Supersized
I got this article in an email the other day. Here it is online:
Last February, Morgan Spurlock decided to become a gastronomical guinea pig.His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald's and document the impact on his health.
Scores of cheeseburgers, hundreds of fries and dozens of chocolate shakes later, the formerly strapping 6-foot-2 New Yorker - who started out at a healthy 185 pounds - had packed on 25 pounds.
But his supersized shape was the least of his problems.
Within a few days of beginning his drive-through diet, Spurlock, 33, was vomiting out the window of his car, and doctors who examined him were shocked at how rapidly Spurlock's entire body deteriorated.
"It was really crazy - my body basically fell apart over the course of 30 days," Spurlock told The Post.
His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression.
My thoughts on this -- well DUH! Of course eating fatty food for every meal for thirty days will cause you to pack on pounds and cause your health to go down the toilet. Why is this surprising?
Spurlock charted his journey from fit to flab in a tongue-in-cheek documentary, which he has taken to the Sundance Film Festival with the hopes of getting a distribution deal."Super Size Me" explores the obesity epidemic that plagues America today - a sort of "Bowling for Columbine" for fast food.
Oh, boy...we have the true agenda behind this revealed here. This guy is a Michael Moore wannabe. The same sort of muckraking, except this time it's McDonald's rather than the NRA.
Despite making dozens of phone calls, Spurlock fails to get anyone from McDonald's to agree to an on-camera interview.A spokeswoman for McDonald's told The Post yesterday that no representatives from the corporation had seen "Super Size Me."
"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," McDonald's said in a statement.
Well, actually, that's true. There are other things to eat at McDonald's besides burgers, fries and milkshakes. As you may know, I've being going to Weight Watchers for the past six months. When I do go to McDonald's on occasion, here is what I usually get: a grilled chicken caesar salad (4 Points), with croutons (1 Point) and low-fat vinaigrette dressing (1 Point). I may also get a fruit and yogurt parfait, which is 3 Points (2 Points if you leave off the granola never mind, granola makes no difference).
Now, if Mr. Spurlock were to have eaten salads with low-fat dressing and parfaits for every meal for thirty days, I doubt that he would have ended up with all those health problems. However, this would not have made a very good expose on the evils of McDonald's.
"He was an extremely healthy person who got very sick eating this McDonald's diet," Dr. Isaacs told The Post."None of us imagined he could deteriorate this badly - he looked terrible. The liver test was the most shocking thing - it became very, very abnormal."
Spurlock has since returned to normal health. "The treatment was to just stop doing what he was doing," Dr. Isaacs says.
Again, DUH!
Spurlock, a film producer who grew up in West Virginia and studied ballet for eight years, was spurred to make his first feature film while watching TV on Thanksgiving Day, 2002."I was feeling like a typical American on Thanksgiving - very bloated and happy on the couch - and at some point on the news they were talking about two women who were suing McDonald's.
"People from the food industry were saying, 'You can't link kids being fat to our food - our food is nutritious.'
"I said, 'How nutritious is it really? Let's find out."
What did he find out? That eating high fat McDonald's food for every meal (Who actually does that?) for thirty days (Again, who actually does that?) will make you fat and ill. Sorry to keep repeating myself, but all I can say to that is...DUH!
Does Mr. Spurlock want some sort of food police to keep people from making bad choices in their eating habits? Should corporations be sued because people choose to stuff their faces with burgers and fries all the time and get fat? Please show me where McDonald's is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to eat Big Macs.
Incidentally, I've noticed that Fr. Bryce Sibley and Mac Swift have also mentioned this story.