Super-Size Me has Entered the Portal
- Thread starter Dan1911
- Start date
Yeah except the documentary that made him famous was a complete fraud and has been proven as such multiple times.
I don’t know if it was fraud, but I recall him seeming overly dramatic about the negative effect it had on him. That said it was meant as entertainment not serious scientific inquiry. For those that already felt McDonalds was garbage or that were looking to improve their diet it struck a chord, which is why the film was so popular.
Yes it made for good TV, but I think his alcoholism may have been a contributing factor in his poor lab results 😄
Multiple people and at least two studies have tried to recreate his test results (which they had to guess at because he refused to offer any guidance or food diary for what he actually ate. You know, like someone not full of shit would do.) and none have been able to come anywhere near his "results".
He was a alcoholic and denied that to his doctors at the time, so when they highlighted his surprisingly bad liver damage, depression, and shakes it was all attributed to Big Macs.
He couldn't possibly afford to conduct that again in today's economy .. Just sayin' ...
How was it a fraud? It always surprised me that people were either shocked that McD’s was really bad for your or defended old Ronald like he was a member of the family.
He never released his food logs.
He was consuming a huge amount of calories a day by eating McD’s three times a day.
The problem is when people tried to do what he did, nobody could recreate the caloric intake. Everybody came up way short.
This led for calls for him to release the food logs. Which he refused.
He was secretly eating more than he alleged to increase his caloric intake.
It’s also weird, even if not fraudulent, to purposely eat to put on a ton of bad weight. And purposely not move around so that you burn less calories than even the average person.
Eat 5k calories of anything and purposely don’t move around much so the calories will be stored, and see how that works out for you.
He lied to the doctor in the documentary about his alcohol use. It makes a LOT more sense to suffer from shaking, depression and liver issues when you are a long time alcoholic.
Several groups of scientists have attempted to recreate his results and failed. Studies done with healthy young males eating garbage food for a month straight have not led to any depression or shaking. The men did gain weight and have some negative health impacts, but nothing as dramatic as what Super Size Me portrayed.
He claimed that without other changes to his daily routine that he put on 10lbs in a week of 3 normal (but super sized) fast food meals per day and almost 25 pounds in a single month. He claimed severe mood swings, depression, heart palpitations, drowsiness, headaches, sexual dysfunction, shakes, etc. He covered up his alcoholism so that all sorts of negative results from his physical would be painted as the result of eating McDonalds (Which he was more than happy to reinforce in every interview).
All of that from 30 days...If that were true than like 40% of us wouldn't have survived college.
He did it for fame and money and kept it secret until a decade later when he wrote a confession about a string of sexual misconducts and impropriety and tying it to childhood abuse and his decades of alcoholism.
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there’s a pretty good independent documentary called “Fat Head” that serves to debunk “Super Size Me” while really taking to task the f*cked up food pyramid we all grew up with and tries to answer why were so many people so badly misled by the government about food?
It shouldn't take a documentary to teach you that "fast food" will kill you in a miserable manner. It should only take reading the ingredients and a little common sense.
You don’t think French fries cooked in fat and covered in salt, white bread from the burger buns and god knows how much sugar from the pops he drank weren’t going to cause him to gain weight, everyone’s metabolism works differently.
Also, you don’t think McDonald’s wasn’t going to do whatever they could to discredit the doc? They’re no different than the cigarette companies.
Absolutely, it's not good for you at all. But a 30-year old dude isn't gaining 0.7% of his body weight in fat per day eating a normal amount of food, even if fast food, only 3 times per day as he claims. A dude's liver doesn't become equivalent to the liver of a long-time alcoholic after 30 days of eating McDonalds.
But a documentary that has a big finale that shows someone gaining a couple of pounds and having slightly worse cholesterol doesn't make $20+ million at the box office and launch a career.
I guess the body responds differently when there isn't a massive financial incentive involved in holding onto the pounds. That must be why all the other people and scientists that have tested this have had completely different results than Spurlock.
