I just found out about the controversy behind Super Size Me a few days ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cw02ni/til_...
> Years after the movie’s release Spurlock admitted to being a lifelong alcoholic, despite claiming otherwise in the documentary. Alcohol abuse can easily explain the liver damage, and alcohol withdrawal during the filming of the documentary also explains the sudden mental health problems he was experiencing.
Hmm, I'm not sure what to think with this new information.
I really enjoyed the documentary when I watched it as a kid. But I did remember thinking it was weird he puked so early in the film. I brushed it off as "everyone is different", and forgot about it.
That's one of the few things I still remember from it, and the takeaway I had was "well, he's eating past the point of nausea, of course he's going to puke." And the fact that he accepted any time they offered to "supersize", just pointing out how hard fast food pushes excess calories. Kind of the point of the documentary, really, that fast food is out of control in this country and needs to be regulated.
I don’t get the ‘eating 5000 calories of anything would make you ill’ argument against the movie. That was sort of the whole point. At the time, fast food chains, and McDonald’s in particular, were pushing large (and the defunct supersize) meals all the time. That this was dangerous, especially for people who didn’t really think about it and trusted the companies, was the entire point of the movie.
Note that things have changed since then - arguably as a result of, or at least accelerated by, the movie. Supersize meals disappeared soon after it, salads were introduced (yes, you can argue they’re still high calorie), and on the whole fast food places are much less aggressively pushing the larger meals than they were in the early 2000s. I would say there’s more awareness of the importance of eating healthily among the general population too (not that that seems to be having ideal results…)
I haven't tried those, but surely it is easier to overeat on fries and hamburgers compared to a salad?
The argument is that they’re ‘misleading’ because the _dressings_ that are provided with them are surprisingly high in calories. Like, a standard size salad with all the provided dressing is not lower calorie than one of the more traditional menu options - and people may not realize that.
I’d say the salads are pretty good BTW - better than you might think a fast food place would do.
So yes, quite hard to overeat salad. Plus, eating that much salad would give a lot of nutrition, and throwing some beans & hemp hearts in would give you a lot of protein too.
Further to consider, it's not uncommon for people to eat the extra large fries and have two double cheeseburgers. The comparison to trying to overeat salad is only more favorable. We can also go furthe rand think of"fancy" burger places like Red Robin, there are several burgers on their menu that are over 2k calories.
* For the back of the napkin math - according to google, there's 815 calories in a fries and a double cheeseburger. For salad, I used this house salad recipe [1] as reference with 148 calories in a 170g serving
The salad with dressing and nuts has more calories than a Big Mac!!
This reads like someone who might not have been in America much. Friend, let me introduce you to ranch "dressing": https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelannpoling/7797400016
And yeah, the vegetables aren't the problem here - the problem is everything has to be sugar-coated (yes, even "savory" things like ranch dressing) for people to eat it, and then they drench everything from wings to burgers in it.
At the time, fast food chains, and McDonald’s
in particular, were pushing large (and the
defunct supersize) meals all the time. That
this was dangerous [...]
A human being should be eating 90 meals per month, give or take. If more than 1 or 2 of those are fast food, that's the problem.
To what standard should we be holding a restaurant meal? "Is it healthy for a person to eat 90 of these meals per month?" doesn't seem like a useful or realistic thing to do.
Given that full service grocery store access is area-income dependent in the US, it's a complicated situation.
Also, economically struggling people often can't prepare their own food, even if given groceries for free: they may be physically disabled, they may be unhoused, they may be unable to afford utilities or appliances, etc.
However, I think that altering the offerings of fast-food restaurants is not even remotely a suitable way to address that.
3 meals a day has nothing to do with health and everything to do with marketing. If the way we eat had any ties to common sense we wouldn't be eating our largest meal at the end of the day when we have nothing left to do except sleep.
Good thing that's not the argument I'm making in my comment. The argument I'm making is about forcing yourself to eat more than you want to while the very act of eating is making you feel sick. That's what Spurlock did in the movie; it's not representative of any significant population of people.
honestly the burger itself isn't too bad. Double quarter pounder is 750 calories, really filling. But tripling that from fries and drink is the real killer. You can probably lose weight from McDonald's simply by only getting water or unsweetened tea for a drink, and limiting yourself to small sides.
