Super Size Me: A documentary by Captain Obvious

I watched it. The result: I gained an extensive set of information (read: ammo) about specifically why this movie is a complete waste of time.

Let’s take a look at the premise of the film. Morgan Spurlock will eat McDonalds for all three meals in a day, and do this for 30 days straight. Firstly, there is no value in conducting such a stupid experiment, because it is not based on realistic conditions. No one eats 3 McDonalds meals a day for 30 days straight. I’m going to make a documentary where I drink water 55 times a day, almost die, and then tout myself as a hero for saving the world from the deadly threat of water.

During his ‘experiment’, he consistently visits doctors to find out how it is affecting his health. Obviously, his cholesterol, triglycerides and other its-bad-to-be-high measures go way up. For some reason I cannot fathom, he is surprised by this. He then calls his wife to tell her that eating lots of McDonalds is making him sick. She is shocked, and starts freaking out. Once again, this scenario is not realistic. There is no reason why either of them should be shocked. Here’s a more believable series of events: He calls his wife to tell her that he never graduated high school. She is not shocked at all.

Once the experiment is complete, he ends up gaining something like 20 pounds and supposedly doubles his risk of heart disease. Frankly, I don’t find the latter to be that threatening since he was very healthy to begin with (if your initial risk is almost-zero, doubling it means it’s still freaking almost-zero). He then goes on an “antitoxin” diet specified by his Vegan Chef wife and manages to undo the damage in about 3 months time.

Really? That’s it? For the movie to really be effective, he pretty much needed to almost die. People don’t respond to petty issues like mild depression and weight gain. There just wasn’t enough gore in this movie for his attempted scare tactic to work. While I could sit and list a comprehensive list of all the ways Spurlock fails, I will narrow it down to four:

  1. “McDonald’s is Evil. Spreading this movie will help destroy it!”

    WRONG. McDonalds does not give a shit about Morgan Spurlock’s undocumentary. They own eight trillion franchises all over the world, and have already expanded to Mars since we discovered there might be water there. Spurlock mentions in this movie that 2 weeks after releasing the film, McDonald’s got rid of the Super Size option, hinting that his movie was the driving force behind that change.

    BULLSHIT.

    The only reason McDonald’s did that is simple catalogue optimization. They figured that if they just make everything one size bigger by default, that’s one less choice the customer has to make (remember: choices involve thinking, and 40% of Americans are allergic to that). Suddenly, all these people are eating and drinking Large size items thinking that they are eating healthier because they didn’t Super Size. Genius.

  2. “The Average Joe will see how much harm eating McDonald’s caused, and mend his ways!”

    WRONG. Here’s what immediately came to my mind after watching this movie: “If eating like that only adds 20 pounds, eating it once a week should do no real harm at all.”

    Do you realize what just happened? Watching this movie actually reinforced my own belief that it’s okay to eat McDonalds. Stunning work.

  3. “Some Americans eat McDonald’s for all their meals. Once they see me do it they’ll know it’s time to stop!”

    RIGHT. Just kidding, you’re still wrong. Americans who are stupid enough to eat McDonald’s for every single meal will not learn anything from your movie. They drink 10 gallon sodas 3 times a day and wonder why they have heart disease.

    FACT: This is all part of a well-documented phenomenon known as natural selection. Instead of wasting time and money trying to solve this non-problem, we should devote our resources to trying to save the world from the biggest threat since the plague: a little known syndrome called OMGSFH (OH MY GOD SWINE FLU HELP). This disease has spread rapidly throughout the States and has taken hundreds of lives. It starts by inducing a mental state of panic, at which point individuals begin to run around in circles. Soon, their trajectory intersects with others who have contracted OMGSFH, and they run into each other and fall. Not being able to get up, they eventually starve to death.

  4. “Well, at least people are talking about it. That’s good…right?”

