Supersize Me

I don't normally do movie reviews yet this is my second in less than a week. Both are shockumentaries which is a new form of documentary meant to shock you into agreeing with the director of the movie.

This time its Supersize Me which is essentially an anti-commercial for McDonalds. I haven't eaten at McDonalds in over five years and I don't plan to ever again, so I guess I was already there in terms of the main purpose of the movie.

The director, Morgan Spurlock, eats nothing but McDonalds food for 30 days and gets pretty sick doing it. No surprises there. I used to get sick after eating one meal at McDonalds.

But what really got me was the stuff about obesity and school lunches. Over 60% of americans are overweight. Many of us are very overweight - ie obese. And the rate of obesity in our kids is an epidemic that we are doing nothing about.

Morgan spends a lot of time in this movie going around to school cafeterias and looking at the food that is offered. He also goes one step further and actually looks at what the kids are really eating. It's awful. Our kids are being offered processed food full of sugar, fat, and carbs. On top of that, they don't eat what they don't like and eat only the stuff they want. So they end up with an even more unbalanced meal.

This is not a great movie, but you could take about 30-45 minutes of footage from it and make an incredible short film that should be shown in every school in the country to teach our kids what to eat and why they need to eat well. It would scare the shit out of them.

Comments

[Tim]

Fred, I'd like to think the movie would change the eating habits of our kids. However, I think that like cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, etc (God these kids have a ton of pressures these days...) the role of the parent remains paramount. It is up to us to drive home the lessons obscured by peer pressure and inexperience. That being said, knowledge certainly helps, and the schools should be teaching this in health class. Good post.

[Michael Forbes]

I for one at the age of 52 have never eaten at McDonald's. Would like that on my tombstone! I have had fairly good success keeping my children from doing the same. However peer pressure is just that and the advertising hype cannot be avoided. My 15 yr. old daughter will go with friends and eat just to not be embarrased and have to explain her strange fathers disdain for fast food. However my 5 yr. old son is a chicken nugget freak but has only eaten McD's nuggets once and says he will never eat there again as they are terrible. One out of two ain't bad! A parent should be his childs best teacher.

[Stephen Bronstein]

On a related note, Fast Food Nation talks at the end about how McD's et al have upgraded their requirements at the meat packing plants to avoid salmonella and whatnot (where whatnot includes animal feces in the meat), so one of the only buyers left that doesn't do these checks is the USDA, buying for school lunches. The USDA in fact tried to institute these checks and the meat packing plants sued them and won - the USDA cannot legally shut down plants where salmonella is found, and if a given plant is open, the USDA is required to purchase beef from it regardless of salmonella or other issues.

Pretty scary stuff, and yet another example of the private sector fixing a problem while interest groups keep the government from doing so. The interest groups aren't going anywhere, but the schools might want to think about buying their beef from someone else...

[Scott Partee]

Sorry to say this, but "I remember when I was a kid..." and they actually forced us, in public elementary school, to at least eat a portion of each thing on our plate.

Of course, we tried to get clever and stuff our green beans in our milk cartons, but our principal figured that one out in a hurry.

You only have to watch a kid at your table drink corn bread, milk, green beans and pieces of a napkin once to make sure you were never put into the same position.

[Tany Alva]

Being a fairly new dad, this topic is one of those that find’s me cringing at how right our parents were about these things. My folks were way too poor to take all five of us out to Micky D's and always insisted on us eating everything that was put on our plate. They refrained from forcing us, but there were nights in which I stared down a plate of lima beans until they were hard as stones. Fast food was a real treat until the age of 14. Guess what? I'm not permanently scarred from the experience in the least bit. It amazes me how prevalent permissive parenting is in our world these days and exactly how harmful it is. When you were in high school, the cafeteria was still serving meals. I was at that same high school when they changed to a fast food based menu my senior year. I recall vividly being surprised at the change. I thought that chewing gum was going to be allowed in classrooms next. Contrast that with the fact that we were ALLOWED to smoke in school between periods and during lunch and that would shock the socks off most new parents today, yet they won’t take a more active roll in guiding their kids diets.

What a concept, this whole parental responsibility huh? I’m convinced it’s the guilt factor. It’s as if parents some how doubt themselves into believing that they DON”T know what’s best for their kids. Your brother will find this just another reason to call me a Bush loving republican in libertarian’s clothing, but after struggling with 315 lbs. during most of my adult life (I'm down to 285lbs. doing Atkin's), after being 6'4" 175lbs. during my skateboarding hey day, my wife and I will be taking our lead from our parents on this children's diet thing. Poor little Katie, little does she know her future will have her stubbornly sitting at the table with her arms folded staring at plates of cold broccoli. She’ll thank us for it later…

[maymay]

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