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I just found out about the controversy behind Super Size Me a few days ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cw02ni/til_a_number_of_people_inclu

by fwr 2y ago

I just found out about the controversy behind Super Size Me a few days ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cw02ni/til_a_number_of_people_including_a_group_of/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cw02ni/til_...

wholien 2y ago
> Besides just gaining weight, the movie also claimed that Spurlock got major liver damage and started suffering from a range of mental health issues, all as a result of eating fast food. Notably, none of the people who replicated the experiment suffered from these problems. > Years after the movie’s release Spurlock admitted to being a lifelong alcoholic, despite claiming otherwise in the documentary. Alcohol abuse can easily explain the liver damage, and alcohol withdrawal during the filming of the documentary also explains the sudden mental health problems he was experiencing. Hmm, I'm not sure what to think with this new information. I really enjoyed the documentary when I watched it as a kid. But I did remember thinking it was weird he puked so early in the film. I brushed it off as "everyone is different", and forgot about it.
- ggddv 2y ago
  Umm who in America doesn’t know someone personally who has visible liver damage from fast food? I know multiple families where 4/4 people have it. Why would he make that up? He didn’t even go diabetic.
- pknomad 2y ago
  Not a doctor fwiw, but elevated ALT and AST levels often comes with being overweight and that could be seen as liver damage. I'm willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt on this claim.
  - refurb 2y ago
    The doctor literally said in the film “Ive never seen this happen from fast food binges and can’t explain it. Usually this happens with alcoholics” It was all a scam. Remarkable the hand waving people go through to excuse dishonesty because they want to believe it so badly.
    - npsimons 2y ago
      > Remarkable the hand waving people go through to excuse dishonesty because they want to believe it so badly. What I find remarkable is how badly people want to ignore just how bad fast food is for you. They'll use anything to dismiss completely the whole debate.
      - refurb 2y ago
        Who is doing that? I don’t see that anywhere in this discussion. But one conclusion we can make is that his own results are useless unless your goal is to see the damage fast food will do to a severe alcoholic.
    - pknomad 2y ago
      Late to this... but elevated ALT/AST levels is canonical observation of obese patients or patients with unhealthy diet. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9659656/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9659656/ Alcohol is definitely a confounding factor here but this documentary is more of a "social experiment" rather than a proper study. It's patient sample size (n=1) and doctor (n=1). IIRC, the 2 other doctors MS consulted (cardiologist and a gastroenterologist) didn't mention the same opinion as the internal med doctor and the doctor who did voice the skepticism was also saying it shouldn't be a no brainer that eating Mcdonalds would cause health problems. Other doctors on the web have gone on record to say "this makes sense." Obviously it doesn't absolve MS of unethical filmmaking practices but that doesn't mean the premise is false given the plethora of other medical literature that supports it.
- npsimons 2y ago
  > But I did remember thinking it was weird he puked so early in the film. I brushed it off as "everyone is different", and forgot about it. That's one of the few things I still remember from it, and the takeaway I had was "well, he's eating past the point of nausea, of course he's going to puke." And the fact that he accepted any time they offered to "supersize", just pointing out how hard fast food pushes excess calories. Kind of the point of the documentary, really, that fast food is out of control in this country and needs to be regulated.
  - tdeck 2y ago
    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.
    - jrmg 2y ago
      It wouldn’t if you were already larger. 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…)
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        > salads were introduced (yes, you can argue they’re still high calorie), I haven't tried those, but surely it is easier to overeat on fries and hamburgers compared to a salad?
- PM_me_your_math 2y ago
  [dead]
- legitster 2y ago
  Even during the course of the documentary, at the end his doctors were saying his body was seeming to adapt to his new diet so always found it unsatisfactory that it just ended right there.
- torginus 2y ago
  Suddenly this Trevor Moore WKUK video makes a lot more sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EIAN1YcEUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EIAN1YcEUI
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  I just thought it was a bad reaction to a change of diet. You can feel bad just from a few days of bad food. Can't imagine 3 meals a day for that kind of stuff.And ofc these were large portions for a (by BMI standards) very slight overweight man.
- maximus-decimus 2y ago
  He was also gaining more weight than the laws of thermodynamics allow based on how many calories he was supposedly eating. Alcohol has a lot of calories.
  - grecy 2y ago
    Three meals a day at McDonald’s with the occasional supersize is easily 4000+ calories a day. That is a massive surplus to gain plenty of weight
    - iwanttocomment 2y ago
      Egg McMuffin and coffee for breakfast and then a Big Mac, medium fries and iced tea (or diet Coke or water) for both lunch and dinner is... 2130 calories. Not the pinnacle of the healthiest diet for sure. Over 30 days for a mid-sized dude, you might gain... one pound.
