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Comment by wholien | Hacker News Reader

> Besides just gaining weight, the movie also claimed that Spurlock got major liver damage and started suffering from a range of mental health issues, all as a result of eating fast food. Notably, none of the people who replicated the experiment suffered from these problems.

> 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.

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> 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.

The fact that he force fed himself kinda weakens the point though, doesn't it? Force feeding yourself 5,000 calories a day even when you feel sick is obviously going to make you sick.

It wouldn’t if you were already larger.

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…)

> salads were introduced (yes, you can argue they’re still high calorie),

I haven't tried those, but surely it is easier to overeat on fries and hamburgers compared to a salad?

Yeah, I agree with you.

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.

You are correct. They're better than you would expect -- and the price is reasonable.

I was curious, looks like the equivalent (calorie-wise) of fries & a double cheeseburger is 1KG of salad.*

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

[1] https://www.nutritionix.com/food/house-salad

Don’t you remember the closing act of the documentary?

The salad with dressing and nuts has more calories than a Big Mac!!

> I haven't tried those, but surely it is easier to overeat on fries and hamburgers compared to a salad?

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 [...]

It's still a little bit ridiculous.

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.

> If more than 1 or 2 of those are fast food, that's the problem.

Given that full service grocery store access is area-income dependent in the US, it's a complicated situation.

"Food deserts" (areas with no access to fresh food) are a huge problem, yeah.

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.

> 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.

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.

I'm confused about why you're confused. The point of the movie was definitely not to give the audience the shocking realism that if you're force feeding yourself to the point of vomiting, you're probably doing something wrong. This aspect of the movie only lessens the actual argument of the movie (except that it makes good headlines and thus probably drove the majority of the media coverage and general interest in the documentary).

> I don’t get the ‘eating 5000 calories of anything would make you ill’ argument against the movie.

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.

Think the point is that it's real easy to force feed yourself 5000 calories if it's 2500 calorie meals that don't fill you up for the day.

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.

> it's real easy to force feed yourself 5000 calories

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.

"ease" is relative here. And if you really care about that debate you can find some social media challenge posts fantasizing about how you'd consume 10000+ calories for 1b dollars. I wouldn't drone much more on that point past calorie density being an undertalked about issue with these "calories in, calories out" crowd.

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.

"that fast food is out of control in this country and needs to be regulated."

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.

Having the declarative knowledge then being able to practice it. I am sure most people know that they are supposed to eat 'healthy'. It can only be one part of a larger program to combat obesity.

Many people don't know just how unhealthy it really is. Many also don't know how to make or choose their own healthy food. It's mostly about habits. It's fine to eat a super-sized meal rarely if you were hungry enough and extremely active, but it's more of an exception.

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).

Tho person you replied to didn't say 'ban' they said 'regulate' and 'a larger plan to combat obesity', and your counter of alcohol is heavily regulated across the world. Some have government run shops, others have advertising bans, or mandatory health warnings, alcohol content labelling and so on. And probably in general should be more regulated.

It read like a ban to me. Other than age restrictions, which vary wildy, it doesn't seem like alcohol regulations have done anything to prevent unhealthy use.

> It read like a ban to me.

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'.

He was also gaining more weight than the laws of thermodynamics allow based on how many calories he was supposedly eating. Alcohol has a lot of calories.

Three meals a day at McDonald’s with the occasional supersize is easily 4000+ calories a day. That is a massive surplus to gain plenty of weight

Egg McMuffin and coffee for breakfast and then a Big Mac, medium fries and iced tea (or diet Coke or water) for both lunch and dinner is... 2130 calories. Not the pinnacle of the healthiest diet for sure. Over 30 days for a mid-sized dude, you might gain... one pound.

In the sister comment, I did some math and because the guy was 188cm and 220 pounds to start with, he needs 2400 calories per day just to keep his weight. He would have lost at least half a pound per week with the diet you just mentioned.

Absolutely, drinking diet coke or water is cutting out an enormous number of calories, as-is medium fries.

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.

sure but from google, he gained 25 pounds in a month. a pound of fat is about 3500 calories. 3500 calories/pound * 25 pounds / 30 days = 2916 calorie surplus. Morgan Spurlock is a 188cm tall man, which let's say he's 30 years old and 100kg (wikipedia says he gained 24.5 pounds/13% body mass), doing no to little exercise (he did walk 2km a day) that gives a Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) of 2406 calories per day (used this calculator : https://www.calculator.net/tdee-calculator.html?cage=25&csex...).

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.

Your math is off because you're forgetting the beverage:

~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.

Not a doctor fwiw, but elevated ALT and AST levels often comes with being overweight and that could be seen as liver damage. I'm willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt on this claim.

The doctor literally said in the film “Ive never seen this happen from fast food binges and can’t explain it. Usually this happens with alcoholics”

It was all a scam.

Remarkable the hand waving people go through to excuse dishonesty because they want to believe it so badly.

> 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.

Who is doing that? I don’t see that anywhere in this discussion.

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.

Late to this... but elevated ALT/AST levels is canonical observation of obese patients or patients with unhealthy diet.

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.

Well damn, this gives a whole new meaning to the Whitest Kids You Know skit about going on a whiskey diet:

https://youtu.be/uOyjzE1vcD4?si=6sejNKCk-VkIzwGo

Also RIP Trevor Moore, another tragedy.

Suddenly this Trevor Moore WKUK video makes a lot more sense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EIAN1YcEUI

I just thought it was a bad reaction to a change of diet. You can feel bad just from a few days of bad food. Can't imagine 3 meals a day for that kind of stuff.And ofc these were large portions for a (by BMI standards) very slight overweight man.

Umm who in America doesn’t know someone personally who has visible liver damage from fast food? I know multiple families where 4/4 people have it. Why would he make that up? He didn’t even go diabetic.

I’m just shocked Hollywood lied to us!

Hopefully this is an isolated event.

Even during the course of the documentary, at the end his doctors were saying his body was seeming to adapt to his new diet so always found it unsatisfactory that it just ended right there.

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