Join me for a cheeseburger and a Coke as we put our feet up, get grease all over ourselves, and examine the deeply-rooted pop culture belief that fast food is bad for you. And here's a thing of honey-mustard sauce to drink for dessert.
The questionable nutritional value of fast food, and of McDonald's in particular, came under its closest scrutiny when documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock released Super Size Me in 2004. The movie documented his own experience living exclusively on McDonald's food for 30 days. He averaged 5,000 calories a day, and when you consider that a Big Mac contains only 510 calories, you know that he was really packing it in. He super-sized every meal that was offered. Most dramatic was Spurlock's reported health problems. Not only did he gain 13% of his body weight, he also developed liver problems, depression and other psychological effects, and sexual dysfunction. Super Size Me also contained a large amount of editorial content about how McDonald's deliberately forces cheap, unhealthy food onto an unsuspecting public for profit.
Super Size Me was the most popular documentary of the year, and was nominated for an academy award. Its claims were generally accepted without critique by nearly everyone who watched it or even just heard about it. But this result was virtually guaranteed by Spurlock's choice of subject matter. McDonald's is probably the world's easiest target. It's always popular to be anticorporate; it's always popular to bash fast foods, and audiences are generally well predisposed to welcome any information that supports these concepts.
Spurlock's results were only presented in his movie. No actual data was published or subjected to any scrutiny or peer review. We have only his verbal statements to go on, plus the lines delivered onscreen by the doctor and nutritionist who performed in his movie. This is a Hollywood entertainment, it's not valid scientific data. However, for the sake of argument, my inclination is to give Spurlock the benefit of the doubt and accept his claims as valid, and accept the movie dialog as actual opinions of unbiased health professionals. From the perspective of responsible empiricism, that's a stretch, but I'm willing to do it. The problem is that Spurlock's results are highly deviant from other research on the same subject.
The questionable nutritional value of fast food, and of McDonald's in particular, came under its closest scrutiny when documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock released Super Size Me in 2004. The movie documented his own experience living exclusively on McDonald's food for 30 days. He averaged 5,000 calories a day, and when you consider that a Big Mac contains only 510 calories, you know that he was really packing it in. He super-sized every meal that was offered. Most dramatic was Spurlock's reported health problems. Not only did he gain 13% of his body weight, he also developed liver problems, depression and other psychological effects, and sexual dysfunction. Super Size Me also contained a large amount of editorial content about how McDonald's deliberately forces cheap, unhealthy food onto an unsuspecting public for profit.
Super Size Me was the most popular documentary of the year, and was nominated for an academy award. Its claims were generally accepted without critique by nearly everyone who watched it or even just heard about it. But this result was virtually guaranteed by Spurlock's choice of subject matter. McDonald's is probably the world's easiest target. It's always popular to be anticorporate; it's always popular to bash fast foods, and audiences are generally well predisposed to welcome any information that supports these concepts.
Spurlock's results were only presented in his movie. No actual data was published or subjected to any scrutiny or peer review. We have only his verbal statements to go on, plus the lines delivered onscreen by the doctor and nutritionist who performed in his movie. This is a Hollywood entertainment, it's not valid scientific data. However, for the sake of argument, my inclination is to give Spurlock the benefit of the doubt and accept his claims as valid, and accept the movie dialog as actual opinions of unbiased health professionals. From the perspective of responsible empiricism, that's a stretch, but I'm willing to do it. The problem is that Spurlock's results are highly deviant from other research on the same subject.
This is a good rebuttal to the infamous documentary. The thing is people are so quick to accept any criticism without actually thinking about things.
If we all followed the nutritional guidelines we'd be eating like rabbits. I'll bet he did have liver issues after that drastic of a diet change.
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