Hacker Cinema
Super Size Me
2004 · Film · documentary · 100 min
Part of Super Size Me Collection
Directed by Morgan Spurlock
Morgan Spurlock subjects himself to a diet based only on McDonald's fast food three times a day for thirty days without exercising to try to prove why so many Americans are fat or obese. He submits himself to a complete check-up by three doctors, comparing his weight along the way, resulting in a scary conclusion.
8 positive7 negative1 mixed21 neutralfrom 37 commenters
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39 comments on Hacker News
I relate McDonald's with the famous movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me And avoid at any cost
would make for quite a bizarre documentary. super size me but information rather than food.
The best description of food in the US was uttered in the documentary “Super Size Me” IIRC. A Frenchman describes it as American Shitfood.
I’ve used it ever since.
Can't just dismiss his 17 films as a grift. Even accepting all the valid criticisms where he misled audiences, his shockumentaries did try to educate, somewhat, but also stretched facts and went for a personalized narrative, Michael-Moore-style. He did leave a legacy of nearly single-handedly reviving documentary as a film genre relevant to nutrition, one that mainstream audiences would watch.
His sequel "Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!" (2017) had fewer distortions and was pretty watchable and educational. Here's a review from https://www.agdaily.com/livestock/poultry/super-size-me-2-movie-review-fact-or-shockumentary/ which among other things covered in depth: "Many food labels, such as organic, natural, non-GMO, gluten-free, no added hormones, free range, green, artisan, antibiotic-free, are indeed quite misleading" and how those branding terms are misused in marketing to restaurant customers. I haven't seen any industry criticism of the segment with the two branding consultants.
As to the legacy of "Super Size Me", here's a review by an ag evangelist: https://www.eater.com/24173039/morgan-spurlock-legacy-super-size-me
> Several of which have pronounced associated negatives (see, e.g., Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me (2004).
There may be associated negatives, but Super Size Me is a terrible piece of evidence of it. Spurlock not only intentionally ate far more than any normal person would, but also declined to mention in the movie his copious alcohol consumption. (Not that I expect someone to admit to their alcoholism in a movie, but when you're making a polemic about how what you consume is bad for you, not mentioning that you're drinking a lot of alcohol during the same period isn't great!)
I always thought he confounded the Super Size Me experiment by guzzling all that soda. That much High Fructose Corn Syrup alone will give you fatty liver disease.
Anyway, RIP Mr. Spurlock. You lived a flawed life but gave us some really interesting films which will live on. Thanks.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-high-fructose-intake-may-trigger-fatty-liver-disease
It's true. Everything has a peak. All directors have a film that did the biggest box office. His was "Super Size Me."
>No one is doing that on accident cause they didnt know how big a supersize fry was.
People have definitely become more aware of what they eat since the documentary came out. And I'm not sure how much of that can specifically be credited to the documentary but if we are still talking about than it clearly has done something right in raising awareness.
Obviously if you are doing research in this area you were never going to cite Super Size Me as it was never serious scientific research.
The sad thing is he never really captured the magic in a bottle again. All of the documentaries after Super Size Me were kind of... nothing. He kind of failed to cash in on the genre he himself invented.
In a lot of ways, whether he or anyone there ever realized it or not, but his influence on today's Youtube cannot be understated.
So Super Size Me is somewhat well-done; the vast majority of the info is talking with experts like a normal documentary, the “experiment” is mostly just communicated as a framing device for unrelated discussion. (This is not 100% true because one convo with an expert is with his sexual partner, describing how the “saturated fats have gotten to his penis” and how she “always has to be on top now” due to his diet.)
However I do think it's clear in how it's framed that we're meant to categorize his McDonald's experience as informative, holding out that this experiment has some connection to the consequences we might experience from eating McDonald’s, and the problem is that he doesn't conduct the experiment in a realistic way. He was to be frank intentionally trying to generate the biggest possible weight gain in 30 days that he could. If you look carefully when he lays out his food in front of you, you'll see both a full-calorie soda AND a shake or ice cream at each meal, in addition to the super-size fries and the sandwich. The folks in the movie who saw his food log say he was consuming 5000 kcal/day, which I think is being sold as “oh my gosh I had no idea it was this easy to overeat at McDonald's.” That sentiment is not correct given the context—qnd the numbers are likely an underestimate because like folks have said, he took it seriously that he was meant to only “eat McDonald's” but gave himself latitude to drink non-McDonalds.
