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Was the 'Super Size Me' evidence ever re-created? I watched and enjoyed the movie, but IIRC the "science" behind it was pretty suspect, and last I heard (which

Was the 'Super Size Me' evidence ever re-created? I watched and enjoyed the movie, but IIRC the "science" behind it was pretty suspect, and last I heard (which was, granted, decades ago) he never would release his data or testing methods or anything.

NoNotTheDuo 2y ago
Nope: https://skylertanner.com/2010/04/30/supersize-me-revisted-under-lab-conditions/ https://skylertanner.com/2010/04/30/supersize-me-revisted-un...
tootie 2y ago
No. It was pretty well disproven actually. And he didn't disclose he had untreated alcoholism during the production which likely caused most of his problems.
- RavingGoat 2y ago
  So his liver was ok even though he was a lifelong alcoholic yet a month later it wasn't and the only new thing he introduced in his diet was lots of mcdonalds? Seems like he proved something.
hintoftime 2y ago
I think I heard he was actually addicted to alcohol, which is information that he withheld, and that some scientists in a European country tried unsuccessfully to recreate his results.
queuebert 2y ago
Serious question -- can you clarify what evidence would need to be released? The calorie counts clearly add up, because a single non-super-sized McDonald's meal is over half of a grown man's BMR. All that remains is to add up the resulting weight gain from the excess daily calories over a month.
- tootie 2y ago
  He had more than weight gain, he suffered serious liver problems. That was in the movie despite him hiding his chronic alcohol abuse. Eating tons of fast food is obviously going to be unhealthy, but the results are pretty predictable. There's a scene at the outset where a doctor tells him something like "you'll gain weight and raise your cholesterol but that's about it" and he came back with loads more problems. The extra problems were most likely due to alcohol.
- smcl 2y ago
  You can't really do that though. I mean at a high level, yeah a poor diet and little exercise will almost certainly lead to an adult gaining weight. But it sounds like you're describing the possibility of calculating his expected weight gain based on how much he ate and how much he exercised, and I don't think that's possible. Not to mention that it's been widely reported (iirc even from Spurlock himself) that he was drinking alcohol heavily during this period, which will further complicate this calorie-level reconcilation you're suggesting.
  - npsimons 2y ago
    > it sounds like you're describing the possibility of calculating his expected weight gain based on how much he ate and how much he exercised, and I don't think that's possible. This is a joke right? This is exactly how you calculate expected weight gain/loss.
    - smcl 2y ago
      If you can do this accurately for an arbitrary person, you will be the world's most celebrated dietician so I encourage you to go ahead and publish exactly how you're doing this.
  - edanm 2y ago
    > But it sounds like you're describing the possibility of calculating his expected weight gain based on how much he ate and how much he exercised, and I don't think that's possible. Why? To a large extent this is possible, and with a bit of experience in how a specific person reacts, it's possible to do this very accurately. Bodybuilders will often have very specific meal plans over months, and know more-or-less exactly how much weight they will gain or lose, sometimes down to the week.
flutas 2y ago
Nope. It’s been tried and never able to be reproduced (aside from weight gain as expected because calories in > calories out)[0]. The underlying thing I’ve heard (and he admitted to, since deleted) is that he was a massive alcoholic during filming and that’s what led to the health problems. Essentially he’s said he drank since age 13, and “was never sober for more than a week since then.” Unfortunately I can’t find that direct quote anymore on a reputable site, but he mentions the alcoholism in this interview.[1] [0]: https://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-under-lab-conditions https://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-u... [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-spurlock-talks-sexual-misconduct-confession-super-size-me-2-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-spurlock-talks-sexual...
hbn 2y ago
The movie was not scientific at all. It was anti-scientific if anything. Not to argue McDonald's is health food, but his method was he had to eat McDonald's 3 times per day - even if he wasn't hungry. And additionally, if the cashier ever asked if he wanted to supersize, he had to say yes. So he was just forcing McDonald's down his throat to the point of throwing up. Name a food where you wouldn't gain weight eating it in excess. And it was later revealed he was lying to doctors by saying he wasn't drinking when he in fact had a very bad alcohol addiction. You even see in the movie a doctor tell him he's baffled how his liver has seen such damage from McDonald's since that should really only happen from an alcohol addiction. Well, turned out years later he was secretly drinking the whole time. The movie is a hoax. McDonald's even gave an official PR response and basically the gist was "we actually agree with the movie, you should not be eating our food like that."
- CoastalCoder 2y ago
  I feel really bad for him, that he had an addiction he couldn't quit and felt forced to hide. Anyone know why, given that, he'd make a movie that put his health under a microscope?
