[password54321]

A society of overweight and obese people giving enormous attention on how the effects of eating McDonalds everyday cannot be replicated. Please let's snapshot everything so the future generations can laugh at how we turned into a parody.

[DontchaKnowit]

Well the problem is that he stuffed his face with absurd amounts of calories everyday. Of course he got fat. He was eating like 5k calories a day. No one is doing that on accident cause they didnt know how big a supersize fry was.

So yes, its a super disingenious doc that is laughably transparent in its pandering to people just like you who want to make fun of obesity and trivialize it.

[thruway516]

There are, or at least at the time there were a lot of people whose meals come entirely from fast food. There wasnt a lot of awareness about how bad that could be and there had been a decades long trend towards replacing meals with microwave dinners and fast food. Supersize Me did play a part in reversing that trend. It was trying to make a very valid point about fast food and dining habits. So its science wasnt exact, but complaining about that is like quibbling with a Michael Moore documentary for being a little loose with facts

[tdeck]

I disagree that there wasn't enough awareness. As someone who was alive at the time, there was a pre-existing moral panic about fast food and there were constant discussions before Supersize Me about how unhealthy it was, not to mention pop culture jokes making fun of it. I think that pre-existing anxiety was one of the reasons so many people saw the film.

[thruway516]

I was definitely alive at the time and remember no such moral panic. I remember how much more acceptable it was in the 80's and 90's, even in upper middle class families to have 'tv dinners' and I think even for a time in the 70's and earlier (though I wasn't alive) dining out on fast food was a fashionable novelty. I very strongly remember when there was a discernible cultural shift which saw the likes of Whole Foods going mainstream and then the shift after that when even regular grocery stores started to have organic food and in-store bakeries which they didn't have before. And fast food chains started to consciously introduce salads and drop trans-fats and make other changes to seem more healthy. The shift started before Super-size me but I remember how shocking it was and how it helped to define the new zeitgeist that books like Erich Schlosser's Fast Food Nation were also helping to create. I think Super-Size me was even directly responsible for the fast food chains changing their menu part.

[seadan83]

Are you referring to 2004 when the movie came out? Just curious what "at the time" means. My personal recollection, the early 2000s was part of a pushback and the movie was part it.

As a trend from the late 80s to 90s, fast food was on the upswing I'd say. Think back to the 1940s when most American's were not getting enough calories, the average American at the time was not getting enough calories. Fast forward to past the 60s when teenage car culture is all the rage, fast food is part of that picture. If there was effectively no fast food before 1950, and by 2000's it was culturally waning, it raises the question of when was peak fast food? Both in terms of cultural "coolness/acceptanced" and per-capita consumption. I don't know if the per-capita consumpion has gone down, but in terms of culture, I'd guess that happened in the early to mid 90s. Probably co-incided with America being mostly under-nourished, to now "over-nourished" (nourished in quotes as there, as soda calories etc are not really nourishment)

[tdeck]

Yep I'm referring to the early 200s. I don't remember the 90s as well :).

[password54321]

>No one is doing that on accident cause they didnt know how big a supersize fry was.

People have definitely become more aware of what they eat since the documentary came out. And I'm not sure how much of that can specifically be credited to the documentary but if we are still talking about than it clearly has done something right in raising awareness.

Obviously if you are doing research in this area you were never going to cite Super Size Me as it was never serious scientific research.

[DontchaKnowit]

Were still talking about it because the movie very effectively sold a lie.

Ever tried to eat 5k calories in a day. I bet you cant. No one, and I mean no one, was taking fast food to the extremes he was without really really trying.

[red-iron-pine]

I bet you can. easily. I used to eat ~6000 calories a day during training while doing competitive rowing in college. not hard with nutrient-dense foods.

your average chipotle burrito is like half way there. throw in a breakfast, snack, and light dinner and easily 5k calories.

[johnnyanmac]

In case you didn't read the article linked: Morgan had a history of alcoholism and admitted later on to drinking during the experiment. That would definitely influence things, and explain why he had symptoms in his liver similar to an alcoholic.