For these reasons and more, people since the wild success of the movie have struggled to replicate his results. See e.g. https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/03/supersize-me-failed-replication-well-sort-of/ for some quick excerpts from some of these different folks.
Was the 'Super Size Me' evidence ever re-created? I watched and enjoyed the movie, but IIRC the "science" behind it was pretty suspect, and last I heard (which was, granted, decades ago) he never would release his data or testing methods or anything.
You don't need to tell me you're vegan, yours is indistinguishable from someone who likes the propaganda.
Merit why it and other fake diet documentaries like super size me are legitimate. They are all grifters and propaganda, from the full carnivore to the full vegetables, most of them are vegan and vegans are commonly known to die of malnutrition.
> Remember peak "Super Size Me"? By the time that movie had come out, portion sizes from McDonalds had already shrunk significantly. Then they removed the size option, but that wasn't the height of fast food consumption at all. It occurred at least two to three decades prior.
You can always order two big macs to make up for it.
Source: recovering junk food addict.
Is obesity really that much of a puzzle? Have you ever looked back in US history and taken a look at portion sizes through the decades? Not year-by-year, I mean across decades and decades, average portion sizes are staggeringly different.
The meals we collectively eat are different.
Remember peak "Super Size Me"? By the time that movie had come out, portion sizes from McDonalds had already shrunk significantly. Then they removed the size option, but that wasn't the height of fast food consumption at all. It occurred at least two to three decades prior.
> Our iPhone or Android cameras rival what Panavision was providing in the 80’s.
Can you imagine if Kevin Smith had a reasonably modern phone, a semidecent PC, and a copy of Resolve when he started out? Of course, that's happening, except it's not Kevin Smith, it's some other snotty kid whose name will become associated with cult cinema in a few years. They're still in their backyard making daft wee movies with their friends and sticking them on Tiktok, and one day you're going to be buying a ticket to their film.
> I just returned from Borneo where I was mostly using Sony RX-10 prosumer cameras. I carried 4 RX-10 bodies and never missed a shot.
Even at that there were (in the early 2000s!) real proper feature films shot on standard-def DV, including one of my favourites, 24 Hour Party People. Every time GAS starts to bite I look at my Sony DSR-PD150 and think "you know what, if it was good enough for the guy that did Open Water or Super Size Me, I ought to be able to get by with it" :-D
If you enjoyed Super Size Me, you should checkout the TV series the host Morgan created soon after, called 30 days [1]. He and others basically do something random for 30 days (gets locked up, goes on a fad diet, binge drinking, etc.)
The first episode where Morgan and his girlfriend try to live on minimum wage in Ohio for a month is some of the best TV I've ever seen.
All the episodes are good, the ones with Morgan are the best.
The recent Super Size Me 2 is also pretty good. Not quite the charm of the first one, but still really good.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_Days_(TV_series)
Remember that movie about a guy who ate at McDonald's for a month, to observe the effects? [1]
Someone should do the same with Facebook ads. I wonder what somebody would feel and look like after engaging with every ad on the platform.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me
Really glad to hear you got pregnant. It makes me so happy now when people do after finding it so hard. It’s a shame this info isn’t more easily found by most people.
I had the exact same experience with doctors just saying there was nothing a man can do to improve fertility. “It’s just genetic”.
I also second the case against sugar. I should have called out refined sugar specifically in my list. That was one thing I cut out 100% even in ingredients lists (this is tough. It’s in EVERYTHING. Even loads of savoury things that have zero business having sugar in).
Side pondering - I’ve often wondered if McDonalds got a really raw deal from Super Size Me (great documentary) and that it was just the super size soft drinks that were the cause of problems - remember the guy in there who has eaten thousands of Big Macs? But he never had the drink. And he was thin as a rake (dunno how many kids he had though!)
Super Size Me was a turning point where the power of dishonest propaganda as "documentary" became a major force in culture.
Super Size Me while dishonest about how bad McD is in just one month, was shooting fish in a barrel.
Waiting for Superman, a charter school infomercial featuring discredited superintendent Michelle Rhee, showed the danger of the form.
I found this press release pretty disappointing. It is very weak. This press release is like saying when the documentary about how bad McDonald is for you (Super Size me) came out, McDonald's issues a statement saying, oh but they (filmmakers) were not fair, they did not show you guys the steps we take to keep harmful bacteria from your food and ensure we don't poison you.
