Review of Super Size Me
Roger Ebert
I say this having eaten irresponsibly at McDonald's since I was in grade school, and one of the very first McDonald's outlets in the nation opened in Urbana. Hamburgers were 15 cents, fries were a dime. Make it two burgers, and we considered that a meal. Today it is possible to ingest thousands of calories at McDonald's, and zoom dangerously over your daily recommended limits of fat, sugar and salt. I know because Morgan Spurlock proves it in "Super Size Me."
This is the documentary that caused a sensation at Sundance 2004 and allegedly inspired McDonald's to discontinue its "super size" promotions as a preemptive measure. In it, Spurlock vows to eat three meals a day at McDonald's for one month. He is examined by three doctors at the beginning of the month and found to be in good health. They check him again regularly during the filming, as his weight balloons 30 pounds, his blood pressure skyrockets, his cholesterol goes up 65 points, he has symptoms of toxic shock to his liver, his skin begins to look unhealthy, his energy drops, he has chest pains, and his girlfriend complains about their sex life. At one point his doctors advise him to abandon McDonald's before he does permanent damage. The doctors say they have seen similar side-effects from binge drinkers, but never dreamed you could get that way just by eating fast food.
It's amazing, what you find on the menu at McDonald's. Let's say you start the day with a sausage and egg McMuffin. You'll get 10 grams of saturated fat -- 50 percent of your daily recommendation, not to mention 39 percent of your daily sodium intake. Add a Big Mac and medium fries for lunch, and you're up to 123 percent of your daily sat fat recommendation, and 96 percent of your sodium. For dinner, choose a Quarter Pounder with cheese, add another medium order of fries, and you're at 206 percent of daily sat. fat and 160 percent of sodium. At some point add a strawberry shake to take you to 247 percent of sat. fat and 166 percent of sodium. And then remember that most nutritionists recommend less fat and salt than the government guidelines.
There is a revisionist interpretation of the film, in which Spurlock is identified as a self-promoter who on behalf of his film ate more than any reasonable person could consume in a month at McDonald's. That is both true and not true. He does have a policy that whenever he's asked if he wants to "super size it," he must reply "yes." But what he orders for any given meal is not uncommon, and we have all known (or been) customers who ordered the same items. That anyone would do it three times a day is unlikely. Occasionally you might want to go upscale at someplace like Outback, where the Bloomin' Onion Rings all by themselves provide more than a day's worth of fat and sodium, and 1,600 calories. Of course they're supposed to be shared. For best results, share them with everyone else in the restaurant.
Of course we bear responsibility for our own actions, so . . . is it possible to go to McDonald's and order a healthy meal? This week a Chicago nutritionist told a Sun-Times reporter that of course Spurlock put on weight, because he was eating 5,000 calories a day. She suggested a McDonald's three-meal menu that would not be fattening, but as I studied it, I wondered: How many customers consider a small hamburger, small fries and a Diet Coke as their dinner? When was the last time you even ordered a small hamburger (that's not a Quarter Pounder) at McDonald's? Don't all raise your hands at once.
Oh, I agree with the nutritionist that her recommended three meals would not add weight; her daily caloric intake totaled 1,460 calories, which is a little low for a child under 4, according to the USDA. But even her menu would include 54 grams of fat (15 saturated), or about one third of calories (for best heart health, fat should be down around 20 percent). And her diet included an astonishing 3,385 mgs of sodium (daily recommendation: 1,600 to 2,400 mgs). My conclusion: Even the nutritionist's bare-bones 1,460-calorie McDonald's menu is dangerous to your health.
I approached "Super Size Me" in a very particular frame of mind, because in December 2002, after years of fooling around, I began seriously following the Pritikin program of nutrition and exercise, and have lost about 86 pounds. Full disclosure: Fifteen of those pounds were probably lost as a side effect of surgery and radiation; the others can be accounted for by Pritikin menus and exercise (the 10,000 Step-a-Day Program plus weights two or three times a week). So of course that makes me a True Believer.
