America’s Gone Super!

Supersized, that is. New Yorker Morgan Spurlock uncovers the truth about what really is in food and how much fat Americans gain in the new documentary, Supersize Me! But is it really all it’s fattened up to be?

America is the fattest country in the world. One in every four people is clinically obese. This means that around 75 million people are vastly overweight. And this is just an estimate. That’s massive! So what do we do?

Morgan Spurlock puts the issue of obesity to the ultimate test: eating nothing but McDonald’s for an entire month. In this experiment, he faces many consequences. For example, after the first week, he gains 5% of his body fat. After the entire month, he gains twenty-four and a half pounds (That’s an estimated 2 stone.) His cholesterol escalates sixty-five points. He experiences frequent chest pain, nausea, depression, mood swings, headaches, etc. He nearly doubles his risk of coronary heart disease.

During his experiment, he travels the country to find out as much as he can about

what we’re really eating. He meets a man who has had 19,000 Big Macs (So far, anyway.) Mr. Spurlock is asked to supersize 8 times. He discovers that children know more about Ronald McDonald than George Washington or Jesus. He tries over ten times to schedule an interview with the executive of McDonald’s. He doesn’t get a reply (I wonder why. If my multi-billion dollar restaurant chain was threatened by a man making a documentary I’d want to support his endeavour.)

In the end, I found myself disappointed with this documentary. It wasn’t the lack of information. In fact, if this was based on information, I’d give this one 5 stars. Morgan Spurlock didn’t let the information speak for itself. If he had, this documentary would’ve been brilliant. His points were overstated. He says at one point, “And you may wind up here [emergency room] or here [cemetery].” He should have left it.

He ends the documentary by saying, “who do you want to see go first? You? Or them?” I believe the point he’s trying to make is eating fast foods will endanger us. But it’ll take a lot more than a burger once a month to kill us. Yes, if you eat McDonald’s every day, you need to change your eating habits. But scaring the rest of us into eating vegan pies every day? No thank you. I’ll take my coke super sized.