Super size me and the food disorders

Despite the title, the main character of this documentary is not a super sized American. Morgan Spurlock is a healthy citizen from the United States (one of the very few) that seems to have a normal, balanced diet although never in the documentary we see how does he eat before filming the movie.

Motivated by the sue that two obese teenagers have against the famous fast food company McDonalds, he decides to conduct an experiment feeding himself three times per day, every day, during 30 days only with McDonalds food…yeah, that includes breakfast. With this experience he tries to prove the effects that a hiper-caloric, high fat, high carbohydrates diet can have in the human organism.

He tests his cholesterol, triglycerides, uric acid, blood pressure, blood sedimentation, heart functionality, liver activity prior to start this wonderful diet. Besides he visits an specialized dietist who take the typical physical anthropological measures; abdominal, knees and side fat, cardiovascular and lung response to physical stress. He is supervised by three doctors; his GP, a cardiologist and a gastrologist. They conclude he is a more than healthy individual, who does not smoke nor drinks (far from the average anyhow).

The rules for this experiment are:

• He must fully eat three McDonald’s meals per day
• He must try every item on the McDonald’s menu at least once over the course of the 30 days (this he managed in nine days)
• He must only ingest items on the menu. This includes bottled water. Any and all outside consumption of food is prohibited.
• He must “Super Size” his meal whenever, and only when, the option is offered to him.
• He will attempt to walk about as much as a typical American, based on a suggested figure of 5 000 steps per day, but this was not firm as he walked relatively more while in New York than Houston.

During the second day of this diet  Spurlock’s first Super Size meal, which happens to be a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, takes 22 minutes to eat. He experiences steadily increasing aches during the process, which culminates in Spurlock vomiting in the parking lot. So nice!

After the diet, which seems to me just disgusting and not only because I do not like these kind of burgers, he has gained 11 kg (24.5 pounds) . After the magical vegan diet of his girlfriend (Alex Jamieson) and 8 months he comes back to his normal life and becomes vegetarian.

First, I do not consider this a proper experiment;  he tries to look for a causal relationship between being obese, depressed, having heart palpitations, and thousand small little disorders and the fact he only walks ca. 1.5 km and only eats McDonalds. He does not even consider the psychical aspect of stress while making the movie or the abrupt response his body gives to this new diet. In the other hand we can possibly believe the physical control because there are analyses that showed how the tryglicerids increased. But how to test if his state of mind is as he pretends to be. he does visit any psychologist or anything.

Second, and most important, I am glad of being an individual with the ability of deciding what to eat. McDonald’s does not force anyone to get into a restaurant and eat. In the same way nobody forces me to smoke or to chew gum,or to use any particular parfum…it is true, that we all know now that smoking is a bad habit and eating McDonald’s is not considered a pernicious eating yet. However, if any particular society falls into the so-called Goverment’s paternalism where ads start to be banned just because an abusive use of anything can potentially kill, where do we leave intelligence?. May be, the USA goverment should consider the inclusion of a label saying “Eating McDonalds can kill” in every Big Mac, but then also that whole country should be labelled as that.

Anyhow the documentary is worth seeing and I am sure it was useful for some people but in the end, what I demand is an intelligent society where there are very few prohibitions and where people is treated as adult individuals, not to the extreme of an anarchy, but something like not to need to say every 100 m “Live at your own risk”.