You didn't ask, but what I Truly Believe is that unless you can find an eating program you can stay on for the rest of your life, dieting is a waste of time. The pounds come back. Instead of extreme high-protein or low-carb diets with all their health risks, why not exercise more, avoid refined foods and eat a balanced diet of fruits and veggies, whole grains, fish and a little meat, beans, soy products, low-fat dairy, low fat, low salt? Of course I agree with McDonald's that a visit to Mickey D's can be part of a responsible nutritional approach. That's why I've dined there twice in the last 17 months.
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Documentaries such as these are the ones I often watch. An update or being educated with something you think you know about. Yet, you are surprised by the truth of it.
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When watching this documentary, I thought back to the many times I had eaten at McDonald’s. However, I have never eaten daily three-times there. Spurlock proves how bad it is, but the man in the documentary who ate 19,000 Big Macs, didn’t look fat nor sick and he might now be affected this much by the meals. I think the greater point that should have been focused on, was the school lunches and the lack of exercise.
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Spurlock’s thesis is clearly delivered right at the beginning of the film. Hence, as a viewer, I focused more on the process of his physical and emotional changes rather than the result – because the result was no surprise.
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Of course not a lot of people are going to volunteer to put their health at risk to prove a point like Spurlock does, but I strongly believe that things need to be tested more than once. The statement “I know because Morgan Spurlock proves it in ‘Super Size Me’” just sounded off to me. It seems rare that now-a-days people will say “I know this because one person said so.” People are taught to be skeptical.
Even though it’s unlikely, it’s possible that somebody else’s body would react differently to the McDonalds than Spurlocks did. I’m not saying it’s probable that if the experiment were tried again with 20 people that there would be different results, it’s just always nice a viewer to have some sort of verification.
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I believe the film directly contributes to McDonald’s decision of eliminating “super size.” Since consumers are sometimes not aware of their ordering decision, getting rid of “super size” is beneficial to healthy-eating.
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I remember growing up and people would talk about Super Size Me like it was the craziest and most interesting movie, but no body ever discussed the impact it made. I never knew that McDonalds discontinued their super-size me promotion until reading this paragraph, and I definitely think it gave the movie a lot more weight. Suddenly the movie strayed away from just being a guy proving a mundane point, into a sort of social commentary with an impactful result.
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Before this documentary premiered, I don’t think people were as conscious of the fact that obesity was becoming one the leading causes of death in the United States, that could be prevented. I feel like Super Size Me along with other kind of documentaries, made people realize how really unhealthy it was and how it can drastically change your body in just a couple of days. I mean people knew it wasn’t the best food but this put it right in front of people’s faces and made everyone think twice before eating at a fast food place.
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In order to attract more customers, they serve big portions with lots of calories. Even small portions tend to exceed the daily recommended calories. Unless we become conscious of what we put into our mouths at restaurants, the health risk increases.
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McDonalds has gone through enough with the release of this film, and I’m sure the tons of reviews being written about it. No body is giving McDonalds the benefit of the doubt. What about Pop-Eyes? Burger King? Or even higher scale restaurants… I’m not a nutritionist but I don’t think it would be healthy to eat three meals a day for a month anywhere that isn’t advertised as a health-food restaurant. The evil here is not in McDonalds, but in the decisions people make.
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That is why mcdonalds is closing locations throughout the US. People are finally catching on to how unhealthy mcdonalds is. According to a Bloomberg article McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant chain, said third-quarter profit fell 30 percent as U.S. sales slumped for the fourth straight quarter.
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things like 2 much sodium, gmo, and beef not even being 100% beef have gotten people to not eat this garbage. I myself havent touched a mcdonalds in 5 years.
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I was just relating it to what I know about McDonalds and to current day awareness on how unhealthy it is.
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I hope fast food chains like McDonald’s can come up choices with better nutritious quality rather than seducing customers going for larger sizes and becoming addictive. McDonald’s uses a very small markup to attract people going for super-size, and by doing so the company appears to be purely profit-oriented.
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plus the additives are made to be addictive much like cigarette additives.
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I think that this documentary proved the point for the need of reforming the way we look at food in this country. I thought it was interesting that everyone in the film, even the professionals, agree that not enough is being done to protect the children and teach them about what they are putting into their bodies.