No it's not. If you have to force it, it's by definition not "easy". Overindulging in something is different from forcing yourself to do it. My problem with the movie is that it takes a very strange scenario (man forces himself to eat to the point of puking) and acts like that's teaching us lessons about the broader population, none of whom are doing that. It might be bad for you to eat unhealthy things that feel pleasurable, but it's obviously worse to do it so much that it's become an ordeal.
Main point: consuming 3000 excess calories a day roughly equates to an average person gaining 5 points a week, 20 pounds a month (which tracks with the documentary). That is extreme. But think of 1000 excess calories (2 pounds a week) and do it over a year. We know which one is worse, and we know which one is more common. And we know it doesn't just stop after a year.
I think there's merit in demonstrating an extreme experiment (especially in this day of social media) and using it to demonstrate what happens from less extreme, but longer term bad habits.
Eh, I would rather see change in the area of education and alternatives than just food type/portion/etc regulation. The education can apply to multiple foods and not just the pariah of the day. Ingredient studies and approvals/disapproval would be an area of regulation that I would support though.
If we extend this to alcohol, then we should ban all alcohol. Alcohol is generally fine in moderation or occasional use. But if we need to ban things because a minority of the population misuses it, then we will have an extremely long list (butter, sausage, steak, etc).
Then you need to increase your reading comprehension. I nowhere said or implied "ban".
Or you need to examine your biases; are you perchance a libertarian? Or really right-leaning in any way. If you're American, chances are very good the answer is 'yes'.
It was all a scam.
Remarkable the hand waving people go through to excuse dishonesty because they want to believe it so badly.
What I find remarkable is how badly people want to ignore just how bad fast food is for you. They'll use anything to dismiss completely the whole debate.
But one conclusion we can make is that his own results are useless unless your goal is to see the damage fast food will do to a severe alcoholic.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9659656/
Alcohol is definitely a confounding factor here but this documentary is more of a "social experiment" rather than a proper study.
It's patient sample size (n=1) and doctor (n=1). IIRC, the 2 other doctors MS consulted (cardiologist and a gastroenterologist) didn't mention the same opinion as the internal med doctor and the doctor who did voice the skepticism was also saying it shouldn't be a no brainer that eating Mcdonalds would cause health problems. Other doctors on the web have gone on record to say "this makes sense."
Obviously it doesn't absolve MS of unethical filmmaking practices but that doesn't mean the premise is false given the plethora of other medical literature that supports it.
Heck, I only weight 185lbs and back when I ate mcDonald's a single Egg McMuffin wasn't nearly enough food to make me feel full. I'd get two and a hash brown, and still be hungry and hour later.
So basically, he had to be eating at the very bare minimum 5400 calories per day to get that much weight. To be fair, the wiki page says he did average 5k calories per day so he would have been lying only about 400 calories (minimum) per day.
Checking online, supersize me fried are ~600 calories and a big mac ~600. So let's say you eat that 3 times a day, that's 1200*3 = "only" 3600 calories. I find it hard to believe he drank 1800 calories worth of drinks per day to fill the gap, especially since he was allowed to drink water. Looking at canadian mcdonald's website, a large pepsi is 290 cals/77 grams of sugar, were supersize me really double that? If so, I guess the conclusion is don't drink 462g (literally over a pound) of sugar.
~600 kcal for a Big Mac
~600 kcal for Super Size fries (7 oz)
~500 kcal for a Super Size Coca Cola (42 oz)
1700 kcal/meal or ~5000 kcal/day if breakfast is the same as lunch and dinner
The calorie count for breakfast will likely vary. Note that orange juice contains more calories than Coca Cola per volume, but I don't remember a Super Size fountain orange juice existing.
https://youtu.be/uOyjzE1vcD4?si=6sejNKCk-VkIzwGo
Also RIP Trevor Moore, another tragedy.
Hopefully this is an isolated event.
/s
It's unfortunate that on the day of his death all I can really think about is how troubled the man was, between dealing with alcoholism, cheating on his past wives / gfs, the sexual assault allegations, and resigning from his company because of just how negative his public image had become. He became something of a household name because of a misleading documentary that was arguably more about the dangers of alcoholism rather than fast food.
Strange processing the death of someone with such a mixed legacy.
So yes, its a super disingenious doc that is laughably transparent in its pandering to people just like you who want to make fun of obesity and trivialize it.
The experiment may have been flawed but it was clearly highlighting a real issue. One that isn't just a one month stint but a multi-decade lifestyle.