This whole Press release is about the "Steps" they have taken, very few of them tell us about these steps in detail or how we can verify them. There is no pledge to do better or a consequence to not meeting these goals. If feels to me that FB is mega coorp where the people in it want to do better but the machine is so much bigger than the people in it they are currently lost on how to do it without torching the whole company
I think this is one of those things we're going to disagree about. Within the America I see as a conference attendee seeking lunch outside of meetings in the food malls, portion control is out of control. Overall, yes, you can eat healthy anywhere. There is a "value" proposition which drives a lot of people to order bigger than they need. The same "value" proposition drives food outlets to compete on size for the same dollar cost. Carbohydrates are a cheap way to achieve size/bulk. Adding extra carbs is low input cost, high profit outcome.
Super-size-me as a film required the market to exist. They didn't make the problem up.
Yea, "Super Size Me" is a great documentary to watch in that regard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me
This is wrong. A burger is bread, meat and vegetables, maybe with some cheese or another meat. Between carbohydrates, protein and some vegetables an all burger diet is unlikely to lead to any noticeable health effects compared to a normal Western diet. Fries are vastly worse for you than burgers or pizza, whether you’re looking at macronutrients alone or tracking vitamins and minerals as well.
http://www.businesspundit.com/the-mcdonalds-weight-loss-program/
> A US woman claims to have lost 33 pounds by eating nothing but McDonald's for 90 days.
> Merab Morgan, of Henderson, North Carolina, began her diet because she found the Super Size Me film insulting.
> In the documentary, film maker Morgan Spurlock put on 25lbs after eating excusively at McDonald's for just one month.
> Ms Morgan, 35, memorised the calories in almost every menu item, and limits herself to 1,400 calories a day, reports the Detroit Free Press.
> "It's kind of like the poor man's diet," said Morgan, who has tried Weight Watchers and Atkins but failed because of the time and money those plans required.
> In 1980, the richest cohort of middle-aged American men could expect to live until about 83 and the poorest to 76. By 2010, the richest American males had gained six years in life expectancy, living to 89 on average, while life expectancy for the poorest men hadn’t improved. [1]
Regarding cost of living, the question is whether minimum wages have gone down , and the answer is yes, because cost of living has increased, they have. It's isn't just mountain view CA.
It's common knowledge that mcdonaldds cannot provide a fully nutritious diet. Take a look at Super Size Me, the book or movie. It's pretty amazing.
[1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/9/16860994/life-expectancy-us-income-inequality
For some reason that reminds me of the 'Super Size Me' movie. Bigger is better! Right?
That seems odd. They're usually classified in the 'Documentary' genre (Amazon Prime Video, IMDB, etc).
The "Super Size Me" WikiPedia even begins "Super Size Me is a 2004 American documentary film". The entries for Moore's films in Wikipedia begin similarly.
Just look at the advertising and lobbying spending of sugar industry to gauge their power over population's discretionary spending.Also, bulk of their marketing spend is during cartoon programming of kids, "catch'em young"!
They successfully shifted blame from sugar to fat as cause of modern lifestyle diseases for last two decades. Would highly recommend the book "Case against Sugar" by Gary Taubes discussed amply here[0] and here[1].
Also recommend the documentary "Super Size Me"[2] a revealing take on workings of fast food industry.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12480733
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521882
[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgcc_ZZnAgM
After reading this article, because of the tone it was written with I think it would be easy to dismiss the authors entire premis of replacing customer service agents with AI to improve efficiency and cut costs as a cold, heartless rant from an elitist that doesnt understand or worse even care about how important those jobs are to maintaining our social fabric... but I won't, the fact is those jobs are being handled by machines right now and the author is somewhat correct, the bad employees need to be replaced but there are valid reasons why people are used instead of machines and I will try my best to give a few of them to address the authors points. Here goes.. Airports are very stressful for a certain amount of people, these people tend to get upset when say, they arrive late for a flight check in, it is much better for that person to be able to vent their frustrations towards a trained rep than another passenger without the social skills and training to de escalate a situation, who most likely is also upset as this would most likely result in further problems requiring police, courts, prisons etc. Airline reps also however little it may seem are an athority figure and as such require passengers to treat them with certain level of decorum either by law or just social convention which tends to make othe rise unruly travelers toe the line. AIrvine reps are much more effective at moving people along than you may realize. There is a reason why during big events the police are called out to direct traffic and pedestrians instead of relying on the light controllers with all of their algorithms and that is because things run smoother, granted the example of an empty airport may not support that argument but all airports get busy and you cannot expect people to be available only when things get busy. (well you can but then you get bad workers) When it comes to customs agents, I agree that being questioned