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Though he is trying to prove the effects of of eating McDonalds, he is also a) eating an excessive amount and b) drastically changing his diet, which would effect anyone’s body negatively because there is no transition time, which does alter the legitimacy of the experiment.
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I would not want to watch a documentary full of “reasonable,” daily, and normal activities. I think Spurlock is really brave and innovative.
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Even eating one full meal at McDonald’s accounts for most of the recommended (or maximum) amount of saturated fats, sodium, etc…
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I agree however in my opinion McDoanlds is one of the worst. Even their own employee website advised employees to not eat there.
http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-tells-employees-to-avoid-fast-food-2013-12
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The statement says if the lawyers can prove that eating McDonald’s “for every meal of every day is unreasonably dangerous”…
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We all know that McDonald’s is bad for you, but we go there anyway. Even Spurlock, who got sick after a day or two of the food, later on became addicted to the food and his mood would soar after eating a meal from McDonald’s. We need to keep in mind that McDonald’s is cheaper than going to a restaurant or buying something healthier. The lower class is especially susceptible to this and they might be forced to eat the fast food just because it is the cheaper food source.
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Because, the first couple of days when we see him eat his super sized meal, he gets sick. Obviously, eating food high in fat and sodium is going to have an extreme effect on an above average healthy man who is used to eating healthy. So I feel like they made the rule of super sizing a meal after being asked, to have these images of him getting sick, to have more of a reaction with the audience watching. With that being said, if it wasn’t for the emphasis of the super size meal in the film, I don’t think McDonald’s would’ve gotten rid of it that fast.
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especially since he was asked a good amount of time. It is one thing to eat McDonalds 3 times a day for a month, but to super size every time asked is a little over kill and could be used as a point to discredit his findings.
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Even though this documentary is based on the truth, I think that the aspect of having to get the meal super sized when it is asked is not as practical.
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When a cashier asks for super size, it sounds like a reminder of a better, more economic option. McDonald’s deliberately sets the price and makes it highly acceptable, so that customers are willing to pay for the larger size with no big sacrifice in money.
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However, Spurlock is not trying to film a everyday life. He’s trying to show us a result in a concentrated time period. Audience only realizes how scary the results are when Spurlock exaggerates the experiment.
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if it was once a day or maybe twice on some.
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that they are eating McDonalds 3 times per day, but they are probably eating fast food multiple times a day on many occasions.
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The commercials for these places show that it is a much healthier place than fast food. The salads look fresher in the commercials, they are unseasoned and without dressing, the bread sticks have grains and are not the plain, bleached white bread you get when you order them. The description of the food itself, begs the question, “look how healthy this is, why wouldn’t you get it.”
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If they did, they would see that one appetizer is more than enough calories for an entire meal. The commercial calls for two appetizers and an entree, as well as unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks. Now that is a meal that could feed an entire sports team.
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Now it’s possible to go to McD to order a healthy meal, e.g. a salad, but even the healthy options are being questioned if they are healthy at all. McD wants to satisfy it’s customers and have a good reputation. Maybe one family member is on a diet, but the rest of the family really craves the Big Mac. In that way it’s still possible for families to go together and get what ever they desire.
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For an obese or overweight person it’s hard going to a McDonald’s an choosing a salad over a cheeseburger. Especially if you could get a cheeseburger from the dollar menu compared to a five dollar plus salad. Although I must commend them for at least having those options for people that eat there on the regular and are trying to live a healthier lifestyle. (I heard they now serve Kale) Also they must be getting fed up with all those lawsuits, so at least they can say people have options.
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a healthy meal
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to see that even a decade later McDonald’s reputation is pretty much the same.
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Even Morgan himself said that he craved fast food, more and more with the passing days. The nutritionist himself said, there is no need for fast food to be so bad for you. Fast food can be nutritious, but without adding the hormones and additives, the cost of making these foods, would be pricier for the company.
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There have been a bunch of images floating around the internet that compare a burger to a salad, where the burger is almost 5x the price of the salad at McDonalds. If the assumption is that the people who eat at McDonalds regularly are low-income, they are probably still going to go for the cheaper option. So adding the healthy items wasn’t as much as a fix as McDonalds may have thought it was. Perhaps it was just for the image, or an answer to the bad publicity.