Fast food serves too much food? Just eat less. Its an absolutely absurd premise.
If only complex issues had simple solutions. Until then let's look at the layer above and solve that:
- government subsidies high fructose corn syrup, a calorie rich good.
- subsidized syrup used in almost all pre-processed food.
- is sold cheap, so it can target lower income individuals
- lower income individuals have less access to resources on dieting, or even nutrition facts.They also have less time to research such issue as they now need multiple jobs to barely pay rent.
- obesity increases in the US, disproportionately from lower income people
So we have 2-3 ways to tackle this issue past "just eat less".
And im not saying just eat less to fight obesity. Im saying portion sizes at a resteraunt are a moot point. People stop eating when they are no longer hungry. Do you always eat 100% of the food you get at a restaurant? Again, peiple treat obese people like theyre too stupid to figure out how they got fat, or theyre too weak minded and must have dietary decisions made for them. Fuck that. Theyre adults free to make choices like anyone else. Im all for education about nutrition, and supersize me offers 0 in that department.
Given how I grew up poor, yes. Yes I do. Restaurants that weren't a McDonald's were a treat (not that I wasted McDonald's). Wasting food was about the worst thing I could do to my grandparents. Any food I didn't eat at the restaurant was tomorrow's dinner. That mentality doesn't just go away even when your lifestyle improves and food is no longer scarce.
>Again, peiple treat obese people like theyre too stupid to figure out how they got fat, or theyre too weak minded and must have dietary decisions made for them. Fuck that.
Call them what you want. You asked for answers and you're rejecting the reality of the situation. The answer for obesity isn't just "make better life choices". It's a mental addiction like alcoholism, we need to treat it like so if we want results, instead of some excuse to degrade people (again, people are are disproportionately lower class income)
>that issue you brought up is NOT what supersize me is about.
Okay. My answer isn't really isn't about supersize me anymore. That ended when I spent my first response giving context to the situation and you decided to diverge the topic with "well what's the answer?". I
I got more subtle answers around 10th-12th grade with other documentaries. The education has to start somewhere. Supersize me is a decently engaging starting point. But I'm not in 5th grade anymore. I have other, more subtle documentaries to reference for that question.
I don't really hold it in regard anymore than I hold my 3rd grade math book. It did it's job, I'm thankful for it. I don't need to go back and tear it apart over how many things it gets wrong. I'm no longer its audience.
If you're for education, stop lambasting 2nd grade math just because it "lies" about negative numbers for a while. Sometimes it's easier to contrive a system and then build on it later by denouncing those simplicities. If you don't understand calories in/out (and yes, some people don't. Gotta start somewhere), you won't understand the issue with corn syrup subsidies, you won't have all the dots to connect, and you may not put them all together in one sitting.
>Theyre adults free to make choices like anyone else.
And child obesity skyrocketed around the same time too (another documentary I watched that I can't recall). I think it's falling over the last decade, but let's not pretend this is an issue relegated to "smart adults".
>People stop eating when they are no longer hungry
I have and sadly do still stress eat. Once more: stop treating this like obesity can just be solved by saying "eat less". It's like telling an alcoholic to stop drinking.
As a trend from the late 80s to 90s, fast food was on the upswing I'd say. Think back to the 1940s when most American's were not getting enough calories, the average American at the time was not getting enough calories. Fast forward to past the 60s when teenage car culture is all the rage, fast food is part of that picture. If there was effectively no fast food before 1950, and by 2000's it was culturally waning, it raises the question of when was peak fast food? Both in terms of cultural "coolness/acceptanced" and per-capita consumption. I don't know if the per-capita consumpion has gone down, but in terms of culture, I'd guess that happened in the early to mid 90s. Probably co-incided with America being mostly under-nourished, to now "over-nourished" (nourished in quotes as there, as soda calories etc are not really nourishment)
People have definitely become more aware of what they eat since the documentary came out. And I'm not sure how much of that can specifically be credited to the documentary but if we are still talking about than it clearly has done something right in raising awareness.
Obviously if you are doing research in this area you were never going to cite Super Size Me as it was never serious scientific research.
Ever tried to eat 5k calories in a day. I bet you cant. No one, and I mean no one, was taking fast food to the extremes he was without really really trying.
your average chipotle burrito is like half way there. throw in a breakfast, snack, and light dinner and easily 5k calories.