  - hbn 2y ago
    There was a moral panic over fast food that was really taking off at the time, and cashing in on it clearly paid off for him. It did make McDonald's put more effort into rebranding with "we care about the health of kids" - I was a kid when the documentary came out and I remember frequent McDonald's ads on kids channels that were just Ronald McDonald teaching you how to do exercises. But I don't think it really made as much of a difference for people binge eating their food as much as the past few years where their prices for all their food have shot to the moon.
    - floor2 2y ago
      Calling it a "moral panic" feels almost offensively wrong to me. McDonald's is very legitimately a serious problem in America today. Obesity and related conditions- Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, etc are at mind boggling epidemic levels. Americans today are living shorter, sicker lives than their parents despite tremendous improvements in medicine, working safety, automobile safety and less smoking almost entirely due to obesity related conditions. Childhood obesity is setting millions of children down a path of suffering before they're old enough to understand that they're being harmed or having the agency and autonomy to correct it. This isn't a "moral panic" over something harmless like kids playing dungeons and dragons or listening to rock and roll, this is arguably the largest health and wellbeing concern in America today. If anything, as a society we probably have too much moral panic about stigmatized things like opioids and guns that impact a pretty small percent of people and have not enough concern about the unfortunately normalized things like 3/4ths of people being overweight and 4/10 being obese.
appleiigs 2y ago
As part of an intro to optimization class in university, we inputted gov't nutrition health guidelines and the McDonalds nutritional menu into a model. Solved how we could hit the health guidelines (min and maximums) by only eating McDs. Basic conclusion is McDs is fine if you don't eat the fries or sodas. The book "Fast Food Nation" was an optional reading. It explained how McD single-handedly improved the quality of beef and potato industry in the US.
- m463 2y ago
  Aren't government nutritional health guidelines heavily influenced by politics/outside influence? I know we've gotten past the food pyramid, but don't guidelines continue to heavily favor dairy? (and doesn't mcdonalds still have a lot of saturated fat?)
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I could be making huge assumptions here. But I imagine the GP's experiment was as simple as focusing on "recommended calories" (which is 2000 per day) and secondarily, keeping under/over certain nutrients (low sugar/cholesterol/fat, high vitamins). Food pyramid was much less scientific and more of a basic guideline for school children (and yes, the dairy campaigns were very successful, though dairy at least has nutritional value and usually a good "fill" factor). But I don't think any of those hard nutrient recommendations were every challenged. Were they? I honestly haven't looked into it.
- vmladenov 2y ago
  I don’t recall coming away from Fast Food Nation with the impression that McD improved things, but it has been many years. I thought the book focused on how agribusiness increased the risk of contamination by pathogens like E. coli and the effects of marketing to children.
keybored 2y ago
From YouTube[1] > We should all thank Morgan for showing us that eating 5000+calories a day while being a raging alcoholic and drug addict is unhealthy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXtJ12EeaOs&lc=UgyA_kYg7pohGToIZOx4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXtJ12EeaOs&lc=UgyA_kYg7pohG...
- mistrial9 2y ago
  "drug addict" is uselessly unspecific in a medical context, and socially is just derogatory.
  - keybored 2y ago
    I agree that saying both alhoholic and drug addict is redundant.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Well, you're never going to convince modern culture. Something something moderate.
kbutler 2y ago
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/03/supersize-me-failed-replication-well-sort-of/ https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/03/supersize-me-failed-rep... "the conclusion, weak as it is, is sufficient to show that the Supersize me documentary is dubious, or maybe even a hoax. Clearly, eating a lot of McDonald’s fast food (or Burger King etc.) is not really so unhealthy that there is serious health risk after a month. The other anecdotes and this study of 18 people showed that clearly. So what did Morgan Spurlock do? Who can say. We can think of benign explanations: maybe McD/Burger King changed their ingredients after 2004, or they differ between Sweden and USA, or Swedes are more naturally resistant to bad diets than English. Or maybe Spurlock engaged in a lot of creative freedom."
mensetmanusman 2y ago
The takeaway was not ‘bad food is bad’ but ‘bad food with absolutely no activity is bad’ A nutritionist responded with a study where he only ate candy and multivitamins but increased his movement exercise 10x. All his health metrics went up.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Must have a hell for hunger pains, though. I can take a moderate walk and feel hungry (which can lead to overeating and cancelling out the exercise gains). I can't imagine the discipline to simply ignore your hunger for those early weeks with a bunch of water and candy.