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Its $4.49 for 10 pc. of chicken nuggets AND ONLY $5 for 20 pc. The why they advertise “super sizes” makes you go for those bigger meals.
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The people ordering these fries will take one look at the sad paper sac that contains maybe 30 fries and will automatically want to get at least the medium, which is a visually appealing cardboard box that holds much more french fries.
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As the documentary showed, just because you choose the salad, it doesn’t mean that it is that much healthier.
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That being said, I can’t imagine the numbers are so off that the difference would validate McDonald’s as a “healthy” or even passable choice.
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I highly agree with Ebert and I think the way he ended the review of Super Size Me is very true. It is true that if you plan on “dieting” then you are setting yourself up for extreme failure. The key is living a better lifestyle, and balancing. It is about finding healthy alternatives that fulfill you and occasionally cheating. The key to healthy eating is not using food to please you but using food to respect your body and keep it at its healthiest stat. You truly are what you eat.
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However, no amount of diet can be helpful without the exercise to support it. In order to respect your body, as you mention, you need to also include the exercise. As we saw in the documentary, the children in the schools were not only being fed unhealthy foods, they were also not getting the right education about the foods nor the right amount of exercise recommended, which is at least 30 minutes every day.
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I wish that this film addressed matters of race and socio-economic status more directly, because it is most relevant when considering poorer people (who tend to be minorities). I truly believe that the fast food empire is yet another way to perpetuate poverty and, therefor, perpetuate the poverty gap. Fast food is cheap. It also destroys your body, as Spurdock illustrates. The people who would be eating a diet close to Spurdock’s are poorer people, which means they are the people to be getting sick, in debt for medical bills or even just bogged down by daily lethargy. Such people also have less access to education about nutrition, making it harder to break the cycle. The fast food business is really another venue of oppression.
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Just think about Kirstie Alley, who was a spokesperson for Jenny Craig, then gained back all the weight she lost and lost her position, then lost the weight again and gained her roles as spokeswoman back again. If you do not change your lifestyle and only follow the latest fad to lose some extra pounds, you will gain back everything you worked so hard to lose if not more weight.
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that don’t exist in nature in order to sell more, and they influence our health.
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To start, a personal story. This film was a personal story, but it influenced many people to educate themselves. Its a domino effect of how people react to a personal story that is substantial enough to make them want to be educated. Once people want the information, then it is given to them, like when Mcdonalds started displaying the calorie count on every menu item.
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and himself are eating.
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Since these people are not so wealthy, they tend to make the best combination. They may care more about getting a delicious, optional, and convenient meal rather than a delicate and healthy one. They pay attention to the cost and benefit tradeoff so much that they are easily attracted to “super size” because it is more worth-it. I think eventually it comes to the problem of purchasing power and sufficient knowledge of health.
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Although I believe that statistics can be manipulated, not including any statistics in the documentary would greatly undermine the credibility of the filmmaker. The viewer would then be able to argue that this is just one case and that it is rare and doesn’t happen everywhere so why should we listen to Spurlock?
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In the words of one of the nutritionist, fast food, does not have to be a trashy as it is today. The reason for this kind of negativity towards fast food is that the companies are not willing to spend more money to make it a little healthier and would rather just add preservatives and hormones to make the food last longer and generate a higher profit.
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s McD diet seems extreme, we can all relate to neglecting our health by eating out. Maybe the stats and numbers Ebert reviews help people realize that the film touches on a real issue that regular people can fall into.
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Based on his irresponsible diet habit at McDonald’s in the past and his experience of losing weight with a decent nutritional program, he conveys his message that people should eat more responsibly.
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In a review about a topic such as this one, which is essentially a personal experiment conducted by Spurlock, you need numbers to make the story. No one cares about Ebert’s opinions, we just want the facts of what Spurlock unlocked about McDonalds, a popular food chain we are all guilty of having eaten in. What this says about Ebert’s technique is that he realizes a good review of this documentary entails stats that the documentary gathered. His own story is used to contrast/balance out the review of the story, giving his own experience may help resonate with the reader better.
