Super Size Me

Super Size Me

I remember the first McDonald's opening in Sydney in 1976. I quickly found the time to visit the restaurant and had a delicious new hamburger, The Big Mac. Since then I've averaged one every year or so and still find it a thrilling indulgence and I always enjoy those fries and even sometimes, a fizzy drink.

Unfortunately, my countrymen and women are more frequent patrons than I am and I'm witnessing, now, two generations of pig-people regularly lining up at the many brightly colored troughs that are dotting our landscape, poisoning themselves with too much of the good stuff. 

Oink, oink. Do you get fries with that?

Super Size Me trailer

In Morgan Spurlock's unashamedly biased documentary, Supersize Me (nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary in 2004), Spurlock subjects himself to a test:

For a month, he will dine exclusively, at McDonald's family restaurants, three times a day and Super Size his order whenever asked.

Of course, we see the very healthy Spurlock undergoing a full medical examination beforehand and then his regular check-ups during the ensuing month. The results are astounding, even shocking his doctors at the speed of his rapid physical deterioration. He quickly becomes:

• depressed
• lethargic
• lacks energy
• experiences a reduced sex drive & by the end of the month 
• has gained 25 lbs (11k)

Hilariously, the food still tastes good as his addiction to the high-contrast fat-salt-sugar diet becomes evident.

Personally, I see fast food restaurants as presently far more dangerous than any illegal drug and there are immense ramifications for:

• individuals, physically
• individuals, psychologically (how do fat people deal with advertising / TV role models / erotica, which are almost exclusively slim?) &
• society in toto 

While billions are spent trying to control the spread of recreational drugs, fast food companies are profiting from addicting hundreds of millions to food that causes far more damage, more quickly and at a greater cost to society than the majority of recreational drugs. I'm not pro-recreational drugs by any means, but with 65% of people now tipping the scales as being overweight, there's no doubt in my mind where the bigger problem lies (or sprawls!).

Frankly, if I were one of one of the drug companies, I'd invest heavily in fast food restaurants because they provide for a quick and exponential increase in profits that has yet to go fully global. Gain a fast food addict and you have a drug company customer for life. Almost certainly, you'll have their children, as well.  

I'm not naive enough to suggest that our health and health care crises are just caused just by fast food and the drug companies. There are obviously a number of other societal factors that have been integrated to breed the  monster that is our unfortunate downward health spiral. 

However, I point my finger at a society which encourages corporate giants like McDonald's to profit from the weaknesses of many....and rob millions of their chance of living a healthy life, while allowing them to promote themselves as respectable businesses. Because of my fellow-citizens' weaknesses, they are not, they are Public Enemy #1!

Super Size Me may seem to be an attack upon McDonald's but it's really one salvo in a much bigger fight. McDonald's, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, does it really matter?  Nevertheless, it's an important, personalized film that everyone should see.