NoNotTheDuo 2y ago

Nope: https://skylertanner.com/2010/04/30/supersize-me-revisted-under-lab-conditions/ https://skylertanner.com/2010/04/30/supersize-me-revisted-un...

tootie 2y ago

No. It was pretty well disproven actually. And he didn't disclose he had untreated alcoholism during the production which likely caused most of his problems.

RavingGoat 2y ago
So his liver was ok even though he was a lifelong alcoholic yet a month later it wasn't and the only new thing he introduced in his diet was lots of mcdonalds? Seems like he proved something.

hintoftime 2y ago

I think I heard he was actually addicted to alcohol, which is information that he withheld, and that some scientists in a European country tried unsuccessfully to recreate his results.

queuebert 2y ago

Serious question -- can you clarify what evidence would need to be released? The calorie counts clearly add up, because a single non-super-sized McDonald's meal is over half of a grown man's BMR. All that remains is to add up the resulting weight gain from the excess daily calories over a month.

tootie 2y ago
He had more than weight gain, he suffered serious liver problems. That was in the movie despite him hiding his chronic alcohol abuse. Eating tons of fast food is obviously going to be unhealthy, but the results are pretty predictable. There's a scene at the outset where a doctor tells him something like "you'll gain weight and raise your cholesterol but that's about it" and he came back with loads more problems. The extra problems were most likely due to alcohol.
smcl 2y ago
You can't really do that though. I mean at a high level, yeah a poor diet and little exercise will almost certainly lead to an adult gaining weight. But it sounds like you're describing the possibility of calculating his expected weight gain based on how much he ate and how much he exercised, and I don't think that's possible. Not to mention that it's been widely reported (iirc even from Spurlock himself) that he was drinking alcohol heavily during this period, which will further complicate this calorie-level reconcilation you're suggesting.
- npsimons 2y ago
  > it sounds like you're describing the possibility of calculating his expected weight gain based on how much he ate and how much he exercised, and I don't think that's possible. This is a joke right? This is exactly how you calculate expected weight gain/loss.
  - smcl 2y ago
    If you can do this accurately for an arbitrary person, you will be the world's most celebrated dietician so I encourage you to go ahead and publish exactly how you're doing this.
- edanm 2y ago
  > But it sounds like you're describing the possibility of calculating his expected weight gain based on how much he ate and how much he exercised, and I don't think that's possible. Why? To a large extent this is possible, and with a bit of experience in how a specific person reacts, it's possible to do this very accurately. Bodybuilders will often have very specific meal plans over months, and know more-or-less exactly how much weight they will gain or lose, sometimes down to the week.

flutas 2y ago

Nope. It’s been tried and never able to be reproduced (aside from weight gain as expected because calories in > calories out)[0]. The underlying thing I’ve heard (and he admitted to, since deleted) is that he was a massive alcoholic during filming and that’s what led to the health problems. Essentially he’s said he drank since age 13, and “was never sober for more than a week since then.” Unfortunately I can’t find that direct quote anymore on a reputable site, but he mentions the alcoholism in this interview.[1] [0]: https://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-under-lab-conditions https://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-u... [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-spurlock-talks-sexual-misconduct-confession-super-size-me-2-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-spurlock-talks-sexual...

hbn 2y ago

The movie was not scientific at all. It was anti-scientific if anything. Not to argue McDonald's is health food, but his method was he had to eat McDonald's 3 times per day - even if he wasn't hungry. And additionally, if the cashier ever asked if he wanted to supersize, he had to say yes. So he was just forcing McDonald's down his throat to the point of throwing up. Name a food where you wouldn't gain weight eating it in excess. And it was later revealed he was lying to doctors by saying he wasn't drinking when he in fact had a very bad alcohol addiction. You even see in the movie a doctor tell him he's baffled how his liver has seen such damage from McDonald's since that should really only happen from an alcohol addiction. Well, turned out years later he was secretly drinking the whole time. The movie is a hoax. McDonald's even gave an official PR response and basically the gist was "we actually agree with the movie, you should not be eating our food like that."

