8 ms·

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

by 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.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      Americans have solved this by making fat into an identity which is taboo to criticize.
      - rpdillon 2y ago
        You're being downvoted, but this happened to me. I mentioned at work some years back something about raising my kids and emphasizing healthy eating to maintain a healthy weight, and a co-worker took me to task for "body shaming" my children. I pointed out that I was really approaching it from the health angle, but that didn't land. Really weird experience that stuck with me.
        lupusreal 2y ago
        People at work bug me about drinking water instead of soda. I'm overweight, BMI of 28, so to me it seems obvious why I shouldn't be drinking sugar water. But try explaining this to them, some of them are 3x my weight at least and are offended by the notion of somebody smaller than them wanting to avoid becoming like them. It's a very delicate subject, trying to explain my desire to be healthier to people who are morbidly obese and see nothing wrong with it.
    - monkeyfun 2y ago
      I very much agree on there not being enough concern and "moral panic" about obesity, but just feel like noting that for opioids specifically though they may be affecting only a relatively small percentage of people, last year alone there was something like 70-100k dead from fentanyl overdoses. In that respect I'd argue that at least compared to guns or abortion as common political obsessions, opioids, especially high potency ones like fentanyl, are a lot closer to obesity in causing catastrophic death and suffering in the US.
- keybored 2y ago
  Drinking too much is bad for you. Maybe someone should make a 30-day heavy drinking trial documentary to demonstrate it.
  - hbn 2y ago
    WKUK actually did a sketch that was exactly that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOyjzE1vcD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOyjzE1vcD4
  - grecy 2y ago
    Morgan did. There is an episode of his TV show “30 days” where exactly this is the premise.
happyopossum 2y ago
> The movie is a hoax. There’s no hoax - he actually ate McDonald’s 3x a day. Where’s the false and preposterous claim we’re supposedly being tricked in to believing?
- practicemaths 2y ago
  That it lead to the pickling of his liver?
- dangus 2y ago
  Well he ate three McDonald’s super size meals PLUS an alcoholic’s diet of liquid calories, which is about 100 calories per drink at the least. Fun fact: if you get a quarter pounder with cheese, Diet Coke and small fries, that’s 750 calories. Eat that for lunch and dinner plus a McMuffin, coffee, and apple pie for breakfast and you’re at 2,030 calories.
  - koolba 2y ago
    > Eat that for lunch and dinner plus a McMuffin, coffee, and apple pie for breakfast and you’re at 2,030 calories. That's significantly less than the average diet in the USA. According to Wikipedia it averages about 3781[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energy_intake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ener... Spurlock was 6'2" so even the higher end of calories wouldn't be out of line for a "normal American diet", at least for total caloric intake. Now if he was also drinking half a bottle of scotch a day, that's another 1000 calories (plus all the liver damage...). [1]: Divide those numbers by 4.184 for the joules to calorie converion.
    - crdrost 2y ago
      Also note that during the experiment one of Spurlock’s medical professionals comments on his diet as averaging 5000 kcal/day given his food logs. At another point a different professional states that these results seem impossible without heavy drinking of alcohol, implying that he wasn't disclosing the alcohol in his food logs to them either.
keybored 2y ago
I’m onboard with the anti-processed food crowd. I don’t frequent any fast food joints but I get processed food at the grocery store. It’s bad. But I also roll my eyes when someone in 2020+ brags about their pristine normal diets, goes on a processed-only diet (to prove some point that no one needed to be convinced about?) and then have embarrassing moans and sighs every time they take a bite. oooooooooHHHHH Am I too far gone? Too numb to the pleasures of processed food?
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I suppose we browse different parts of the net, but I've never come across that scenario.
baubino 2y ago
I saw the movie when it came out and had distantly interacted with Morgan while he was making the film (he was an acquaintance of an acquaintance). I don’t recall the movie ever being presented as “scientific” so it’s really interesting seeing all these take-downs of it for that reason. I remember it being a quirky “documentary” (more along the lines of edu-tainment) about this weird funny thing he did. It was wild that the film gained as much traction as it did, which I don’t think was anyone’s expectation at the time. So yes, it is 100% not scientific but I really don’t think it was intended to be.
- hbn 2y ago
  Well myself and everyone else in school at the time had to sit through it in health class. Teachers LOVED this movie.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>Name a food where you wouldn't gain weight eating it in excess. You seem to be laser focused on the chemistry and less on the psychology. The point was that yes, some people back then (when fast food was actually cheap) would eat it 3 times a day and not question much. It was only filling enough for a couple of hours but highly calorie dense (mostly friends and soda, though). Much easier to lose track of that then most other foods. If we could scientifically convince people not to overeat, there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic in the US. Lasty, consider the audience. I watched this in 4th and 6th grade. What's obvious to you c. 2024 wasn't obvious to 11 yo me, especially not in anticipation of a lifestyle where I drive everywhere instead of being subjected to 1 hr of PE a day >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." And people continued to. The shuffled some stuff around as PR, but the calorie density remained the same. Coke gives too much profit margins to cut but is the biggest problem. Salads were still covered in sugar and salt so they were not in fact better than burgers. Super size was cut, but large sizes increased to 80% of supersize. So yeah, as you said. Any food in excess gains weight. The portions and ingredients continued to be excess.
15155 2y ago
ALT and AST of over 100 aren't an accident, usually. Rewatching this a couple years back this stood out immediately.
grecy 2y ago
> Name a food where you wouldn't gain weight eating it in excess. Every vegetable for a start.
- vmladenov 2y ago
  I like this list https://healthbeet.org/printable-list-for-calories-in-vegetables/ https://healthbeet.org/printable-list-for-calories-in-vegeta... Even for just corn, 1.8kg of food a day to hit 2000 calories is gonna take some effort.