is annoying and can make you feel like they are searching for a reason to arrest you, but that is their purpose and the fact that you felt that way is actually a good thing, yes scanning a passport is much better for the travelers but not necessarily better for everyone, just as swiping your drivers license into a kiosk might be better for the majority of people going through a drunk driver checkstop it would defeat the whole purpose. The cashier that was too busy talking to their co worker to serve you should be fired. But there are vending machines in airports for everything now, they do tend to breakdown, get vandalized, run out of product. Yes you can solve these problems and as I said there are machines already doing this. Finaly the McDonald's example, yes people do tend to up size their orders at kiosks just like how slot machines tend to encourage people to keep gambling, as a matter of fact though there was a certain movie called Super Size Me that attacked McDonald's for exactly what you see as a virtue but that is another argument all together. I live in an area that has McDonald's with these kiosks and they provide a value added service called create your own burger which allows you to mix and match McDonald's products together to create hybrid burgers like a quaternary pounder fillet o mac!! but again for some reason they do not accept cash and considering many of mcdonald's customers either prefer or are forced to use cash due to their financial situations there are still problems that need to be solved. In conclusion I tend to agree that there are many benefits to automation and computer services, I myself use the self checkouts at my local grocery store but that does not mean that we can discount the benifits of real people, both systems have value and smart companies realize this and as such use both, choice is always better.
> You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant.
But Soylent is supposed to be consumable on a daily basis, so long-term effects are important. Remember the documentary Super Size Me, which tested long term effects of food from a certain fast-food restaurant? [1]
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521
One topic that was not mentioned in the article that I have found fascinating is that your gut microbiome can actually affect your cravings. (1) Your microbiome accomplishes this through a host of mechanisms including changing the expression of taste receptors, making certain foods taste better; they may release hunger-inducing hormones; or they may manipulate the vagus nerve (which connects the stomach to the brain) to control their hosts’ eating behavior.
Are you sure you really want that extra side of chips? Or has your gut biome decided it wants that extra fat, and influences you to eat it.
Additionally, you can "reseed" your gut biome by changing your diet. Do you crave greasy food? Go vegan for 2 weeks. The new gut biome that develops and takes hold may soon have you start craving healthier foods. A change in diet can change your biome in as little as 4 days. (2) You can witness this phenomena in the movie Super Size Me. At the start of the movie Spurlock is disgusted by eating McDonalds for every meal. But, by the end of his experiment, his gut biome has significantly changed, and you can literally see his mood darken when he is not eating greasy fries and burgers. He craves, or should I say, his microbiome craves those happy meals, and is influencing both his taste receptors, health, and general mood in order to manipulate him in to a trip to the drive though.
1. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/your-gut-bacteria-want-you-to-eat-a-cupcake/378702/ 2. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-guts-microbiome-changes-diet/
Well that's interesting! I'm still convinced that living on Twinkies & McD's isn't going to result in quality health, but it's good to know the super-size-me person had to lie in his documentary.
Super size me has been (politely) not reproducible, or less politely, shown to be shockingly full of crap.
http://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-revisited-under-lab-conditions
http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html
Moral: popular media is a horrible source of scientific knowledge
>>"eat a reasonably varied diet that is calorie restricted?"
Define "reasonably" and "restricted". Otherwise, you might as well say "If everyone just did the right thing, everything would be as it should!" which has no actionable component.
>>"people who have lived on nothing but twinkies or McD for a month and stil lost weight?"
....but suffered dozens of other health problems that'll lead to an early grave.
"Super size me" -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/
The documentary you're thinking of is by Morgan Spurlock, Super-size Me
Jared appeared in the documentary Super Size Me telling school kids to eat Subway sandwiches to lose weight. When a chunky teenage girl told him that was too expensive he was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The "Fat Head" movie is good response to the "Super Size Me". It proves that eating at McDonald's isn't as bad as one might think and it also presents a lot of other interesting stuff.
Check out Fat Head. A Documentary response to Super Size Me that discusses how what we "know" about fat and cholesterol was the result of a politician lining his pockets by pushing the agenda of one of his friends in the business world http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Fat_Head/70115017?trkid=2361637
In spite of the faux-documentaries like Super-Size Me, eating McDonald's food doesn't actually make you fat and unhealthy.
In the "Super Size Me" movie, the main dude gets literally addicted just like described in this article. He is depressed until he gets his McDonalds fix and then is pleasantly satiated until he feels like ass because he just ate 1500 calories of McDonalds.