CoastalCoder 2y ago
I feel really bad for him, that he had an addiction he couldn't quit and felt forced to hide. Anyone know why, given that, he'd make a movie that put his health under a microscope?
- hbn 2y ago
  There was a moral panic over fast food that was really taking off at the time, and cashing in on it clearly paid off for him. It did make McDonald's put more effort into rebranding with "we care about the health of kids" - I was a kid when the documentary came out and I remember frequent McDonald's ads on kids channels that were just Ronald McDonald teaching you how to do exercises. But I don't think it really made as much of a difference for people binge eating their food as much as the past few years where their prices for all their food have shot to the moon.
  - floor2 2y ago
    Calling it a "moral panic" feels almost offensively wrong to me. McDonald's is very legitimately a serious problem in America today. Obesity and related conditions- Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, etc are at mind boggling epidemic levels. Americans today are living shorter, sicker lives than their parents despite tremendous improvements in medicine, working safety, automobile safety and less smoking almost entirely due to obesity related conditions. Childhood obesity is setting millions of children down a path of suffering before they're old enough to understand that they're being harmed or having the agency and autonomy to correct it. This isn't a "moral panic" over something harmless like kids playing dungeons and dragons or listening to rock and roll, this is arguably the largest health and wellbeing concern in America today. If anything, as a society we probably have too much moral panic about stigmatized things like opioids and guns that impact a pretty small percent of people and have not enough concern about the unfortunately normalized things like 3/4ths of people being overweight and 4/10 being obese.

appleiigs 2y ago

As part of an intro to optimization class in university, we inputted gov't nutrition health guidelines and the McDonalds nutritional menu into a model. Solved how we could hit the health guidelines (min and maximums) by only eating McDs. Basic conclusion is McDs is fine if you don't eat the fries or sodas. The book "Fast Food Nation" was an optional reading. It explained how McD single-handedly improved the quality of beef and potato industry in the US.

m463 2y ago
Aren't government nutritional health guidelines heavily influenced by politics/outside influence? I know we've gotten past the food pyramid, but don't guidelines continue to heavily favor dairy? (and doesn't mcdonalds still have a lot of saturated fat?)
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I could be making huge assumptions here. But I imagine the GP's experiment was as simple as focusing on "recommended calories" (which is 2000 per day) and secondarily, keeping under/over certain nutrients (low sugar/cholesterol/fat, high vitamins). Food pyramid was much less scientific and more of a basic guideline for school children (and yes, the dairy campaigns were very successful, though dairy at least has nutritional value and usually a good "fill" factor). But I don't think any of those hard nutrient recommendations were every challenged. Were they? I honestly haven't looked into it.
vmladenov 2y ago
I don’t recall coming away from Fast Food Nation with the impression that McD improved things, but it has been many years. I thought the book focused on how agribusiness increased the risk of contamination by pathogens like E. coli and the effects of marketing to children.

keybored 2y ago

From YouTube[1] > We should all thank Morgan for showing us that eating 5000+calories a day while being a raging alcoholic and drug addict is unhealthy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXtJ12EeaOs&lc=UgyA_kYg7pohGToIZOx4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXtJ12EeaOs&lc=UgyA_kYg7pohG...

mistrial9 2y ago
"drug addict" is uselessly unspecific in a medical context, and socially is just derogatory.
- keybored 2y ago
  I agree that saying both alhoholic and drug addict is redundant.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Well, you're never going to convince modern culture. Something something moderate.

kbutler 2y ago

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/03/supersize-me-failed-replication-well-sort-of/ https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/03/supersize-me-failed-rep... "the conclusion, weak as it is, is sufficient to show that the Supersize me documentary is dubious, or maybe even a hoax. Clearly, eating a lot of McDonald’s fast food (or Burger King etc.) is not really so unhealthy that there is serious health risk after a month. The other anecdotes and this study of 18 people showed that clearly. So what did Morgan Spurlock do? Who can say. We can think of benign explanations: maybe McD/Burger King changed their ingredients after 2004, or they differ between Sweden and USA, or Swedes are more naturally resistant to bad diets than English. Or maybe Spurlock engaged in a lot of creative freedom."

mensetmanusman 2y ago

The takeaway was not ‘bad food is bad’ but ‘bad food with absolutely no activity is bad’ A nutritionist responded with a study where he only ate candy and multivitamins but increased his movement exercise 10x. All his health metrics went up.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Must have a hell for hunger pains, though. I can take a moderate walk and feel hungry (which can lead to overeating and cancelling out the exercise gains). I can't imagine the discipline to simply ignore your hunger for those early weeks with a bunch of water and candy.