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I agree with you. Fact over opinion. Opinion is used to fluff a film and make it more relatable. It also creates a mental break because if the entire film was numbers numbers numbers none of us would continue watching, unless your into that kind of thing.
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The reviewer speaks about his own life because he too is trying to gain a healthier lifestyle. The reviewer mentioned how her lost 86 pounds by going on a nutritional program. This film must hit close to home. The review must include statistics because that is the basis of this film. It is based on numbers revolved around the body, and food companies.
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His personal story kind of shows his basis towards the film, because he went out of his way to make sure he was healthy and in shape from working out and eating healthy, and since he is about his health he he has a stronger connection to film since it is showing the side effects of McDonalds food.
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I guess in order to come across his point, Ebert includes this many stats to highlight/emphasize the negative effect it has on one’s body to be living off of fastfood. The technique is sort of irrelevant in this documentary. We follow a person whose main goal is to prove that your health is at risk if your diet mainly consists of fastfood.
He includes his personal story to let the reader know that this had happened to him before, so he supports the stats as well as Spurlock’s experience.
I used to work at McD for 6 years in Denmark, and over the course of those 6 years I gained 100lbs. I was in physical bad shape because I would eat at least 10 meals at McD per week. for 6 years. I managed to lose 65lbs after I quit in 2006.
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I’ve been working at Starbucks for 3 years, and I have gained my fair share of weight just off of all the milk based drinks and bakery treats. It’s no Mcdonald’s but its not necessarily better. I only work 2 days a week now and the other 5 days I use to try and lose some chunk that I gained from full time. People working in the food industry in general would give a great perspective for another documentary.
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Ebert’s personal experience causes him to be more of advocate of the film compared to a viewer learning about the shocking facts. I think Ebert was aware of these statistics before he watched the film (since he talks about losing weight). Because of that, his review was in a way, skewed from the beginning, since he was aware of the facts and all this documentary does is prove those facts.
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I would bet that no body goes to McDonalds thinking they’re getting any nutritional value. People know that McDonalds is bad for them, but they overlook the numbers. Seeing the numbers laid out the way Ebert puts them definitely makes one realize just how bad McDonalds is for them. I think the statistics tied in with the story his his personal weight loss is almost a warning from him personally to stay away from McDonalds.
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This is one of those documentaries where since the content is about a man’s day to day life, technique is less noticed because everyone is involved with the story and what will happen to the man in his life while consuming something people are so familiar with. I think Ebert recognizes that, so he decides to focus on the content rather than technique
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Statistics are not always credible. If you poll people walking into McDonald’s every evening, you would run into bias from the people who are there for the first time in months versus the people who go there every day. You need to also look at the fact that many people would lie when it comes to surveys and wouldn’t admit to the actual number of times they eat fast food since we all know it is bad for us.
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Morgan Spurlock is narrating facts and statistics about obesity within the United States calling it the” fattest nation in the world”. This provides the audience with the shock factor over this portrait of America which further engages them into the film for these statistics. However, he does not clearly distinguish these effects as a separate problem from McDonalds specifically. Using Michael Moore techniques, Spurlock creates his own character to tell a story. For example, by providing close-ups of his throwing up and forcing his audience to see crumbles of chewed up slime fall across his face, showing the appeal of fast food.
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Ebert pulled statistics from the film to make his review seem more factual than it actually was. In the end, he ended up being a spokesperson for this film rather than a critic. Even when he did bring up arguments that others had with the documentary, he always downplayed them and used phrases like “this is both true and not true” to show two sides of the debate. But when it came to praising the film, it seemed as though he felt this documentary was the greatest discovery and would change the way everyone looks at fast food.
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The film’s main story is about a man taking on this challenge to eat nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days. It’s a personal narrative that highlights what the film is trying to say about McDonald’s food. Ebert himself had been overweight for quite a number of years before he lost weight. This movie makes people take a personal look at themselves and their choices when it comes to food. By explaining everything that he did and has done when it comes to dieting and McDonald’s, Ebert is highlighting that exact fact.
