So I was Super Sized - Now What?

I saw Super Size Me with my son in May and left wondering what the point was. It was not a scientific experiment and little was said about what makes food good for us. I am no friend of the fast food industry, but I don't think this movie did its job. The film skipped crucial points while blaming one industry as the cause of America's weight problems.

For 30 days filmmaker Michael Spurlock finished everything he was served at McDonalds, three meals per day, whether he was still hungry or not, comsuming twice the calories he needed. He allowed himself only 2,000 walking steps per day, to mimic the average amount of daily exercise many Americans get. Surprise! He gained weight and his blood profile went from excellent to awful in three weeks. Consuming double the daily calorie one needs will give anyone problems regardless of the quality of the food. Additionally, there was little fiber and few fruits or vegetables in the McDiet. If he'd continued the experiment a few more months Spurlock would certainly have exhibited symptoms of vitamin deficiencies, but he never mentioned the importance of a varied diet.

In the film Professor Kelly Brownell, of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, stated that the obesity epidemic "can't have been caused by food we eat at home because we've been cooking at home for hundreds of years." Has he shopped for groceries in the past 40 years? Read the labels at any conventional grocery store. The typical processed food product is laden with partially hydrogenated fat, high fructose corn syrup and white flour. That's what much of our population calls daily fare.

Spurlock's doctors became alarmed about his liver function tests after three weeks. One doctor raved that he had no idea that you could "pickle your liver on a high fat diet." But it was not just a high fat diet. Near the end of the film Spurlock sat surrounded by 30 pounds of sugar, to demonstrate how much he'd consumed in 30 days. But most of the sugar he consumed in the soda pop and baked goods wasn't real sugar at all, it was high fructose corn syrup. (See Jennette Turner's article on sweeteners to learn about that stuff.) McDonald's still cooks the French fries in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, an artificial fat which a scientific panel concluded is not safe to eat in any quantity. McDonald's menu is full of these phony foods. Both are known to have adverse effects on blood fats, the liver, and the way the human body stores fat yet Spurlock said nothing about either. Opportunity lost.

While it was mildly entertaining, the film was not what it could have been: a clarion call for eating a wide variety of natural (real) food. It followed a path already beaten to death by so-called food activists while glossing over the points that could help people who desperately need the information.