, and shouldn’t consumption by children be prohibited?

I think Spurlock did a nice job of exploring those very questions, talking about the oversaturation of McDonalds and other fast food locations, talking about the marketing to children through imagery and toys, talking about the processing and manipulation of the content of the food.

If you agree it’s bad and will kill you, why would you object to a movie that considers the fact that massive people continue to consume massive amounts of the stuff on a daily basis?