Wednesday, February 4, 2004 |
02:11 - The harmful effects of documentaries
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3672518/
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Further to the earlier observations about this week's particularly egregious Newsweek, I have to mention this: it's a sidebar near the front that also happens to be online. It's an interview with a guy who-- get this-- is eating at McDonald's for three meals a day, for a month. For a documentary.
Morgan Spurlock, director of "Super Size Me": My body just basically falls apart. I start to get tired; I start to get headaches; my liver fills up with fat because there's so much fat and sugar in this food. My blood sugar skyrockets, my cholesterol goes off the charts, my blood pressure becomes completely unmanageable.
How much weight did you put on?
About 25 pounds in a month.
How did you feel?
I felt terrible! I put on this weight so quickly my knees hurt. I would eat, and I would feel so good because I would get all that sugar and caffeine and fat and I would feel just great. And then an hour later I would just crash--I would hit the wall and be angry and depressed and upset. I was a disaster to live with.
Why McDonald's?
The chain has 30,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries on six continents. McDonald's could institute real change. If the company would launch healthier menu options, it would happen across the board.
You know how some things are just beyond ridicule? This is squarely in that category. I mean, damn! The guy is sitting here calmly telling us that he ate ninety McDonald's meals in a month and how scandalized he is that it gave him headaches and made him gain weight.
Now: You remember a few years back when some guy was in the news because he had grown accustomed to a steady diet of a Big Mac every single day for years and years, and he seemed fit as a fiddle? Remember the general reaction? Most people were shocked that he was still alive. He was a freak, a curiosity: Big Mac Man. Good for him, we all said. I don't think I'd want to try that, but if it doesn't kill him, hey, more power to him.
Now this guy is intentionally setting out to stuff as much fast food down his throat as he can, specifically so he can go on the news and tell everybody how fat and sad the food makes him. All for the noble purpose of forcing McDonald's, after fifty years of providing a product whose healthiness has changed very little (and probably for the better, if at all), to "institute real change".
What a trooper, huh? What a guy. Where would we be without him?
How would we ever otherwise have learned that in the foregoing decade, we have seemingly gone from a people with a general awareness of the unhealthiness of eating at fast food every day, to vacant, drooling bovines incapable of discerning whether a cheeseburger or a salad is better for you? All hail Morgan Spurlock, the Bringer of Light!
Help! I've intentionally stuck my head up my own ass. Ow! Ow! We've got to pass laws to reduce ass-related injury hazards! Asses are criminally unsafe! Fight Halliburton and the Ass Lobby!
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