Super Size Me

Morgan Spurlock created this documentary as a commentary about obesity in the United States. He does this by eating only McDonald's for 30 days. He lines up a few physicians to help him with his experiment. Morgan then attempts to document his display of how unhealthy and toxic fast food is. It was entertaining and had glimmers of information. However, he presented his little experiment's results as being proof of the extreme harm of fast food.

The fact is that he did a few things in his methodology that are highly questionable and lead to exagerated results. (And I am someone who eats often at McDonald's.)

One, what exactly did he eat day in and day out? Did he intentionally eat the worst of everything? Shakes seemed to be an overly regular item in his diet. Look at the Big Mac lover.

Two, his level of sickness through his blood work may also have been a result of toxic shock in essence. He went from a highly health conscious diet to immediately binging on McD's. The body does not take that kind of drastic change well at all regardless of what the change is. My own blood work does not come anywhere close to those numbers in the movie. I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm saying that he shocked his body and it rebelled.

Three, he went from staying actively in shape to doing nothing. Again, the body does not react well to immediate changes. This is the same concept that runners use when they carbo-load. The body overreacts to drastic changes. Anyone who lives in places like Minnesota, North Dakota or other states that have drastic weather changes also understand this. When the temps change quickly the body does not accept those changes easily, but when the change is gradual the body can adapt. Morgan shocked his body in a number of ways thus compounding any results AND ruining the validity of his evidence. The result is almost shocking.

What I did learn is that Morgan is a drama queen, his girlfriend is a "granola" vegan chef (ick) and that expose documentaries are getting worse by the year. For entertainment this was a decent flick. But, since it calls itself a documentary it has to be downgraded.

Grade: C