      - maximus-decimus 2y ago
        In the sister comment, I did some math and because the guy was 188cm and 220 pounds to start with, he needs 2400 calories per day just to keep his weight. He would have lost at least half a pound per week with the diet you just mentioned.
      - grecy 2y ago
        Absolutely, drinking diet coke or water is cutting out an enormous number of calories, as-is medium fries. Heck, I only weight 185lbs and back when I ate mcDonald's a single Egg McMuffin wasn't nearly enough food to make me feel full. I'd get two and a hash brown, and still be hungry and hour later.
    - maximus-decimus 2y ago
      sure but from google, he gained 25 pounds in a month. a pound of fat is about 3500 calories. 3500 calories/pound * 25 pounds / 30 days = 2916 calorie surplus. Morgan Spurlock is a 188cm tall man, which let's say he's 30 years old and 100kg (wikipedia says he gained 24.5 pounds/13% body mass), doing no to little exercise (he did walk 2km a day) that gives a Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) of 2406 calories per day (used this calculator : https://www.calculator.net/tdee-calculator.html?cage=25&csex=m&cheightfeet=5&cheightinch=10&cpound=200&cheightmeter=180&ckg=100&cactivity=1&cmop=0&coutunit=c&cformula=m&cfatpct=20&printit=0&ctype=metric&x=Calculate https://www.calculator.net/tdee-calculator.html?cage=25&csex...). So basically, he had to be eating at the very bare minimum 5400 calories per day to get that much weight. To be fair, the wiki page says he did average 5k calories per day so he would have been lying only about 400 calories (minimum) per day. Checking online, supersize me fried are ~600 calories and a big mac ~600. So let's say you eat that 3 times a day, that's 1200*3 = "only" 3600 calories. I find it hard to believe he drank 1800 calories worth of drinks per day to fill the gap, especially since he was allowed to drink water. Looking at canadian mcdonald's website, a large pepsi is 290 cals/77 grams of sugar, were supersize me really double that? If so, I guess the conclusion is don't drink 462g (literally over a pound) of sugar.
- web3-is-a-scam 2y ago
  Well damn, this gives a whole new meaning to the Whitest Kids You Know skit about going on a whiskey diet: https://youtu.be/uOyjzE1vcD4?si=6sejNKCk-VkIzwGo https://youtu.be/uOyjzE1vcD4?si=6sejNKCk-VkIzwGo Also RIP Trevor Moore, another tragedy.
- refurb 2y ago
  I’m just shocked Hollywood lied to us! Hopefully this is an isolated event. /s
Bjorkbat 2y ago
There's also the allegations of sexual misconduct (https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/filmmaker-morgan-spurlock-admits-history-sexual-misconduct-n829581 https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/filmmake...) It's unfortunate that on the day of his death all I can really think about is how troubled the man was, between dealing with alcoholism, cheating on his past wives / gfs, the sexual assault allegations, and resigning from his company because of just how negative his public image had become. He became something of a household name because of a misleading documentary that was arguably more about the dangers of alcoholism rather than fast food. Strange processing the death of someone with such a mixed legacy.
- canucker2016 2y ago
  The blog post mentioned in the nbcnews link mentions more of his problems in addition to alcoholism, adultery/infidelity - broken family during childhood, sexual abuse, depression, etc. see https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqc244 https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqc244
password54321 2y ago
A society of overweight and obese people giving enormous attention on how the effects of eating McDonalds everyday cannot be replicated. Please let's snapshot everything so the future generations can laugh at how we turned into a parody.
- DontchaKnowit 2y ago
  Well the problem is that he stuffed his face with absurd amounts of calories everyday. Of course he got fat. He was eating like 5k calories a day. No one is doing that on accident cause they didnt know how big a supersize fry was. So yes, its a super disingenious doc that is laughably transparent in its pandering to people just like you who want to make fun of obesity and trivialize it.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    In case you didn't read the article linked: Morgan had a history of alcoholism and admitted later on to drinking during the experiment. That would definitely influence things, and explain why he had symptoms in his liver similar to an alcoholic. The experiment may have been flawed but it was clearly highlighting a real issue. One that isn't just a one month stint but a multi-decade lifestyle.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
      What, pray tell, is the real issue? Fast food serves too much food? Just eat less. Its an absolutely absurd premise.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Yes, indeed. That is the real real issue. People are mean to each other and fight? Just be nice. World hunger? Just share food. Rent too high? Just live together. If only complex issues had simple solutions. Until then let's look at the layer above and solve that: - government subsidies high fructose corn syrup, a calorie rich good. - subsidized syrup used in almost all pre-processed food. - is sold cheap, so it can target lower income individuals - lower income individuals have less access to resources on dieting, or even nutrition facts.They also have less time to research such issue as they now need multiple jobs to barely pay rent. - obesity increases in the US, disproportionately from lower income people So we have 2-3 ways to tackle this issue past "just eat less".

