McDonalds for a Month

Pfly

Well-Known Member
If this movie ever gets released, it should be interesting to see!
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Film records effects of eating only McDonald's for a month

25.01.2004 12.00pm - By DAVID USBORNE
NEW YORK - Normally sane actors have been known to gain or lose huge amounts of weight for their art. Think of Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary. Directors, of course, never have to undergo such torture. Or so it used to be, until Morgan Spurlock had a bright idea for a film project.

The first clue to his particular misery comes in the title of his documentary, which has become the darling of this year's Sundance Film Festival. It is called Super Size Me: A Film of Epic Portions and it is a sometimes comic but serious look at America's addiction to fast food.

Spurlock, a tall New Yorker of usually cast-iron constitution, made himself the guinea pig in this dogged investigation into the effects of fast food on the body. He ate only at McDonald's for a month - three meals, every day - and took a camera crew along to record it. If a server offered to super-size his order, he was obliged to accept - and to ingest everything, gherkins and all.

Neither Spurlock, 33, nor the three doctors who agreed to monitor his health during the experiment were prepared for the degree of ruin it would wreak on his body. Within days, he was vomiting up his burgers and battling with headaches and depression. And his sex drive vanished.

When Spurlock had finished, his liver, overwhelmed by saturated fats, had virtually turned to pate. "The liver test was the most shocking thing," said Dr Daryl Isaacs, who joined the team to watch over him. "It became very, very abnormal."

Spurlock put on nearly 12kg over the period and his cholesterol level leapt from a respectable 165 to 230. He told the New York Post: "I got desperately ill. My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I've never had in my life ... It was amazing - and really frightening." And his girlfriend, a vegan chef? "She was completely disgusted by me," he said.

Making the film over several months last year, Spurlock travelled through 20 states, interviewing everyone from fast-food junkies to the US Surgeon General and a lobbyist for the industry. McDonald's, for whom the film can only be a public relations catastrophe, ignored his repeated entreaties for comment.

Spurlock had the idea for the film on Thanksgiving Day 2002, slumped on his mother's couch after eating far too much. He saw a news item about two teenage girls in New York suing McDonald's for making them obese. The company responded by saying their food was nutritious and good for people. Is that so, he wondered? To find out, he committed himself to his 30 days of Big Mac bingeing.

The film does not yet have a distributor and, given the advertising clout of McDonald's, that may prove problematic. But the critics at Sundance seem to have been captivated. Certainly, the film is blessed by good timing. Obesity has in recent months captured headlines as America's new health scourge. The humour of the approach - and Spurlock's own suffering - obviously helps.

At the festival in Park City, Utah, he has had teams handing out "Unhappy Meal" bags on the streets with a few "Fat Fun Facts". For instance, one in four Americans visits a fast-food restaurant every day. And did you know that McDonald's feeds more people around the world every day than the population of Spain? The makers have self-rated the film "F" - for "fat audiences".

McDonald's has finally been forced to comment. "Consumers can achieve balance in their daily dining decisions by choosing from our array of quality offerings and range of portion sizes to meet their taste and nutrition goals," it said in a statement last week.

Spurlock claims that the goal was not to attack McDonald's as such. Among the issues he highlights is the willingness of schools to feed students nothing but burgers and pizza. "If there's one thing we could accomplish with the film, it is that we make people think about what they put in their mouth," he said. "So the next time you do go into a fast-food restaurant and they say, 'Would you like to upsize that?' you think about it and say, 'Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll stick with the medium this time.'"
 
Thanks for sharing that..

I believe it is about time for my yearly fast food. Our family only eats organic food, and whenever I have Fast Food or lots of unhealthy food I feel a little on the sick side. I love it, because I have such a strong immune system, and no health problems.
 
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All things in moderation. I could never eat at McD's moe than one a week.

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You'd be supprised what you can accomplish when your only other option is the dorm caf
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And when you don't, please give me the address of your employer so that I can send in my resume'.
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You hear about all the expansion that's going on up at GVSU? I've got a friend up there that lives in some of the new dorms...no I take it back; it's more like an apartment. She's got a kitchen, her own bathroom. It's nuts.
 
Yeah, they have grown like a weed up there. GVSU is one of the nicest campuses I've ever been on. When I left they were building new housing and it looked great. But, the "rub" is that Allendale isn't exactly a hip town to live in. I do miss Grand Rapids, great Blues clubs.
 
Oh wow..... if eating McDonald's for a month screwed that guy up that bad, I should probably be dead. All I ever eat is fast food........
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I'm living proof that eating a ton of McDonalds won't kill you...

I even lost weight!!!


Just try living in the middle of China for a summer and see how much Mickey Ds you huff down. There is only so much rice and noodles a person can take.

I lost ten pounds and ate McDonalds probably 4 or 5 times a week.
 
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Thanks for sharing that..

I believe it is about time for my yearly fast food. Our family only eats organic food, and whenever I have Fast Food or lots of unhealthy food I feel a little on the sick side. I love it, because I have such a strong immune system, and no health problems.

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Ugggghhh my mom is a vegan and only eats that organic crap like Tofu and no animal by products wow sounds boring you can have that.... it's all you.


Matthew
 
Matthew - Actually. We aren't like that. Mom doesn't buy the tofu and all the stuff you would expect. It's all normal food, just mostly certified organic, or different brands that are organic, but by all means no tofu and all that crap! We still eat meat, it's from the local livestock. I couldn't live without the normal food!
 
Yeah, how could you live without meat?
The funny thing about organic food, is I caught a Dateline a a couple years ago about how organic food was actually more unhealthy than its chemically treated counterparts. More bacteria passed through fertilizer feces, blah, blah , blah.
My motto is: don't waste your life being too concerned about trivial stuff like this.
LONG LIVE THE FOREMAN GRILL!!!
 
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There is only so much rice and noodles a person can take.

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I don't know...do you know I eat rice at least 5 days out of the week? Sometimes more than once a day...It's wonderful stuff if you stay away from that instant stuff...
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Weird, huh?
 
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LONG LIVE THE FOREMAN GRILL!!

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Heck yeah man, I use mine almost daily!
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On a side note- I wonder what would've happened to this guy if he'd eaten Taco Bell for 30 days straight?
 
it was because of this article i chose subway instead of wendy's for lunch today...ack! i miss my heart attack in a bag!
 
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