[jrmg]

It wouldn’t if you were already larger.

I don’t get the ‘eating 5000 calories of anything would make you ill’ argument against the movie. That was sort of the whole point. At the time, fast food chains, and McDonald’s in particular, were pushing large (and the defunct supersize) meals all the time. That this was dangerous, especially for people who didn’t really think about it and trusted the companies, was the entire point of the movie.

Note that things have changed since then - arguably as a result of, or at least accelerated by, the movie. Supersize meals disappeared soon after it, salads were introduced (yes, you can argue they’re still high calorie), and on the whole fast food places are much less aggressively pushing the larger meals than they were in the early 2000s. I would say there’s more awareness of the importance of eating healthily among the general population too (not that that seems to be having ideal results…)

[tshaddox]

I'm confused about why you're confused. The point of the movie was definitely not to give the audience the shocking realism that if you're force feeding yourself to the point of vomiting, you're probably doing something wrong. This aspect of the movie only lessens the actual argument of the movie (except that it makes good headlines and thus probably drove the majority of the media coverage and general interest in the documentary).

[JohnBooty]

    At the time, fast food chains, and McDonald’s 
    in particular, were pushing large (and the 
    defunct supersize) meals all the time. That 
    this was dangerous [...]

It's still a little bit ridiculous.

A human being should be eating 90 meals per month, give or take. If more than 1 or 2 of those are fast food, that's the problem.

To what standard should we be holding a restaurant meal? "Is it healthy for a person to eat 90 of these meals per month?" doesn't seem like a useful or realistic thing to do.

[hmcq6]

> A human being should be eating 90 meals per month, give or take. If more than 1 or 2 of those are fast food, that's the problem.

3 meals a day has nothing to do with health and everything to do with marketing. If the way we eat had any ties to common sense we wouldn't be eating our largest meal at the end of the day when we have nothing left to do except sleep.

[ethbr1]

> If more than 1 or 2 of those are fast food, that's the problem.

Given that full service grocery store access is area-income dependent in the US, it's a complicated situation.

[JohnBooty]

"Food deserts" (areas with no access to fresh food) are a huge problem, yeah.

Also, economically struggling people often can't prepare their own food, even if given groceries for free: they may be physically disabled, they may be unhoused, they may be unable to afford utilities or appliances, etc.

However, I think that altering the offerings of fast-food restaurants is not even remotely a suitable way to address that.

[tdeck]

> I don’t get the ‘eating 5000 calories of anything would make you ill’ argument against the movie.

Good thing that's not the argument I'm making in my comment. The argument I'm making is about forcing yourself to eat more than you want to while the very act of eating is making you feel sick. That's what Spurlock did in the movie; it's not representative of any significant population of people.

[rightbyte]

> salads were introduced (yes, you can argue they’re still high calorie),

I haven't tried those, but surely it is easier to overeat on fries and hamburgers compared to a salad?

[seadan83]

I was curious, looks like the equivalent (calorie-wise) of fries & a double cheeseburger is 1KG of salad.*

So yes, quite hard to overeat salad. Plus, eating that much salad would give a lot of nutrition, and throwing some beans & hemp hearts in would give you a lot of protein too.

Further to consider, it's not uncommon for people to eat the extra large fries and have two double cheeseburgers. The comparison to trying to overeat salad is only more favorable. We can also go furthe rand think of"fancy" burger places like Red Robin, there are several burgers on their menu that are over 2k calories.

* For the back of the napkin math - according to google, there's 815 calories in a fries and a double cheeseburger. For salad, I used this house salad recipe [1] as reference with 148 calories in a 170g serving

[1] https://www.nutritionix.com/food/house-salad

[grecy]

Don’t you remember the closing act of the documentary?

The salad with dressing and nuts has more calories than a Big Mac!!

[npsimons]

> I haven't tried those, but surely it is easier to overeat on fries and hamburgers compared to a salad?

This reads like someone who might not have been in America much. Friend, let me introduce you to ranch "dressing": https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelannpoling/7797400016

And yeah, the vegetables aren't the problem here - the problem is everything has to be sugar-coated (yes, even "savory" things like ranch dressing) for people to eat it, and then they drench everything from wings to burgers in it.

[jrmg]

Yeah, I agree with you.

The argument is that they’re ‘misleading’ because the _dressings_ that are provided with them are surprisingly high in calories. Like, a standard size salad with all the provided dressing is not lower calorie than one of the more traditional menu options - and people may not realize that.

I’d say the salads are pretty good BTW - better than you might think a fast food place would do.

[xhkkffbf]

You are correct. They're better than you would expect -- and the price is reasonable.