by hbn 2y ago

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.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Americans have solved this by making fat into an identity which is taboo to criticize.
    - rpdillon 2y ago
      You're being downvoted, but this happened to me. I mentioned at work some years back something about raising my kids and emphasizing healthy eating to maintain a healthy weight, and a co-worker took me to task for "body shaming" my children. I pointed out that I was really approaching it from the health angle, but that didn't land. Really weird experience that stuck with me.
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        People at work bug me about drinking water instead of soda. I'm overweight, BMI of 28, so to me it seems obvious why I shouldn't be drinking sugar water. But try explaining this to them, some of them are 3x my weight at least and are offended by the notion of somebody smaller than them wanting to avoid becoming like them. It's a very delicate subject, trying to explain my desire to be healthier to people who are morbidly obese and see nothing wrong with it.
  - monkeyfun 2y ago
    I very much agree on there not being enough concern and "moral panic" about obesity, but just feel like noting that for opioids specifically though they may be affecting only a relatively small percentage of people, last year alone there was something like 70-100k dead from fentanyl overdoses. In that respect I'd argue that at least compared to guns or abortion as common political obsessions, opioids, especially high potency ones like fentanyl, are a lot closer to obesity in causing catastrophic death and suffering in the US.
keybored 2y ago
Drinking too much is bad for you. Maybe someone should make a 30-day heavy drinking trial documentary to demonstrate it.
- hbn 2y ago
  WKUK actually did a sketch that was exactly that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOyjzE1vcD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOyjzE1vcD4
- grecy 2y ago
  Morgan did. There is an episode of his TV show “30 days” where exactly this is the premise.

happyopossum 2y ago

> The movie is a hoax. There’s no hoax - he actually ate McDonald’s 3x a day. Where’s the false and preposterous claim we’re supposedly being tricked in to believing?

practicemaths 2y ago
That it lead to the pickling of his liver?
dangus 2y ago
Well he ate three McDonald’s super size meals PLUS an alcoholic’s diet of liquid calories, which is about 100 calories per drink at the least. Fun fact: if you get a quarter pounder with cheese, Diet Coke and small fries, that’s 750 calories. Eat that for lunch and dinner plus a McMuffin, coffee, and apple pie for breakfast and you’re at 2,030 calories.
- koolba 2y ago
  > Eat that for lunch and dinner plus a McMuffin, coffee, and apple pie for breakfast and you’re at 2,030 calories. That's significantly less than the average diet in the USA. According to Wikipedia it averages about 3781[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energy_intake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ener... Spurlock was 6'2" so even the higher end of calories wouldn't be out of line for a "normal American diet", at least for total caloric intake. Now if he was also drinking half a bottle of scotch a day, that's another 1000 calories (plus all the liver damage...). [1]: Divide those numbers by 4.184 for the joules to calorie converion.
  - crdrost 2y ago
    Also note that during the experiment one of Spurlock’s medical professionals comments on his diet as averaging 5000 kcal/day given his food logs. At another point a different professional states that these results seem impossible without heavy drinking of alcohol, implying that he wasn't disclosing the alcohol in his food logs to them either.

keybored 2y ago

I’m onboard with the anti-processed food crowd. I don’t frequent any fast food joints but I get processed food at the grocery store. It’s bad. But I also roll my eyes when someone in 2020+ brags about their pristine normal diets, goes on a processed-only diet (to prove some point that no one needed to be convinced about?) and then have embarrassing moans and sighs every time they take a bite. oooooooooHHHHH Am I too far gone? Too numb to the pleasures of processed food?

johnnyanmac 2y ago
I suppose we browse different parts of the net, but I've never come across that scenario.

baubino 2y ago

I saw the movie when it came out and had distantly interacted with Morgan while he was making the film (he was an acquaintance of an acquaintance). I don’t recall the movie ever being presented as “scientific” so it’s really interesting seeing all these take-downs of it for that reason. I remember it being a quirky “documentary” (more along the lines of edu-tainment) about this weird funny thing he did. It was wild that the film gained as much traction as it did, which I don’t think was anyone’s expectation at the time. So yes, it is 100% not scientific but I really don’t think it was intended to be.

hbn 2y ago
Well myself and everyone else in school at the time had to sit through it in health class. Teachers LOVED this movie.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>Name a food where you wouldn't gain weight eating it in excess. You seem to be laser focused on the chemistry and less on the psychology. The point was that yes, some people back then (when fast food was actually cheap) would eat it 3 times a day and not question much. It was only filling enough for a couple of hours but highly calorie dense (mostly friends and soda, though). Much easier to lose track of that then most other foods. If we could scientifically convince people not to overeat, there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic in the US. Lasty, consider the audience. I watched this in 4th and 6th grade. What's obvious to you c. 2024 wasn't obvious to 11 yo me, especially not in anticipation of a lifestyle where I drive everywhere instead of being subjected to 1 hr of PE a day >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." And people continued to. The shuffled some stuff around as PR, but the calorie density remained the same. Coke gives too much profit margins to cut but is the biggest problem. Salads were still covered in sugar and salt so they were not in fact better than burgers. Super size was cut, but large sizes increased to 80% of supersize. So yeah, as you said. Any food in excess gains weight. The portions and ingredients continued to be excess.

15155 2y ago

ALT and AST of over 100 aren't an accident, usually. Rewatching this a couple years back this stood out immediately.

grecy 2y ago

> Name a food where you wouldn't gain weight eating it in excess. Every vegetable for a start.

vmladenov 2y ago
I like this list https://healthbeet.org/printable-list-for-calories-in-vegetables/ https://healthbeet.org/printable-list-for-calories-in-vegeta... Even for just corn, 1.8kg of food a day to hit 2000 calories is gonna take some effort.