 |
| Anyone could show that certain foods are dangerous in massive quantities; it's much more convincing and meaningful to show that it's dangerous in the quantities that the average person is exposed to. |
For many years, those little pink packets of Sweet'N'Low sugar substitute that you'd find on the tables of truck stops and Denny's restaurants carried a warning stating that experiments with saccharin, the main ingredient in Sweet'N'Low, was found to cause cancer in laboratory animals. This shocking warning was enough for many diners, including myself, to avoid the stuff at any cost, and happily opt for the more fattening, but ultimately more trustworthy alternative, sugar. Nowadays, those pink packets no longer carry this warning. You see, years after the government forced this disclaimer to be printed on the packets, it became apparent that the levels of saccharin given to the lab animals by experimenters in the studies that determined this substance to be carcinogenic were quantities far exceeding commensurate doses for typical humans. Imagine, if you will, consuming several pounds of Sweet'N'Low a week. You might expect that eating so much Sweet'N'Low would cause cancer. In fact, it seems that eating that much of
anything would cause cancer.
 |
| Director Morgan Spurlock subjected himself to serious bodily abuse, but was it heroic action or just attention-grabbing showmanship? |
The reason I bring up this seemingly unrelated tale is because it relates to the scientific technique of Morgan Spurlock, the director of
Super Size Me, and the way this movie has been marketed to the public.
True, this is one of the most disgustingly pleasurable movies I have seen in a very long time, and it showcases the jaw-dropping effects of America’s love with fatty foods on the body of a Joe Sixpack-- and tops it off with grisly footage of deteriorating health, informational charts, and disturbing interviews with health professionals, fast food pundits, and junk food junkies, and of course, the hallmark of any great documentary, poorly drawn South Park-like cartoons that condense the complexities of reality into expansive and logically irrefutable blanket statements.
The problem is, many will engage this movie with the hope of confirming their beliefs, less as interlocutors wanting to synthesize a dialogue with the material, and more as wide-eyed, gawking spectators completely bypassing any intellectual nourishment that could come from the film and directly mainlining the opiate tales of excess that lead to Spurlock’s eventual development of seemingly serious health conditions. It seems pretty clear from this vantage point that this the effect that Spurlock wants the movie to have on the audience. And that’s where the trouble begins; Super Size Me is a movie whose goal is to offer entertainment in the form of a low-brow “I-dare-you” style parlor bet packaged as a true scientific experiment, not to elicit the formation of well-founded opinions based on a convincing array of credible evidence.
And while all that is-- of course-- fun, Spurlock's message is also problematic, unconvincing, and sets a poor precedent for documentaries that seek to make social statements. Super Size Me is an experience that is disturbing as it is funny, but like the subject matter it covers, it's a satisfying experience only in the present tense; critical analysis later would reveal a startling lack of depth, and crucial flaws not only in research methodology, but also in the resulting conclusions.
 |
| 5000 calories worth of fast food is hardly representative of the public's consumption. |
Early on, Spurlock mentions the dismissal of several individuals' lawsuits against McDonald's due to their failure to prove McDonald's was the culprit for their injuries. If Spurlock was inclined to make a convincing monument to the detriments of fast food culture, he should have consumed typical quantities of McDonald's food— four to five times a week, not the twenty-one times a week shown here. Anyone could show that McDonald's food is dangerous in
massive quantities; it's much more convincing and meaningful to show that it's dangerous in the quantities that the average person is exposed to. But obviously, doing this would not make for nearly as dramatic a film. In fact, I would doubt that the typical fast food eater gets even close to the 5,000 calories that Spurlock’s dieticians at the stupidly named
Haelth nutrition center estimate that he gets every day. So with this flawed, but highly entertaining approach to investigative journalism, the integrity of the experiment is lost; it no longer reflects the reality of the public’s relationship with fast food restaurants. Now it shows the health effects of fast food on a hardcore McDonald’s junkie with a 3 meal a day habit, and that’s just misleading. It’s misleading in the magnitude of the effects, and it’s misleading in how the public will perceive the information. Only the few people who make it a point to critically analyze the information being fed to them are going to walk away with a conclusion other than “eating McDonald’s food can cause serious health damages.” And while that statement may ultimately be true, it’s faulty reasoning to arrive there simply by watching this movie; the only
legitimate, deductive conclusion you can draw, assuming that all the evidence presented is truth, is that McDonald’s food, when eaten 3 times a day for a month, will cause serious health damage
in some people. But that’s not the conclusion most people will make.
 |
| The McDonald's restaurant chain is not pleased with Super Size Me. |
Most people will conveniently forget Spurlock’s showman-like demonstration of unusually gross overindulgence of 5,000 daily calories (which does not reflect the consumption levels of the average fast food eater); they will ignore the fact that Spurlock dropped his activity level sharply when beginning the program (to simulate the exercise level of the average fast food eater—odd considering that the 21 fast-food meals a week plan was clearly not representative of the average fast food eater); they will ignore the contradictory presence of Don Gorske, the, um, impeccably palated gourmand who consumed over 18,000 Big Macs over a 30 year period, with a cholesterol level of an enviably low 155; and they will likely overlook the fact that Spurlock’s body was not already adjusted to the high-fat, high sodium diet he was switching to. The reality is that bodies need time to transition into to new forms of caloric intake, and without giving them a sufficient period to adjust, all hell is prone to break loose—and that includes rapid weight gain and other bodily dysfunction. All of those facts are, individually and combined, potentially massive holes in the “airtight” case against McDonald’s, but it takes real critical analysis to see them, and frankly, I don’t think most audiences have the inclination or questioning nature to look that hard. In the end, I sort of question whether Spurlock did—you know, if he even wanted to go there at all.
So what are we left with? Spurlock has created a funny, entertaining, and ultimately important statement on the nature of food consumption and health in America, but let's not mince words here: this is entertainment, not science. You know what his goal is when he enters the experiment (to prove McDonald’s food will wreak havoc on your body), and you know what the outcome’s going to be when it ends (it wreaks havoc on your body). There’s never any question. And maybe that’s because we’re talking about McDonald’s food here, and everyone already knows that eating it is like eating congealed fat covered with melted processed cheese and lots of salt. Still, you never get the feeling that it’s anything but a biased investigation; and to make matters worse, Spurlock enters every phase of the experiment with the cloying bravado of a 20/20 reporter. And like “journalists” such as John Stossel, Spurlock seems to have deceived himself into thinking that what he’s covering is somehow more explosive and revelatory than it is. But arguably, that's part of the movie's over-the-top fun.
Many of the people who see this movie will leave the theatre believing that McDonald's restaurant is a disgusting, possibly dangerous place to eat. And while this may be true—and I am very sympathetic to that suggestion— it is also true that Spurlock submitted himself to an extreme overexposure to the suspected "carcinogen." No one— no one — eats McDonald's three times a day. And in the off chance that someone does, surely the health detriments should already be obvious, and hence the need for the film no longer exists. And once you think about it for a minute, it is already obvious that McDonald's food is not particularly good for you; plaintiffs suing McDonald’s apparently notwithstanding, even casual diners at fast food restaurants are already aware of this. You don't really need this movie to reveal that to you; you go to the movie to confirm it. True, the movie demonstrates the dangers of fast food in a harrowing fashion that ordinary fast food consumption could not make as obvious, and in a time frame that leaves little room for argument as to the root cause of the damage being done, the extreme nature of the experiment also suggests that the entire setup seeks not so much to educate, but to shock, disgust, and, of course, to entertain.
But the bottom line is that it’s an enjoyable flick. Go see it. But take it with a ton of salt.
