Supersize Me

I just watched one of the most disturbing movies ever. For those of you who haven’t heard about Supersize Me, it’s a documentry about this guy who eats at McDonald’s for 30 days straight: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He has 3 simple rules:

1. No options: he could only eat what was available over the counter (water included!)
2. No supersizing unless offered
3. No excuses: he had to eat every item on the menu at least once

During the eating episodes, Morgan, the star of the film, goes around the country talking with people about their eating habits. “The film [also] explores the horror of school lunch programs, declining health and physical education classes, food addictions and the extreme measures people take to lose weight and regain their health.” (supersizeme.com) If you haven’t seen the film already, you need to see it now. It really does provide a very real and critical look at what our nation is becoming.

• Each day, 1 in 4 Americans visits a fast food restaurant
• In 1972, we spent 3 billion a year on fast food – today we spend more than 110 billion
• McDonald’s feeds more than 46 million people a day – more than the entire population of Spain
• French fries are the most eaten vegetable in America
• You would have to walk for seven hours straight to burn off a Super Sized Coke, fry and Big Mac
• In the U.S., we eat more than 1,000,000 animals an hour
• 60 % of all Americans are either overweight or obese
• One in every three children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime
• Left unabated, obesity will surpass smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in America
• Obesity has been linked to: Hypertension, Coronary Heart Disease, Adult Onset Diabetes, Stroke, Gall Bladder Disease, Osteoarthritis, Sleep Apnea, Respiratory Problems, Endometrial, Breast, Prostate and Colon Cancers, Dyslipidemia, steatohepatitis, insulin resistance, breathlessness, Asthma, Hyperuricaemia, reproductive hormone abnormalities, polycystic ovarian syndrome, impaired fertility and lower back pain
• The average child sees 10,000 TV advertisements per year
• Only seven items on McDonald’s entire menu contain no sugar
• Willard Scott was the first Ronald McDonald – he was fired for being too fat
• McDonald’s distributes more toys per year than Toys-R-Us
• Diabetes will cut 17-27 years off your life
• McDonald’s: “Any processing our foods undergo make them more dangerous than unprocessed foods”
• The World Health Organization has declared obesity a global epidemic
• Eating fast food may be dangerous to your health
• McDonald’s calls people who eat a lot of their food “Heavy Users”
• McDonald’s operates more than 30,000 restaurants in more then 100 countries on 6 continents
• Before most children can speak they can recognize McDonald’s
• Surgeon General David Satcher: “Fast food is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic”
• Most nutritionists recommend not eating fast food more than once a month
• 40% of American meals are eaten outside the home
• McDonald’s represents 43% of total U.S. fast food market