    WRONG. People talking about McDonald’s means people thinking about McDonald’s, which inevitably leads to people eating McDonald’s (if you think my logic is flawed, your opinion is wrong). Where does such a metric actually make sense? That’s right, kids — advertising. QED. This entire film is a giant ad for McDonald’s. Congratulations Spurlock, you are officially a more profitable mascot than Ronald McDonald.

I’m off to go get a Big Mac.

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4 thoughts on “Super Size Me: A documentary by Captain Obvious

  1. Tyler says:

    I ate mcd’s 17.3x more in the 6 months after i saw this movie than the 6 months before.

    His wife was vegan.

    http://pramode.net/2008/09/22/learning-windows-is-like-learning-to-eat-every-meal-at-mcdonalds/

  2. Robert says:

    It gets FAR worse than that Sal.

    I had many friends recommend me this movie and I thought it was utter bullshit. The first scene of him eating the burger in the car pissed me off. As if that was a typical eating experience at McDonald’s. Fucking drama queen. Then the FIRST time he enjoys the experience he compares it to his cigarette addiction. Isn’t that great?

    He also does other bullshit like when he interviews the two young black males and asks them how they feel about it. They tell him that it’s easy to eat lots of McDonalds. Just do a few big Macs and a few pushup and you’re all good. Then he counters it with two fat middle-aged white females who say, “oh my God, it’s so hard for me to keep up!” *gasp*. Way to attempt to destroy personal responsibility.

    The ONLY half decent segment that I could sympathize with this was the lunch time school meals. I had horrific choices and sometimes it was just a box of fries and gravy.

    Anyways, the worse part about all of this?

    He created an MTV show called “I Bet You Will”:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Bet_You_Will. Where he gets people to eat gross shit. When asked how he feels about getting people to do these things. He responded that it’s their choice and they opted to do it. Niiice move.

    What an ass.

  3. Salman Ansari says:

    Re: Tyler – updated to be Vegan. I disagree with the article you posted… at least McDonald’s is tasty. Do you have any idea how many hacks (aka toppings) I had to put into Windows before it even looked appetizing?

    Re: Rob – Totally agree. In fact, I had about 2-3 paragraphs ranting about how pathetic he is for taking 45 minutes to eat a freaking Quarter Pounder. I cut that out (among other things) because the rant became far too long lol. And yeah, the schools thing is the only real valid point (as well as positive point with that one school serving only natural stuff).

  4. Adam Watt says:

    The complete idiocy of this arduous documentary riled me. Spurlock was eating 5000 calories a day, 2500 or so above the caloric requirements to maintain his weight. Regardless of whether you consume this many calories as a result of Mcdonald’s or a complete vegetable diet (understandably not very feasible yet this is hypothetical)you will get fat. Spurlock only served to further victimise a fast food industry that offers it’s clientele complete personal choice; sadly many don’t understand how to integrate ‘fast food’ into a calorically controlled diet and the obesity epidemic stops at the door of corporate responsibility once more. I’m not saying these fast food chains are innocent, yet Spurlock could have at least pretended to confront basic nutritional principles before this 90 minute slog, principles that could have at least been described to him through the nasally smugness of his vegan girlfriend, who basked in her nutrient halo as she loathed the carnivorous joyride of her better half. What a saint for sticking by him… Sadly the only enlightenment I garnered from this documentary was the enforcement of the notion that idiocy permeates so much of society. How can anyone qualified in the law profession take on a case where two teenagers have become fat as a result of their own stupidity? Yet such a case was highlighted in this film. I have an idea, Put down the big mac and take some personal responsibility. On the broad point of societal ignorance, the pinnacle of this documentary for myself as an irate viewer was the ‘Haelth’ registered dietitian who taken aback when in his third week Spurlock had maintained his weight proclaimed “you must have lost some muscle and gained some fat, muscle weighs more than fat.” No you silly cow muscle is more dense than fat, they both weigh the same. No wonder your health/dietary/nutritional/misinformation centre ceased operations. Rant over.

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