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Everybody has their own experience with food and how it specifically affects their body. This experiment although with most likely similar results would’ve had different outcomes if the subject was older, younger, male, female whichever the case maybe. It makes the audience realize how drastic the mcdonald’s sodium and fat numbers are compared to a “regular” diet.
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Being a heavy set man, Ebert relates to the many Americans going through the struggle of leading a healthier life by eating healthy. He points out what worked for him was a creation Pritikin diet he followed and not only that but exercise. Leading a healthy lifestyle is not only about what you eat but how you maintain your body, which can be done with exercise also.
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Also, he added the element of only supersizing when asked. So it doesn’t seem unbelievably extreme to order a #3 or whatever… but it shows how McDonalds not only serves unhealthy food – they push unhealthy quantities of that food on their customers.
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If Spurlock’s story was not a part of the film then there would be no direct evidence of what McDonald food really does to a persona body. His story references the direct harm McDonald food does. Is more show and less tell, which is a more effective way of speaking to a general audience. Especially when it comes to health.
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I agree. Showcasing his own body makes a more valid point than just telling a story and yes it is dramatic, but maybe the influence the film made wouldn’t have been as great if he was just telling a story of how bad and unhealthy McDonald’s food is.
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Spurlock makes this film personal by adding personal aspects to the film such as his wife and her perspective, his apartment building, his own apartment, and phone calls between him and his wife and the doctors. Also because this is a documentary that is being filmed in a diary style it gives is a much more personal feel.
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The documentary is about him just as much as it’s about McDonalds or how fast food is detrimental. It’s filmed in a first person perspective – Spurlock is talking directly to his audience.
This film also creates an image of Spurlock. Even though the experiment is questionable, he wants to see what would happen. He’s a risk taker. Even when the doctors advise him to stop, he doesn’t. This also shows that he’s true to his word; he said he would eat McDonald’s for 30 days and doesn’t back down, no matter how disastrous it could end up being.
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Through his journey, we can actually see how he struggles both physically and mentally. By acting as a model, his experience also reminds us how we can be experiencing the same thing.
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It would be easy to just give the audience numbers – this is how much we’ve I’ve gained, this is how many calories I eat a day, this is my blood pressure before and after, etc – but a film wouldn’t be necessary for that. Spurlock could give us a spreadsheet with that data and it would have the same impact. What makes the movie really personal is when we learn about how eating the McDonalds affects him emotionally and personally, especially with his girlfriend. She says that the McDonalds has affected their sex life, and it’s comments like these that make the film much more than a spreadsheet.
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It reveals personal information about himself like the amount of weight he has lost, and it allows the audience to have emotions for him, which is unusual for a reviewer to do for himself, since his job is just to talk about someone else’s film.
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Spurlock takes the cameras with him through most of his day. The viewer sees the negative affects of the fast food on his body, his sex life, and his daily routines. This becomes a chapter in his autobiography because he decided to do this experiment as a perfectly healthy individual and now has gained about 30 pounds, 65 points in cholesterol, and has damaged his kidney, heart, and other organs. The next step for him would be to start eating healthy again, get more exercise, and take vitamins to combat the damage. However, as we heard from his doctors, some of this damage may be irreversible.
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Spurlock is the star.Using himself as an experimental subject, represents an entertaining, and occasionally horrifying view for the audiences. He has a fun sense of humor, speaks naturally and honestly,and plays the part of human guinea pig well.
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I found it extremely enlightening, probably more on the grounds that he must having been eating healthier than the average person given that his girlfriend was a Vegan. It made the results of his experiment even more disturbing given that he was a lot healthier than your average person when he started it. In fact, I researched his girlfriend and found out that the diet she created for him for when he finally got off the McDonald’s diet, was the basis for a dietary book she wrote years later. Also how they mentioned it took him like 14 months to get back to where he was after only one moth of this. This story continued on after, not only affecting him, but his loved ones as well.
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How much more personal can you get than showcasing your body for this experiment. He also exposed part of his every day home life with his girlfriend and also how this experienced affected their relationship. Im sure this had a huge effect on her, especially being a vegan chef
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