Fwd: [S-A] Film Records Effects Of Eating Only McDonald's For a Month

[Guest guest]

" Misty L. Trepke "

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 15:32:47 -0000

[s-A] Film Records Effects Of Eating Only McDonald's For a Month

 

Yikes!! The guts someone must have to do this?! And then the " gut "

afterwards?!

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

FILM RECORDS EFFECTS OF EATING ONLY MCDONALD'S FOR A MONTH

By David Usborne

New Zealand Herald

January 25, 2004

 

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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 ofMcDonald's, that may prove problematic. But the critics at

Sundance seem to have been captivated. Certainly, the film is

blessed by good timing. Obesityhas 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.' "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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