by fwr 2y ago

wholien 2y ago

> Besides just gaining weight, the movie also claimed that Spurlock got major liver damage and started suffering from a range of mental health issues, all as a result of eating fast food. Notably, none of the people who replicated the experiment suffered from these problems. > Years after the movie’s release Spurlock admitted to being a lifelong alcoholic, despite claiming otherwise in the documentary. Alcohol abuse can easily explain the liver damage, and alcohol withdrawal during the filming of the documentary also explains the sudden mental health problems he was experiencing. Hmm, I'm not sure what to think with this new information. I really enjoyed the documentary when I watched it as a kid. But I did remember thinking it was weird he puked so early in the film. I brushed it off as "everyone is different", and forgot about it.

ggddv 2y ago
Umm who in America doesn’t know someone personally who has visible liver damage from fast food? I know multiple families where 4/4 people have it. Why would he make that up? He didn’t even go diabetic.
pknomad 2y ago
Not a doctor fwiw, but elevated ALT and AST levels often comes with being overweight and that could be seen as liver damage. I'm willing to give MS the benefit of the doubt on this claim.
- refurb 2y ago
  The doctor literally said in the film “Ive never seen this happen from fast food binges and can’t explain it. Usually this happens with alcoholics” It was all a scam. Remarkable the hand waving people go through to excuse dishonesty because they want to believe it so badly.
  - npsimons 2y ago
    > Remarkable the hand waving people go through to excuse dishonesty because they want to believe it so badly. What I find remarkable is how badly people want to ignore just how bad fast food is for you. They'll use anything to dismiss completely the whole debate.
    - refurb 2y ago
      Who is doing that? I don’t see that anywhere in this discussion. But one conclusion we can make is that his own results are useless unless your goal is to see the damage fast food will do to a severe alcoholic.
  - pknomad 2y ago
    Late to this... but elevated ALT/AST levels is canonical observation of obese patients or patients with unhealthy diet. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9659656/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9659656/ Alcohol is definitely a confounding factor here but this documentary is more of a "social experiment" rather than a proper study. It's patient sample size (n=1) and doctor (n=1). IIRC, the 2 other doctors MS consulted (cardiologist and a gastroenterologist) didn't mention the same opinion as the internal med doctor and the doctor who did voice the skepticism was also saying it shouldn't be a no brainer that eating Mcdonalds would cause health problems. Other doctors on the web have gone on record to say "this makes sense." Obviously it doesn't absolve MS of unethical filmmaking practices but that doesn't mean the premise is false given the plethora of other medical literature that supports it.
npsimons 2y ago
> But I did remember thinking it was weird he puked so early in the film. I brushed it off as "everyone is different", and forgot about it. That's one of the few things I still remember from it, and the takeaway I had was "well, he's eating past the point of nausea, of course he's going to puke." And the fact that he accepted any time they offered to "supersize", just pointing out how hard fast food pushes excess calories. Kind of the point of the documentary, really, that fast food is out of control in this country and needs to be regulated.
- tdeck 2y ago
  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.
  - jrmg 2y ago
    It wouldn’t if you were already larger. 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…)
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      > salads were introduced (yes, you can argue they’re still high calorie), I haven't tried those, but surely it is easier to overeat on fries and hamburgers compared to a salad?
PM_me_your_math 2y ago
[dead]
legitster 2y ago
Even during the course of the documentary, at the end his doctors were saying his body was seeming to adapt to his new diet so always found it unsatisfactory that it just ended right there.
torginus 2y ago
Suddenly this Trevor Moore WKUK video makes a lot more sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EIAN1YcEUI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EIAN1YcEUI
johnnyanmac 2y ago
I just thought it was a bad reaction to a change of diet. You can feel bad just from a few days of bad food. Can't imagine 3 meals a day for that kind of stuff.And ofc these were large portions for a (by BMI standards) very slight overweight man.
maximus-decimus 2y ago
He was also gaining more weight than the laws of thermodynamics allow based on how many calories he was supposedly eating. Alcohol has a lot of calories.
- grecy 2y ago
  Three meals a day at McDonald’s with the occasional supersize is easily 4000+ calories a day. That is a massive surplus to gain plenty of weight
  - iwanttocomment 2y ago
    Egg McMuffin and coffee for breakfast and then a Big Mac, medium fries and iced tea (or diet Coke or water) for both lunch and dinner is... 2130 calories. Not the pinnacle of the healthiest diet for sure. Over 30 days for a mid-sized dude, you might gain... one pound.
    - maximus-decimus 2y ago
      In the sister comment, I did some math and because the guy was 188cm and 220 pounds to start with, he needs 2400 calories per day just to keep his weight. He would have lost at least half a pound per week with the diet you just mentioned.
    - grecy 2y ago
      Absolutely, drinking diet coke or water is cutting out an enormous number of calories, as-is medium fries. Heck, I only weight 185lbs and back when I ate mcDonald's a single Egg McMuffin wasn't nearly enough food to make me feel full. I'd get two and a hash brown, and still be hungry and hour later.
  - maximus-decimus 2y ago
    sure but from google, he gained 25 pounds in a month. a pound of fat is about 3500 calories. 3500 calories/pound * 25 pounds / 30 days = 2916 calorie surplus. Morgan Spurlock is a 188cm tall man, which let's say he's 30 years old and 100kg (wikipedia says he gained 24.5 pounds/13% body mass), doing no to little exercise (he did walk 2km a day) that gives a Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) of 2406 calories per day (used this calculator : https://www.calculator.net/tdee-calculator.html?cage=25&csex=m&cheightfeet=5&cheightinch=10&cpound=200&cheightmeter=180&ckg=100&cactivity=1&cmop=0&coutunit=c&cformula=m&cfatpct=20&printit=0&ctype=metric&x=Calculate https://www.calculator.net/tdee-calculator.html?cage=25&csex...). So basically, he had to be eating at the very bare minimum 5400 calories per day to get that much weight. To be fair, the wiki page says he did average 5k calories per day so he would have been lying only about 400 calories (minimum) per day. Checking online, supersize me fried are ~600 calories and a big mac ~600. So let's say you eat that 3 times a day, that's 1200*3 = "only" 3600 calories. I find it hard to believe he drank 1800 calories worth of drinks per day to fill the gap, especially since he was allowed to drink water. Looking at canadian mcdonald's website, a large pepsi is 290 cals/77 grams of sugar, were supersize me really double that? If so, I guess the conclusion is don't drink 462g (literally over a pound) of sugar.
web3-is-a-scam 2y ago
Well damn, this gives a whole new meaning to the Whitest Kids You Know skit about going on a whiskey diet: https://youtu.be/uOyjzE1vcD4?si=6sejNKCk-VkIzwGo https://youtu.be/uOyjzE1vcD4?si=6sejNKCk-VkIzwGo Also RIP Trevor Moore, another tragedy.
refurb 2y ago
I’m just shocked Hollywood lied to us! Hopefully this is an isolated event. /s

