yecul

I want to see this movie in the theatre while eating a Whopper.

MrN

I saw this film this weekend and I agree with this statement:

I guess everyone knows what the premise is and that its not a good idea to go with a fast food diet for that long. But I'm glad the film went a little beyond that and examined other issues. Corporate vs. Personal responsibility; Fitness in America etc.

I also want to see The Corporation which they had a trailer for - no doubt it will agree with everything said in Super Size Me.

Josh-da-man

I haven't seen this movie but it just sounds incredibly stupid. I agree that it comes off more as a Jackass-style stunt than a serious documentary.

A guy spends a month eating probably 6000 calories a day of sugars, carbohydrates, and saturated fat and puts on weight? Oooooh.

This thing just reeks of bullshit. If the guy didn't get sick and fat, he wouldn't have had much of a point in making the movie, would he?

MrN

Yes, that is the premise but the film goes beyond that. Nobody wants to see a film whose only point is 'fast-food is unhealthy.'

I don't know how to convince anyone of this but I just checked rotten tomatoes and the rating is 90%.

Michael T Hudson

I agree I read the Fast Food Nation in 2002 and have not had McDonalds since then. After seeing the movie last weekend I have decided no more fast food for me ever again. I loved the movie.

Kinyo

DAC

Here is another film to watch

Meet your Meat

Corvin

I've been sitting on this for a while. Before Morgan goes on his McDonald's diet, he is having a conversation with his mom, about his liver, no less. He's saying how he had done some reading of his own, and found that the liver is an extremely resilient organ.

It seems fishy, to me, that he'd be having this conversation in the first place. There were no indications this his liver would be hurt at all, so why would he be having this liver-talk with his mother? Seems more than just a "coincidence," if you ask me. It's very much like that 9-11 documentary one of the major networks screened about the two filmmaking brothers. As they meet (supposedely for the first time since the attacks), the camera zooms towards the two brothers. The brothers themselves were working the cameras, so they obviously told someone else to film the reunion. It takes away the emotional impact when there are hints that the scene was staged.

John-In-VA

I have an idea for my own film. Every morning I will cook eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, etc. and eat till I am stuffed. I'll down it with a huge cup of joe. For lunch I will make a very large burger with cheese, bacon, and a nice big carbohydrate bun plus a gigantic plate of fries cooked in a deep fryer. I'll have a super size coke with it. For dinner I will eat something similar to lunch.
I will do this every day for thirty days.

Hmm...I wonder. Will that make me fat too and generally less healthy? Probably not since I made it myself. It would only be unhealthy if I got it at McDonalds.

Corvin

I really think the McDonald's diet was a gimmick in order to get some funding/attention. Everyone knows that eating only McDonald's for a month is horrible on the body; Morgan spends a great amount of time in the film dealing with other subjects.

C-Mart

I agree, the time spent on other subjects is what makes this a great movie. I was especially intrigued by the information about school lunch programs. For some schools the kidsd basically have unregulated access to anything that would be at a 7-11 or AMPM. I'm not saying that in my day school lunches were healthy, but at least there was always a veggie on the plate. Actually, I only ate the school lunches when it was pizza day, other days I brown-bagged it.

Anyway, I went into it thinking about how stupid the gimmick was, and it was. The problem with the McDonald's diet is that the guy made no attempt to watch what he ate. He was told by his dietician the amount of calories he needed every day, and he ate about twice that. He was asked emphatically to not drink sodas or shakes, yet he continued to do so.

Crocker Jarmen

You are mistaken. He has this conversation with his mother near the end of his McDonald's experiment, because the doctors told him about the damage that has been done to his liver.

I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I thought I would. It was at it's best when looking at the school lunch programs.

The thing that disturbed me the most was when they were interviewing the girl after the 'Guy-wh-lost-weight-on-his-Subway-diet' lecture, and she talks about how impossible it is for her to lose weight because she can't afford to eat at Subway three times a day, under the impression that's the 'only way' to lose weight.

movieking

I just saw this last night, and I am amazed about the amount of misinformation in this thread (most of which has been corrected by others). I enjoyed the movie. It actually got a standing ovation in the theatre I saw it in (which I found ironic, since most of the people there had appeared to upsize their popcorns and soft drinks to a size rivalling the biggest Big Gulp).

While I agree that we all knew that nothing good was going to come out of eating the diet for a month, the big was the amount of damage that he did to himself in only one month. The doctors all seemed to be shocked at the level of shock his body went into by eating the high fat diet.

As far as I know, according to CNN and Reuters, the Supersized Upgrades will be discontinued by the end of this year.

scott shelton

Ug. People love to feel important, don't they...

movieking

I agree. I quietly mocked them as they applauded.

Dr. DVD

Saw it. Good movie, but made me feel very uneasy and never want to eat McDonalds or any form of fast food again.

dstrauss

It would be good if some of the people in this thread actually *saw* the movie before they criticized it.

