Nabisco has never implied that you shouldn’t eat Oreos three times daily either. Should they? Should some fool make a movie in which he eats nothing but Oreos for a month just to see what happens?
Just for the record, here’s the journal of a man who ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days and dropped eight pounds.
Yeah, you know, I would totally agree with you if he’d eaten so crappily for six months or so. But I really didn’t think he’d be able to gain that much weight or have that many health problems in only a month. That’s what really astounded me. I find the fast food/evil conglomerate part interesting but what I really took away from the movie is how little time it can take to produce drastic changes. It inspires me to be more vigilant about what I eat everyday but not to go on any campaigns against McDonalds or any other fast food.
Does Nabisco market Oreos as a meal? Huh? Ok, Post does, but Nabisco doesn’t.
So McDonald’s sells meals. What exactly about that implies that it’s okay to eat there three times daily? What should McDonald’s call what it sells: snacks? They are meals. I’ve had many a satisfying meal at fast food restaurants. But geez, never more than once a day, and maybe twice or thrice a week at the highest (when I had a meal plan in the college dorms and was forced to eat what they had).
Somehow, I’ve managed to keep my weight at an acceptable level.
The speed in which the filmmaker’s health deteriorated while making the film is entirely a product of the fact that unlike normal people, he was intentionally ignoring his body’s signals, he wasn’t attempting moderation in any way, he wasn’t exercising and there’s no evidence that he was doing anything to maintain any aspect of wellbeing during the filming. (There’s also no proof that he wasn’t eating other things off-camera, for that matter.) He went out of his way to be as unhealthy as was possible without laying in a bed on a continuous NG tube-feeding of lard.
The fact that its normal to eat three meals a day, and the fact that they offer a varied menu for all three meals.
He made the movie in response to Judge Sweet’s decision in the infamous Micky Dee’s lawsuit, which was tossed out in large part because the litigants failed to meet their burden to prove that “McDonald’s products involve danger … not within the common knowledge of consumers.”
The plaintiffs’ complaint, you’ll remember, was based on the corporation’s misleading claims about the nutritional value of their products. The vague claim that “McDonald’s can be part of a healthy diet and lifestyle,” which is true if it’s a insignficantly small part of a healthy diet and lifestyle, may well meet the test for deceptive advertising if it can be shown that McDonald’s actively encourages people to make their products a large part of their diet.
Well, for starters, one of the plaintiffs in that case claimed that she was led to believe that McChicken sandwiches were reasonable for everyday consumption by the slogan that they were advertised with at the time, which was, uh… oh yeah… “McChicken Every Day!”
Yeah, the average consumer is probably somewhat aware that eating McDonald’s food every day is a poor health choice. On the other hand, I think most consumers probably understand this in the general way that eating fried hamburger and french fries every day is a bad idea. The thing is, the health risks associated with eating McDonald’s products every day are an order of magnitude worse than subsisting on fried meat and spuds. It’s the processing. I’d wager that the average consumer would expect that eating a Quarter Pounder with Cheese every day would have less of a negative impact on health than eating a home-made burger each day – because Quarter Pounders are seemingly insubstantial next to a home-made burger.
Supersize Me was made largely because one little girl was surprised to find out that the food she was eating (with the moderation that comes with extreme poverty) made her into a morbidly obese, hypertensive diabetic. She didn’t have much in the way of food options and did not know that eating McDonald’s food every day would have catastrophic effects for her.
I don’t know that a lawsuit was an ideal solution to the problem, but I think that Supersize Me fits the bill admirably. “Hey kids! Don’t try this at home.”
You might think that it’s common sense that you ought not to eat fast food every day – but it’s really not that clear for everyone. This film will undoubtably help many people make more reasonable use of fast food.
Moderation? He ate three meals a day, and only took the “Supersize” option if it was offered. As for exercise, the sort of person who’s liable to eat fast food every day isn’t likely to be working the stairmaster very hard. The sort of people who fall into it usually do so out of laziness, lack of time, and little attention to their personal health. As for off-camera contributing factors to his health decline, sure, he could have been snorting lines of warfarin in between takes, but there’s nothing to suggest it. A diet that’s that high in processed sugars, hydrogenated oil, and salt is plenty sufficient to wreak havoc with your kidneys & liver, mess with your blood pressure, render you impotent, and of course widen your ass. In short order. Why do you imagine there must be some trickery involved?
Anyway, now I’m hungry. I’m gwinta go getta burga. (FTR, McDonald’s is an occasional part of my healthy diet and (ha!) lifestyle. I don’t think Spurlock was trying to claim that fast food is poison and should never be consumed – it’s more about getting the word out that it’s not, you know, suitable for daily consumption.)
I still think people like this girl, who don’t really have a choice, would have been a better central subject than Spurlock.
Indeed, the final sentiment of the film was personal responsibility – not that McDonalds or other fast food restaurants should be banned or run out of business – but that consumers should demand healthier options and make smarter choices. A significant portion of the film was also devoted to school lunch programs and how they have, in a lot of districts, been handed over to a lot of the same companies. It’s a priceless moment of the film when a school director has it pointed out to her that the can of lemonade she touts as a healthy choice for kids has more sugar and calories than a Pepsi.
Exactly. The other day my gramma was talking about how much nutrition has changed. Back in the fifties, they used to eat burgers and fries and think it wasn’t a half bad meal. You had your meat, your starch, and a litle vegetable on top. And my gramma was a nurse. She keeps up with the reading and knows fast food isn’t good for you; a lot of people don’t.
And it’s obvious just from the reaction the movie inspired a lot of people also didn’t know just how rotten that many fast food meals could be for you. We all know fast food is OK in moderation but I think the movie makes it clear just how moderate the moderation should be.