I just finished watching the Movie Super Size Me. Though I had heard good things about it, the movie was much more entertaining than I thought it would be.. Happy that I had just seen a good movie, I went home to read the comments on IMDB; I was thoroughly frustrated with their comments, in particular those of thread "Another example of: How Truly Dumb People in American Are". While most people will acknowledge that fast food isn't the most healthful of options, I believe that few people were aware of just how potent fatty foods are for harming health. All these stupid commentators can say is how stupid this Morgan character is. They say he created this documentary because he was a failure in his directorial career and needed the cash and attention. True, the film may not be the most elegantly assembled ever, but that doesn't necessarily diminish its value. Gripes about his post:

1. Instead of taking the food to a lab to have it examined for fat intake, (Even though every body with commom sense knows this, the approach would have been more intelligent)this dummy eats nothing but McDonalds for a lengthy period of time. First of all, he has the nutritional facts available to him. Since the nutritionist is able to calculate average caloric intake per day, he obviously has these numbers already. I don't know what "taking the food to a lab" would accomplish. Perhaps he could determine the average number of sesame seeds on a bun and how this weighs into the amount of calories in a Big Mac--I'm sure some lab somewhere would do this for him--but what good would that be? In addition, just finding the fat content wouldn't have led to other findings such as hyperuricemia and addiction.
2. And he never chooses from the salads McDonalds has... As per his own rules, he orders everything on the menu. I'm sure this includes salads. Besides, he states that the number of calories in a salad with dressing is comparable to that of a Big Mac. (I don't remember whether the fat content was also compared, but the point is that even the salads aren't that great for you.)
3. He doesn't do this a couple times a week(like most people with common sense do)he does this everyday. Perhaps the person who wrote this comment stopped listening because he was already convinced that the documentary's content was but repetitive drivel. Apparently, 22% are "super heavy users" according to McDonald's and eat a significant portion of their meals there. While branding occurs at an early age, it's highly feasible that even these super heavy users patronize other fast food establishments. Some people do subsist on fast food, which is a conclusion that his informal polls support. And he doesn't super size things every day, either. In total, he only supersized 9 times--1/10th of his meals.
4. [He]finds out that his heart is getting weak.... and his kidney is no longer working... It turns out that the EKG showed his heart was fine; I don't remember hearing anything about kidney problems--especially any problems with just one kidney. I guess it was only his liver that seemed to have suffered damage. SGPT and SGOT are (mostly) liver tests, not heart tests, not kidney tests. Cholesterol and triglycerides are also liver related, although they are risk factors for heart disease. The doctor mentions a high uric acid level, but that in itself isn't a sickness. It might precipitate kidney stones, but that's not quite the same as kidney failure as the comment guy suggests.
5. There are so many people in the world that genetically have bad health,and they can do nothing about it. Yet this dummy is making himself have bad health on purpose. One of the interviewees makes a comparison about being hectored for smoking and being hectored for poor eating habits. It's conceivable that different genetic make-ups may favour higher plasma cholesterol levels (such as apolipoprotein E isoforms) but diet is a matter of choice. It's been demonstrated that a high fat diet leads to rapid weight gain and that many people tend towards high fat diets; genetics is left out of this. Not all fat people have genetics stacked against them.
6. The lady asked him if he wanted his meal supersized,as a man he has a choice to either say:Yes or No. It's true that he has the choice to supersize. But the McDonald's employee in Houston says that, in her humble estimation, most people who are offered a supersized meal accept it. Houston, according to the poll mentioned (probably by Men's Fitness Magazine), was the nation's fattest city at the time. I don't necessarily trust Men's Fitness Magazine, whose calculations include the number of fitness centres and air quality. But when JAMA publishes an article (Mokdad AH, Bowman BA, Ford ES, et al. Prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and obesity related health risk factors, 2001. JAMA 2003:289;76–79) saying that 44.3 million American adults are obese (data obtained by phone interview; obese defined as BMI > 30.0) that catches my attention. What really gets me, however, is the number of fat people I see on the streets--and Wisconsin is ranked only #14.
7. What about Burger King, Wendy's, Krystal, Jack in the Box, Sonic, etc.. As stated in the beginning, the domination of McDonald's in the States is so strong that, just in Manhattan, the number of Mickey D's is greater than that several other large chains combined. It's not that he's pissed off at McDonald's, it's just that it makes a great representative of fast food in general. Even the author of this comment acknowledges that each of these chains has its own form of "super sizing". If he had chosen something like Krystal he'd have difficulty maintaining the diet at home, seeing that the closest one to Manhattan would be in Burlington, North Carolina.
8. Don't buy into crap that you've already known about. Apparently, this is not crap I knew about before. I didn't realize that soft drink sizes had increased that drastically. Of course, the year of McDonald's' founding is much before my time. Even the doctors hadn't realized the extent of possible liver damage from such a diet so this was news to them as well.

The nerve of some people! It just bugs me that he paid so little attention to what was said in the movie--and the fact that most of the subsequent posts are in agreement with him. Dang, the McD's drive through just closed a few minutes ago. I really felt like having a nice, juicy Big Mac. I guess I'll just go to bed instead.