As others have said, the diet of the filmmaker is part of the film, not all of it. And we're not just talking about the guy gaining 25 pounds, which he did. The problem here is the fact the guy was able to seriously damage his liver, kidneys, and other internal systems in just a few weeks. As one doctor noted, the affects on his body were akin to Nicholas Cage drinking himself to death in "Leaving Las Vegas." That's messed up.

msdmoney

I saw it today and enjoyed the film but like many others I found his other points more interesting than the McDonald's stuff. The school lunch menus I found appalling. It's one thing for a restaurant to offer unhealthy food but much worse for a school cafeteria, where the students are basically captive to the food choice (unless they bring their own), to offer such poor choices.

I think he went somewhat overboard with the McDonald's thing. He would make sure to stuff himself to the point where he was puking in one scene. In another he really wanted a shake even though they didn't have any. It seemed like he was really trying to eat as unhealthy and as many calories as possible. Just because a 350 pound person can down that, doesn't mean you should try to do the same. I think if someone ate that many calories of any food, it would do some damage. But I realize his point wasn't specifically McDonalds, but more eating habits in general.

RKillgore

I saw this movie last weekend and I too am amazed at the misinformation that other people have posted here, so I'm in agreement with dstrauss, that there's a lot of posts from people who haven't seen it. But to avoid criticizing the "critics", I'll add a few points that I liked that haven't been mentioned.

-The discussion about meat between Spurlock and his vegan girlfriend, and his comeback to her when she equates meat with heroin.

-The Blue Danube playing over the gastric bypass surgery scene. I thought that was pretty clever, emphasising the routine, almost choreographed process that this surgery has become.

-People unable to get through the Pledge of Allegiance, but able to rattle off what's in a Big Mac. I'll chalk up the people's inability to get through the Pledge to being nervous, but the ingraining of the Big Mac on many American's mind is something that occured to me recently and how it was done. Make the list of ingredients a little song jingle and (this is the brilliant part) show people trying to list the ingredients and flubbing it, prompting the viewers of the commercial to try it themselves and keep trying to until they get it right, to be better than the people on the commercial.

movieking

Does anyone know what Spurlock does for a living? Is he a filmmaker? It seemed like he was in some kind of office setting during some of the scenes where he was on the phone with his doctors.

Just curious.

matome

I saw this and became a vegan...not.

Corvin

I don't think that's right. He has two conversations with his mother. One is the conversation in question, and the second is an emotional one where he's saying he wants to go on but he doesn't want to hurt himself. I believe, and I could be wrong but I don't think so, that he was talking about his liver in the first conversation, telling his mother not to worry because it's such a versatile organ.

Crocker Jarmen

I'm pretty sure there was just the one conversation, but I have been a victim of Phantom Movie Scene Syndrom once or twice.

Let's hear from some else who has seen the movie more then once or more reccently then Corvin or myself. I was pretty sure that all this liver talk turned up in that one conversation with his mother. The reason he was mentioning the versatility of the liver was because he was figuring that even if it was already damaged and to get even more damaged, it would be okay because it would return to normal after awhile.

I wonder if there is a transcript of the movie out there someplace.

harpo787

I saw this movie on Monday and I enjoyed it. I'm a fast food junkie. I'm the several times a week guy. I think the movie referred to it as a super heavy user?

Nonetheless, I do feel inspired to absolutely minimize my fast food intake in the future, and to get off my fat ass and exercise.

To refer to Crocker's post, I remember the "liver is resilient" conversation with his mom to be in the latter half of his 30 day diet. I was going to start pointing out errors in others posts here, but I believe that most of them have been already been pointed out, so why beat a dead horse...

A scary thing was hearing him describe some "symptoms" that he was going through, and realizing that I've experienced most of them myself. I knew EXACTLY what he was talking about when mentioned the "pressure" on the chest area sensation. Thankfully though, I've not experienced the "wooshing" sensation in the genitalia area that he had. I also know of getting headaches when not eating, and feeling "energized" after eating the food and then just being way too friggin tired like 2 hours later. It's some seriously scary shit.

As someone already pointed out, he only super-sized when asked, which was 9 out of 90 meals. On the very first one, it seemed that he was actually looking forward to it, saying that it was fast food heaven or words to that effect. He just kept on eating and drinking, and eventually, his stomach must have been beyond full...and out of his stomach and out the window it went.

Oh yes, one other thing to add to. In a previous post, someone was mentioning the "sugar-free items" on the list from McDonalds, and I do remember two more to add to that list: fries and chicken mcnuggets. I only remember those because its the only thing I order there (along with my soda of course).

I guess that's it. Thumbs up from me, I guess I'd give the flick 4 out of 5 stars.

mrpayroll

http://www.local6.com/food/3551106/d...107202004&ts=H

Man Downs 20,000th Big Mac

POSTED: 10:40 am EDT July 20, 2004

FOND DU LAC, Wis. -- He's already hit the record books -- but his appetite is still strong.

A man in Fond du Lac downed his 20,000th Big Mac Monday, as a crowd of people watched at a local McDonald's.

Don Gorske already made the Guinness Book of Records for eating a record number of the sandwiches before he hit number 19,000 in March 2003. He also appears in the current hit documentary "Super Size Me."

Gorske has been eating Big Macs since 1972 at a rate of at least one a day. He also says he's eaten a Big Mac from every state in the union.

The 6-foot Gorske has maintained his weight at around 170 pounds.


Chris