The fact that he force fed himself kinda weakens the point though, doesn't it? Force feeding yourself 5,000 calories a day even when you feel sick is obviously going to make you sick.
I don’t get the ‘eating 5000 calories of anything would make you ill’ argument against the movie. That was sort of the whole point. At the time, fast food chains, and McDonald’s in particular, were pushing large (and the defunct supersize) meals all the time. That this was dangerous, especially for people who didn’t really think about it and trusted the companies, was the entire point of the movie.
Note that things have changed since then - arguably as a result of, or at least accelerated by, the movie. Supersize meals disappeared soon after it, salads were introduced (yes, you can argue they’re still high calorie), and on the whole fast food places are much less aggressively pushing the larger meals than they were in the early 2000s. I would say there’s more awareness of the importance of eating healthily among the general population too (not that that seems to be having ideal results…)
I'm confused about why you're confused. The point of the movie was definitely not to give the audience the shocking realism that if you're force feeding yourself to the point of vomiting, you're probably doing something wrong. This aspect of the movie only lessens the actual argument of the movie (except that it makes good headlines and thus probably drove the majority of the media coverage and general interest in the documentary).
At the time, fast food chains, and McDonald’s
in particular, were pushing large (and the
defunct supersize) meals all the time. That
this was dangerous [...]
It's still a little bit ridiculous.
A human being should be eating 90 meals per month, give or take. If more than 1 or 2 of those are fast food, that's the problem.
To what standard should we be holding a restaurant meal? "Is it healthy for a person to eat 90 of these meals per month?" doesn't seem like a useful or realistic thing to do.
> A human being should be eating 90 meals per month, give or take. If more than 1 or 2 of those are fast food, that's the problem.
3 meals a day has nothing to do with health and everything to do with marketing. If the way we eat had any ties to common sense we wouldn't be eating our largest meal at the end of the day when we have nothing left to do except sleep.
"Food deserts" (areas with no access to fresh food) are a huge problem, yeah.
Also, economically struggling people often can't prepare their own food, even if given groceries for free: they may be physically disabled, they may be unhoused, they may be unable to afford utilities or appliances, etc.
However, I think that altering the offerings of fast-food restaurants is not even remotely a suitable way to address that.
> I don’t get the ‘eating 5000 calories of anything would make you ill’ argument against the movie.
Good thing that's not the argument I'm making in my comment. The argument I'm making is about forcing yourself to eat more than you want to while the very act of eating is making you feel sick. That's what Spurlock did in the movie; it's not representative of any significant population of people.
I was curious, looks like the equivalent (calorie-wise) of fries & a double cheeseburger is 1KG of salad.*
So yes, quite hard to overeat salad. Plus, eating that much salad would give a lot of nutrition, and throwing some beans & hemp hearts in would give you a lot of protein too.
Further to consider, it's not uncommon for people to eat the extra large fries and have two double cheeseburgers. The comparison to trying to overeat salad is only more favorable. We can also go furthe rand think of"fancy" burger places like Red Robin, there are several burgers on their menu that are over 2k calories.
* For the back of the napkin math - according to google, there's 815 calories in a fries and a double cheeseburger. For salad, I used this house salad recipe [1] as reference with 148 calories in a 170g serving
And yeah, the vegetables aren't the problem here - the problem is everything has to be sugar-coated (yes, even "savory" things like ranch dressing) for people to eat it, and then they drench everything from wings to burgers in it.
The argument is that they’re ‘misleading’ because the _dressings_ that are provided with them are surprisingly high in calories. Like, a standard size salad with all the provided dressing is not lower calorie than one of the more traditional menu options - and people may not realize that.
I’d say the salads are pretty good BTW - better than you might think a fast food place would do.
Think the point is that it's real easy to force feed yourself 5000 calories if it's 2500 calorie meals that don't fill you up for the day.
honestly the burger itself isn't too bad. Double quarter pounder is 750 calories, really filling. But tripling that from fries and drink is the real killer. You can probably lose weight from McDonald's simply by only getting water or unsweetened tea for a drink, and limiting yourself to small sides.
> it's real easy to force feed yourself 5000 calories
No it's not. If you have to force it, it's by definition not "easy". Overindulging in something is different from forcing yourself to do it. My problem with the movie is that it takes a very strange scenario (man forces himself to eat to the point of puking) and acts like that's teaching us lessons about the broader population, none of whom are doing that. It might be bad for you to eat unhealthy things that feel pleasurable, but it's obviously worse to do it so much that it's become an ordeal.
"ease" is relative here. And if you really care about that debate you can find some social media challenge posts fantasizing about how you'd consume 10000+ calories for 1b dollars. I wouldn't drone much more on that point past calorie density being an undertalked about issue with these "calories in, calories out" crowd.
Main point: consuming 3000 excess calories a day roughly equates to an average person gaining 5 points a week, 20 pounds a month (which tracks with the documentary). That is extreme. But think of 1000 excess calories (2 pounds a week) and do it over a year. We know which one is worse, and we know which one is more common. And we know it doesn't just stop after a year.
I think there's merit in demonstrating an extreme experiment (especially in this day of social media) and using it to demonstrate what happens from less extreme, but longer term bad habits.
