Rob Gardiner
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2002
- Messages
- 2,950
Mark,
The point of Super Size Me is not that McDonalds is solely responsible for making everyone fat, or that eating fast food once is going to kill you. The point of the movie is twofold:
1) To demonstrate that we as a society have convinced ourselves that a diet based on fast food (as served in school lunches, not just at McDonalds) can be the basis of a healthy lifestyle. The stunt that you linked to in your first post will reinforce this idea, especially among those who do not make as careful choices as the woman in the article.
2) We don't really know how bad fast food is for your health. It's easy to say, "it's common sense, everybody knows fast food is bad for you," but we really aren't aware of the degree to which this is true. When Morgan begins his experiment, he visits three doctors who tell him his weight and blood pressure will go up a little bit. By the end of the experiment, the doctors themselves are shocked at the degree to which his body has been damaged by the fast food diet.
Maybe, after you've seen the film, you can argue these subtleties with your friend. You can argue with her, not for bringing up the film, but for misunderstanding it. Morgan even makes the point that eating it occasionally is fine -- what he objects to is McDonalds propogating the myth that all their food is healthy to eat all the time.
The point of Super Size Me is not that McDonalds is solely responsible for making everyone fat, or that eating fast food once is going to kill you. The point of the movie is twofold:
1) To demonstrate that we as a society have convinced ourselves that a diet based on fast food (as served in school lunches, not just at McDonalds) can be the basis of a healthy lifestyle. The stunt that you linked to in your first post will reinforce this idea, especially among those who do not make as careful choices as the woman in the article.
2) We don't really know how bad fast food is for your health. It's easy to say, "it's common sense, everybody knows fast food is bad for you," but we really aren't aware of the degree to which this is true. When Morgan begins his experiment, he visits three doctors who tell him his weight and blood pressure will go up a little bit. By the end of the experiment, the doctors themselves are shocked at the degree to which his body has been damaged by the fast food diet.
Maybe, after you've seen the film, you can argue these subtleties with your friend. You can argue with her, not for bringing up the film, but for misunderstanding it. Morgan even makes the point that eating it occasionally is fine -- what he objects to is McDonalds propogating the myth that all their food is healthy to eat all the time.