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Often times when I eat McWorld food I am still hungry after eating a meal. Even supersized. But then again I eat alot.

 

When I used to work for McBombs and I had to eat that shit every day I couldn't tell if it was keeping me alive or killing me though. Shit is daaag nasty!

 

I wouldn't be surprised if that was clown meat! Soylent Green is made of people!

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Guest BROWNer

you didn't like my 'big round patty of shit' comment?

i'm being dramatic..but..

 

quote: "He absolves us of responsibility for our own fitness. We aren't to blame for being fat; big corporations are!”

 

whatever..this guy got this stuff in some large papers as well, pull quote style..

i'm not personally going to get behind that logic. i thought

the movie was a sick joke about what happens when you deliberately fat off on burgers.

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Guest imported_El Mamerro

No, the patty of shit comment was rather clever.

 

I'm just wondering if you feel the criticism is unsubstantiated. I haven't seen the movie, so I can't say what the statement is: we get fat because we choose to, we get fact because corporations shove food in our faces, or both.

 

After seeing Michael Moore get away with some pretty shady manipulations to make his case, I can't help but be wary this guy will do the same... and that's what these critics seem to imply he did.

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During the journey, Spurlock also put his own body on the line, living on nothing but McDonald's for an entire month with three simple rules:

 

1) No options: he could only eat what was available over the counter (water included!)

2) No supersizing unless offered

3) No excuses: he had to eat every item on the menu at least once

 

It all adds up to a fat food bill, harrowing visits to the doctor, and compelling viewing for anyone who's ever wondered if man could live on fast food alone.

 

this alone would get me in the cinema

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here in australia i have noticed ALOT of television commercials and print ads promoting fruits and vegetables, by recomending servings, recipies etc, as well as this new government campaign "find 30" which shows little things you can do to get your 30 minutes of excersize a day...go into the city and along with mcdonalds and kfc there are also PLENTY of otherHEALTHY fastfood type places e.g- subway, MYO, fresh n tasty or even the salads plus menu at mcdonalds or other conventional fast food places have adopted.

 

now this has been going on for some time but do people choose to listen and follow? no! but then citizens living in this very city say that fastfood has made them fat because they are exposed to it on a regular basis...

its almost like a rapist sueing a porn company because they exposed him to pornograpgic material.

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Guest imported_Tesseract
Originally posted by El Mamerro

After seeing Michael Moore get away with some pretty shady manipulations to make his case

 

The thing that bugged me the most with M.M was that he was being overdramatic to make a case. However, i wouldnt call any of his stuff 'shady manipulations' what you're reffering to?

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Guest imported_El Mamerro
Originally posted by Tesseract

The thing that bugged me the most with M.M was that he was being overdramatic to make a case. However, i wouldnt call any of his stuff 'shady manipulations' what you're reffering to?

 

Here you go... the spinsanity case.

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Guest imported_El Mamerro

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree in any way with what he's trying to say... just not too keen on the way he goes about it. BFC is still an incredible eye-opener, as no doubt will be "Supersize Me".

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i haven't eaten fast food since last october.

(except Subway Veggie Delights)

 

 

i heard about this movie awhile ago, i may see it..

but that would be preaching to the converted.

 

fast food is awful.

 

Fast Food Nation was a good book.

eye opening.

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I will probably end up seeing this movie, but I recently read an article in Esquire which questions the movie's theme. It's worth the read.

 

McDiculous

A new film that blames fast food for America's weight problem is clever, entertaining, and totally misguided

 

by Chuck Klosterman | May 01 '04

 

STAYING ALIVE IS COMPLICATED. There is just so much in this wicked world that can kill us: cancer, avalanches, liver failure, street gangs wearing baseball uniforms, gravity, electric chairs, Rwandan death squads, hammerhead sharks, werewolves, hemlock, and a boundless cornucopia of other coldhearted entities that exist solely so that we may not. Everything is bad for you. Food is bad for you. Food—something you need in order to stay alive—is probably killing you right now. Food hates you. But food cannot be held accountable for its diabolical actions, even if Morgan Spurlock thinks otherwise.

 

Spurlock is the director of the documentary Super Size Me , which opens May 14. The film chronicles Spurlock's experiment on his own thirty-two-year-old body. For thirty days, he ate nothing but food from McDonald's. If it wasn't on the menu, he did not consume it. (For example, he wouldn't even take aspirin, as McDonald's does not offer pharmaceuticals.) Within the reality of the movie, the results are staggering: Spurlock gains twenty-five pounds, watches his cholesterol spike sixty-two points, shows signs of liver failure, becomes profoundly depressed, and vomits on camera. The goal of Super Size Me is to illustrate how fast-food restaurants contribute to the overall obesity of America. (Sixty percent of U. S. adults are overweight, according to this movie.) You may recall that in 2002, two girls unsuccessfully sued McDonald's, claiming that their inability to stop eating was the restaurant's fault. (One of the plaintiffs was five feet six and weighed 270 pounds.) Perhaps you thought that lawsuit was frivolous. Well, that's because it was. It was completely idiotic, as is the entire philosophical premise of this movie.

