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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

by 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.
- throwaway22032 2y ago
  3781!?!?!? Holy shit. My bulking diet is about that, I'm trying to gain weight whilst lifting 3-4x a week. Mental. edit: Looking at the article this isn't accounting for food wastage etc so the real figure is likely a fair bit lower.
maxlybbert 2y ago
In the US, there’s a concern that some alcohol company will start claiming their drinks are healthier than the others, so alcohol packaging isn’t required to say anything about the number of calories in the drink ( https://www.eatingwell.com/article/2052030/why-your-booze-doesnt-have-a-nutrition-label/ https://www.eatingwell.com/article/2052030/why-your-booze-do... ). It makes me wonder how many people see that calories aren’t listed and assume “it must be small.” I don’t think anybody believes alcohol is a diet drink, but I’m sure many people don’t realize how it’s packed with calories.
- yladiz 2y ago
  I think they should treat it like in the UK and use a different measurement like “1 standard drink”, and, probably more importantly, forbid it from being used in marketing. I think if the minimum was 1, and even if a beer has low calories it still counts as 1 drink, it would avoid this issue.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
"diet" soda is still a huge chasm of psychological confusion so I wouldn't call it the silver bullet to beating the calories in metric. If only life were so simple. But yes, that was part of the point of the documentary. Super size portions were triple that of small and instead of a quarter pounder we're talking double or triple the meat (and maybe more grease in the burger to boot). And companies encouraged consumer to supersize because higher profit margins.

by dangus 2y ago

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.
throwaway22032 2y ago
3781!?!?!? Holy shit. My bulking diet is about that, I'm trying to gain weight whilst lifting 3-4x a week. Mental. edit: Looking at the article this isn't accounting for food wastage etc so the real figure is likely a fair bit lower.

maxlybbert 2y ago

In the US, there’s a concern that some alcohol company will start claiming their drinks are healthier than the others, so alcohol packaging isn’t required to say anything about the number of calories in the drink ( https://www.eatingwell.com/article/2052030/why-your-booze-doesnt-have-a-nutrition-label/ https://www.eatingwell.com/article/2052030/why-your-booze-do... ). It makes me wonder how many people see that calories aren’t listed and assume “it must be small.” I don’t think anybody believes alcohol is a diet drink, but I’m sure many people don’t realize how it’s packed with calories.

yladiz 2y ago
I think they should treat it like in the UK and use a different measurement like “1 standard drink”, and, probably more importantly, forbid it from being used in marketing. I think if the minimum was 1, and even if a beer has low calories it still counts as 1 drink, it would avoid this issue.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

"diet" soda is still a huge chasm of psychological confusion so I wouldn't call it the silver bullet to beating the calories in metric. If only life were so simple. But yes, that was part of the point of the documentary. Super size portions were triple that of small and instead of a quarter pounder we're talking double or triple the meat (and maybe more grease in the burger to boot). And companies encouraged consumer to supersize because higher profit margins.