Quote:
Originally Posted by mlmpetert
So does the 1 man doing 1 thing also apply to the guy in the Supersize Me movie?
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Yes I agree with you and the more I dig into Super Size the less I find his study complaining but it did do a good job of shinning the light on obesity in America. This still doesn't mean McD's is good for you.
Some interest stuff on the doc:
Critics of the film, including McDonald's, argue that the author intentionally consumed an average of 5,000 calories per day and did not exercise, and that the results would have been the same regardless of the source of overeating.
[13] He was eating solely McDonald's food in keeping with the terms of a potential judgment against McDonald's in court documents highlighted at the beginning of the film. However, in the comedic documentary reply
Fat Head,
[14] Tom Naughton "suggests that Spurlock's calorie and fat counts don't add up" and criticizes Spurlock's refusal to publish the Super Size Me food log; The
Houston Chronicle reports: "Unlike Spurlock, Naughton has a page on his Web site that lists every item (including nutritional information) he ate during his fast-food month."
[15] The film addresses such objections by highlighting that a part of the reason for Spurlock's deteriorating health was not just the high calorie intake but also the high quantity of fat relative to vitamins and minerals in the McDonald's menu, which is similar in that regard to the nutritional content of the menus of most other U.S. fast-food chains.
About 1/3 of Spurlock's calories came from sugar. His nutritionist, Bridget Bennett RD, cited him about his excess intake of sugar from "milkshakes and cokes". It is revealed toward the end of the movie that over the course of the diet, he consumed "over 30 pounds of sugar, and over 12 lbs. of fat from their food."
[16] The nutritional side of the diet was not fully explored in the film because of the closure of the clinic which monitored this aspect during the filming of the movie.
Soso Whaley, the owner of Literary Llama Productions (an independent film production company), made a reply
[17] film called "Me & Mickey D."
[18] [19], in which she also ate all meals at McDonald's, yet lost weight -- 20 pounds over 60 days; 30 pounds in 90 days. Some of Whaley's requirements for her meals were the same as Spurlock's (had to eat everything on the menu over the course of the experiment, etc); but some were different (she didn't have to clean the plate -- Spurlock required himself to do so). Whaley also collected documentation in the form of itemized receipts for each meal, which Spurlock did not do. Whaley's results were quite different
[20].
Likewise, fitness advocate Chazz Weaver also created a documentary
[21] of his own 30-day McDonald's diet in response to Spurlock, and again results were entirely different from Spurlock's. Where Weaver's premise differed from Whaley's, however, was the commitment to exercise. Weaver acknowledged that without exercise, the fat-laden diet he ate at McDonald's would have resulted in a weight gain. The thrust of Weaver's thesis was an exercise plan. His result was weight loss (222 lbs down to 214 lbs), as well as improved blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides.
Spurlock claimed he was trying to imitate what an average diet for a regular eater at McDonald's—a person who would get little to no exercise—would do to them. Spurlock's intake of 5,000 calories per day was well over twice the recommended daily intake for a sedentary adult male, which would amount to only about 2,300 calories.
[22] A typical man consuming as many calories as Spurlock did would gain nearly a pound a day (which is roughly how much Spurlock gained), a rate of weight gain that could not be sustained for long periods. Additionally, Spurlock did not demonstrate or claim that anyone, let alone a substantial number of people, eats at McDonald's three times per day. In fact McDonald's is mentioned during the movie to have two classes of users of their restaurants: There are the "Heavy Users" (about 72% of customers, who eat at their restaurants once or twice a week), and the "SUPER Heavy Users" (about 22% of customers, who eat McDonald's three or more times a week).