 

Now, before I get into this, I want to be clear about something. Super Size Me is not an unwatchable movie. It's generally interesting and always entertaining, and it won the documentary director's prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival in January. Moreover, Spurlock seems like a great guy. He came over to my apartment to screen his documentary on my living-room TV, and he drank four Sierra Nevada beers, and he has a cool-looking Jack McDowell mustache and a foxy vegan girlfriend who vaguely resembles Brady Bunch star Eve Plumb. I hope Spurlock makes money from this movie. In fact, I encourage people to see Super Size Me , if for no other reason than to consider its two problems.

 

The first problem is tangible: Is this movie true?

 

Honestly, I'm not sure that I can answer that question; maybe it is and maybe it isn't.

 

The second question is ideological: Does this movie make a valid point?

 

No.

 

Let me first address the former query. It may seem irrational to question the reality of Super Size Me , since the evidence appears on the screen. We see Spurlock go to the doctor, we see him eat a shitload of Big Macs, and then we see him go back to his physician to track his devolution. Around day twenty-one, a doctor suggests that Spurlock may die if he doesn't change his diet. I question that diagnosis, and here's why: I once did something very similar to this. In 1996, I ate only Chicken McNuggets for an entire week. For seven straight days, I consumed nothing else—no fries, no Filets-O-Fish, no McDonaldland cookies, no nothing. All told, I ate somewhere between 230 and 280 McNuggets. And you know what happened to me? Nothing. Nothing happened. I gained exactly one pound. My cholesterol and blood pressure actually went down .

 

Now, did I feel stellar at the end of that week? Not quite. I felt like I was coated in petroleum jelly. But I've certainly felt far worse at other points in my life; I think I feel worse right now. But in this movie, Spurlock struggles almost immediately. By the third day of the experiment, he starts to act like a dying smack junkie. It all seems pretty sketchy.

 

Granted, it's possible that I'm well suited to this kind of contrived gluttony. For some reason, my body has an unbelievably high tolerance for everything, and my organs seem indestructible. But I still suspect Super Size Me is somewhat exaggerated; if it wasn't, it couldn't exist. You could not sell a movie about eating fast food and feeling fine. And Spurlock didn't just eat; he gorged himself at every possible turn. He was ramming down five thousand calories a day. He was eating unreasonably on purpose. But when I pointed that out, he implied that I was missing the point.

 

"Someone else asked me about that," he said. "And he argued that if you ate nothing but broccoli for a month, that would make you sick, too. And that's probably true. But you know what? Nobody is telling you that broccoli is a meal. McDonald's is trying to convince people that their stuff is a legitimate meal, and that you can eat it every day."

 

Here is where the second problem with Super Size Me —the larger philosophical problem—comes into focus. This is a movie about alleged victimization. But the biggest problem with America is not faceless corporate forces. The biggest problem with America is people who blame faceless corporate forces instead of accepting accountability for their own lives*. And that's what Super Size Me is ultimately about: It's about blaming a chain restaurant for offering a product that people choose to consume.

 

Early in the documentary, Spurlock poses an important question: He asks us where personal responsibility ends and corporate responsibility begins. Super Size Me never answers that question, but I will: Corporate responsibility begins when corporations start breaking the law; meanwhile, personal responsibility never ends. Spurlock questions the ethics of offering consumers forty-two-ounce beverages and massive portions of fries, arguing that people can't help themselves. "It's just human nature to eat what you get, even if you don't need it or want it," Spurlock says. Well, whose fucking fault is that? Why is a restaurant supposed to worry about people who get fat by eating food they supposedly don't want? **

 

Now, don't misunderstand me; I don't feel altogether comfortable defending McDonald's. I almost feel like I'm saying, "Hey, man, Darth Vader had every right to build the Death Star. He had all the proper zoning permits." However, the paradigm advocated by Super Size Me is wrong. McDonald's is a publicly traded capitalist venture. Its function is to earn as much as it can by offering people a product they want. Perhaps you hate that notion. Well, go ahead and hate it. Hate it hard. But don't blame McDonald's because you can't control your own life.

 

Spurlock criticizes McDonald's for not being up-front about the lack of nutrition in its food. This reminds me of people who sued tobacco companies because nobody told them that inhaling smoke is less healthy than inhaling oxygen. Spurlock also attacks the prevalence of McDonald's advertising campaigns, and he hates the way they target children. This is intriguing, because I remember seeing thousands of "Just Say No" advertisements when I was young, and those didn't seem to take. All those "Got Milk?" ads don't seem to make people crazy for milk, either. Why is it that the only advertising campaigns that work seem to sell bad things that people actually desire? Isn't that a weird coincidence?