The experiment may have been flawed but it was clearly highlighting a real issue. One that isn't just a one month stint but a multi-decade lifestyle.

[DontchaKnowit]

What, pray tell, is the real issue?

Fast food serves too much food? Just eat less. Its an absolutely absurd premise.

[johnnyanmac]

Yes, indeed. That is the real real issue. People are mean to each other and fight? Just be nice. World hunger? Just share food. Rent too high? Just live together.

If only complex issues had simple solutions. Until then let's look at the layer above and solve that:

- government subsidies high fructose corn syrup, a calorie rich good.

- subsidized syrup used in almost all pre-processed food.

- is sold cheap, so it can target lower income individuals

- lower income individuals have less access to resources on dieting, or even nutrition facts.They also have less time to research such issue as they now need multiple jobs to barely pay rent.

- obesity increases in the US, disproportionately from lower income people

So we have 2-3 ways to tackle this issue past "just eat less".

[DontchaKnowit]

Except that issue you brought up is NOT what supersize me is about. Its competitor doc, Fathead, is about that though. And absolutely lambastes supersize me.

And im not saying just eat less to fight obesity. Im saying portion sizes at a resteraunt are a moot point. People stop eating when they are no longer hungry. Do you always eat 100% of the food you get at a restaurant? Again, peiple treat obese people like theyre too stupid to figure out how they got fat, or theyre too weak minded and must have dietary decisions made for them. Fuck that. Theyre adults free to make choices like anyone else. Im all for education about nutrition, and supersize me offers 0 in that department.

[johnnyanmac]

>Do you always eat 100% of the food you get at a restaurant?

Given how I grew up poor, yes. Yes I do. Restaurants that weren't a McDonald's were a treat (not that I wasted McDonald's). Wasting food was about the worst thing I could do to my grandparents. Any food I didn't eat at the restaurant was tomorrow's dinner. That mentality doesn't just go away even when your lifestyle improves and food is no longer scarce.

>Again, peiple treat obese people like theyre too stupid to figure out how they got fat, or theyre too weak minded and must have dietary decisions made for them. Fuck that.

Call them what you want. You asked for answers and you're rejecting the reality of the situation. The answer for obesity isn't just "make better life choices". It's a mental addiction like alcoholism, we need to treat it like so if we want results, instead of some excuse to degrade people (again, people are are disproportionately lower class income)

>that issue you brought up is NOT what supersize me is about.

Okay. My answer isn't really isn't about supersize me anymore. That ended when I spent my first response giving context to the situation and you decided to diverge the topic with "well what's the answer?". I

I got more subtle answers around 10th-12th grade with other documentaries. The education has to start somewhere. Supersize me is a decently engaging starting point. But I'm not in 5th grade anymore. I have other, more subtle documentaries to reference for that question.

I don't really hold it in regard anymore than I hold my 3rd grade math book. It did it's job, I'm thankful for it. I don't need to go back and tear it apart over how many things it gets wrong. I'm no longer its audience.

If you're for education, stop lambasting 2nd grade math just because it "lies" about negative numbers for a while. Sometimes it's easier to contrive a system and then build on it later by denouncing those simplicities. If you don't understand calories in/out (and yes, some people don't. Gotta start somewhere), you won't understand the issue with corn syrup subsidies, you won't have all the dots to connect, and you may not put them all together in one sitting.

>Theyre adults free to make choices like anyone else.

And child obesity skyrocketed around the same time too (another documentary I watched that I can't recall). I think it's falling over the last decade, but let's not pretend this is an issue relegated to "smart adults".

>People stop eating when they are no longer hungry

I have and sadly do still stress eat. Once more: stop treating this like obesity can just be solved by saying "eat less". It's like telling an alcoholic to stop drinking.

[refurb]

Not only that it has the same issues as lying about Covid in the name of “public safety” - when people find out it’s a lie they’ll trust the next thing you say even if it’s 100% true.