Bjorkbat 2y ago

There's also the allegations of sexual misconduct (https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/filmmaker-morgan-spurlock-admits-history-sexual-misconduct-n829581 https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/filmmake...) It's unfortunate that on the day of his death all I can really think about is how troubled the man was, between dealing with alcoholism, cheating on his past wives / gfs, the sexual assault allegations, and resigning from his company because of just how negative his public image had become. He became something of a household name because of a misleading documentary that was arguably more about the dangers of alcoholism rather than fast food. Strange processing the death of someone with such a mixed legacy.

canucker2016 2y ago
The blog post mentioned in the nbcnews link mentions more of his problems in addition to alcoholism, adultery/infidelity - broken family during childhood, sexual abuse, depression, etc. see https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqc244 https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqc244

password54321 2y ago

A society of overweight and obese people giving enormous attention on how the effects of eating McDonalds everyday cannot be replicated. Please let's snapshot everything so the future generations can laugh at how we turned into a parody.

DontchaKnowit 2y ago
Well the problem is that he stuffed his face with absurd amounts of calories everyday. Of course he got fat. He was eating like 5k calories a day. No one is doing that on accident cause they didnt know how big a supersize fry was. So yes, its a super disingenious doc that is laughably transparent in its pandering to people just like you who want to make fun of obesity and trivialize it.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  In case you didn't read the article linked: Morgan had a history of alcoholism and admitted later on to drinking during the experiment. That would definitely influence things, and explain why he had symptoms in his liver similar to an alcoholic. The experiment may have been flawed but it was clearly highlighting a real issue. One that isn't just a one month stint but a multi-decade lifestyle.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
    What, pray tell, is the real issue? Fast food serves too much food? Just eat less. Its an absolutely absurd premise.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Yes, indeed. That is the real real issue. People are mean to each other and fight? Just be nice. World hunger? Just share food. Rent too high? Just live together. If only complex issues had simple solutions. Until then let's look at the layer above and solve that: - government subsidies high fructose corn syrup, a calorie rich good. - subsidized syrup used in almost all pre-processed food. - is sold cheap, so it can target lower income individuals - lower income individuals have less access to resources on dieting, or even nutrition facts.They also have less time to research such issue as they now need multiple jobs to barely pay rent. - obesity increases in the US, disproportionately from lower income people So we have 2-3 ways to tackle this issue past "just eat less".