 

Commercials for McDonald's claim its food is marvelous and that you should eat it constantly. And maybe you believe that. And maybe you need documentary filmmakers to protect you from yourself, because life is dangerous. And life is dangerous. Like I said, staying alive is complicated. But I'll take my chances.

 

 

* Actually, this is more like the second biggest problem in America; the biggest is that we somehow managed to elect the worst president since Ulysses S. Grant. But it's tight.

 

**Yet—amazingly—this appears to be already happening. In early March, McDonald's announced that it plans to phase out Super Size items by the end of the year. Company officials insist that this move has nothing to do with the release of this documentary. I insist they are lying.

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NIce thread Brownsz

 

I was going to make this one two because

the film is playing at the HotDocs (local doc festival)

In fact.. there were posters put up for it right outside my window.

sheesh.

 

My one question:

 

The guy was a marathon runner before his experiment.

Did he continue with his training while pigging out?

Certainly if you take someone in tiptop shape,

then stop the exercise, their body will change suddenly.

I'm sure an overweight, beer drinking, chain smoker

would be better able to handle a McDiet.

Something about cockroaches being able to live forever by eating shit.

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I know a girl who spent much of her teenage years doing drugs and eating McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She was skinny, with terrible skin, and had cellulite. On another note, I ate McD’s the other day (it’s a rarity) and had the fries with 4 packs of McChicken sauce.

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Eve Plumb was Jan right? Poop, that article was written by a total douche. I haven't seen SuperSize Me, but if there is one fast food giant bent on change right now it's the fucking clown shop. I don't see anyone else working with oil giants to make a healthful fryer oil, or using free range chickens. Not that i would eat there anyhow. Maybe they should put up a warning sign at the exit/drive through, this food contains fat may be harmful to you're health but is also required by the body to survive in amounts less one tenth of what you have just consumed.

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something to consider:

 

the fast food joints are fulfilling a high demand.

otherwise, they wouldn't be spreading everywhere.

as consumers demand different things, the companies change the product to fit the taste.

 

if the american (and now onto the rest of the world) culture was more socially conscious, these vicious corporations wouldn'r have the stranglehold that they do on the restaurant industry.

 

people are crying out at every turn for homogeneity; the comfort of what is known.

 

and on another cultural note, why is everything served in massive portions, and consumed to the maximum?

when did people start believing, (in our rich society) that just because you COULD have more, you SHOULD.

 

i have never been one to eat until i was stuffed, unless it's thanksgiving.

 

apparently though, for millions of americans, that is how to eat.

 

this is not the fault of fast food.

fast food has simply come to reflect the eating habits of our culture, exploited to the fullest by formatting meals to an industrial production line.

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Guest imported_Tesseract

agreed !@#$%...thats also proven by the fact that even though in europe we got the same ammount of the same fast food joints, we dont have so many fat people.

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Guest BROWNer

mamerro..from what i gather, that quote seems to be the gist

of the dude's argument. just slightly preposterous don't you think?

some of the other stuff i read on there seemed to highlight spurlock's career

and the outrageous things he's done as a way to pick at his character.

anyhow..it's quite hard to say much about this until

we've all seen it. i still think this should be taken a bit lighter.

..and if this movie is supposed to be some big political thing against

mcdonalds, then i think he could have picked a different and better

angle then the quality of food thing..a corporation its size is bound to

have some shady shit somewhere..

perhaps a compilation of things they've done and the 'ethical' substance of them..

for instance, things like the mcafrika

burger or something...

 

also.....i wish people would keep in mind that 'documentary' does not

necessarily correlate to 'truth'. i guess it's supposed to but it doesn't..

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  • 2 weeks later...

bump for closing down my thread.

 

 

the criticism of this guy is bullshit. even if he completely made up everything in the film, the fact remains that what, 60% of americans are over weight?!

that is fucking disgusting.

even if dude equated mcdonalds with the murder of nick berg, it does not change the fact that we're a whole country full of fat, lazy pieces of shit who are eating ourselves to death.

at our current rate, 1/3 of american adults will be diabetic in the next (i believe) 20 years. that is insane.

 

seeing this made me happy that i'm skinny, vegetarian, and for the most part, pretty active. i eat alot of 'fast food' but it's always taco bell or subway, which are about as lesser of all evils as you can get.

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Guest imported_El Mamerro

^Seeking, as far as I can tell, most of the criticism leveled against the guy is that he seems to put a substantial amount of blame for American fatness on the fast food corporations themselves. If individual choice was taking a back seat in sharing the blame, then I believe the criticism was somewhat substantiated.

 

From your reaction/conclusions after watching the film, I gather it is not so, which is a good thing.

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