[HN Gopher] Morgan Spurlock has died
___________________________________________________________________
Morgan Spurlock has died
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 108 points
Date : 2024-05-24 14:07 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Spurlock
|
| https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1041597/
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Spooky how the story about his alcoholism making the rounds
| earlier this month. Was he sick?
| deelowe wrote:
| Seems he died from cancer.
| vrc wrote:
| Often causative, though from GPs phrasing, it could be
| they're insinuating the alcoholism was a smokescreen for
| cancer, which seems unnecessary...
| rozab wrote:
| They're just saying it's strange he was being widely talked
| about for the first time in 20 years and then he suddenly
| dies
| keybored wrote:
| Morbid serendipity.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Yeah -- this is all that I meant
| plasticsoprano wrote:
| Pwilly?
|
| The article mentions he was fighting cancer.
| voisin wrote:
| Lots of cancers are related to alcoholism. Not saying this
| was, but I think I see OP's point.
| glonq wrote:
| Correct, alcohol is a group 1 carcinogen.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| P, Pwilly, PDubs, Fat Pat, whatever you want.
|
| I somehow overlooked the cancer piece in the article thanks
| windowshopping wrote:
| What does pwilly mean
| plasticsoprano wrote:
| It's what I called him at a previous job.
| dpflan wrote:
| This article is sparse with "more details soon"; Wikipedia seems
| up to date with a recent obituary reference;
| https://variety.com/2024/film/obituaries-people-news/morgan-...
| basil-rash wrote:
| That site could do to mention his admission to decades of
| chronic alcoholism in his "MeToo" letter, which of course void
| the results of his Super Size Me study, in which the doctors
| repeatedly said he had liver damage "consistent with years of
| alcohol abuse", which he then pinned on the McDonalds.
|
| I for one am pissed that his fraudulent hit piece has made it
| impossible for _more than one person_ to get SuperSize options
| _and share them_ , resulting in potentially less overall
| calories than multiple other orders, along with cost savings
| and less work for the employees.
| ohmyiv wrote:
| > piece has made it impossible for more than one person to
| get SuperSize options and share them
|
| They sell extra large sizes that are basically the same and
| can still upgrade to it. They just dont call it "supersize"
| any more or directly offer it. Well, at least the McDs I go
| to once in a while doesn't directly offer it as I have to
| ask.
|
| YMMV
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >I for one am pissed that his fraudulent hit piece has made
| it impossible for more than one person to get SuperSize
| options and share them, resulting in potentially less overall
| calories than multiple other orders, along with cost savings
| and less work for the employees.
|
| Is that really the hill to die on? Regardless of the results,
| McDonald's is under holy hellfire for more or less
| quadrupling prices over the last decade.
|
| And of course those profits don't go to employees. When
| California increased minimum wage for fast food workers,
| layoffs all around. Hey, less work for the laid off! And more
| work for the survivors. Bonus: they then try to blame the
| price hikes on neeeding to pay their labor.
|
| We aren't getting cheap fast food, and employees don't have
| it better. Morgan didn't really affect that.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > By the end of the experiment, Spurlock claimed that he gained
| 25 pounds and suffered from depression and liver dysfunction.
|
| Important to note that the man was hiding alcoholism at the
| time.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| 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.
| tootie wrote:
| No. It was pretty well disproven actually. And he didn't
| disclose he had untreated alcoholism during the production
| which likely caused most of his problems.
| RavingGoat wrote:
| So his liver was ok even though he was a lifelong alcoholic
| yet a month later it wasn't and the only new thing he
| introduced in his diet was lots of mcdonalds? Seems like he
| proved something.
| hintoftime wrote:
| I think I heard he was actually addicted to alcohol, which is
| information that he withheld, and that some scientists in a
| European country tried unsuccessfully to recreate his results.
| NoNotTheDuo wrote:
| Nope: https://skylertanner.com/2010/04/30/supersize-me-
| revisted-un...
| queuebert wrote:
| Serious question -- can you clarify what evidence would need to
| be released?
|
| The calorie counts clearly add up, because a single non-super-
| sized McDonald's meal is over half of a grown man's BMR. All
| that remains is to add up the resulting weight gain from the
| excess daily calories over a month.
| tootie wrote:
| He had more than weight gain, he suffered serious liver
| problems. That was in the movie despite him hiding his
| chronic alcohol abuse. Eating tons of fast food is obviously
| going to be unhealthy, but the results are pretty
| predictable. There's a scene at the outset where a doctor
| tells him something like "you'll gain weight and raise your
| cholesterol but that's about it" and he came back with loads
| more problems. The extra problems were most likely due to
| alcohol.
| smcl wrote:
| You can't really do that though. I mean at a high level, yeah
| a poor diet and little exercise will almost certainly lead to
| an adult gaining weight. But it sounds like you're describing
| the possibility of calculating his expected weight gain based
| on how much he ate and how much he exercised, and I don't
| think that's possible. Not to mention that it's been widely
| reported (iirc even from Spurlock himself) that he was
| drinking alcohol heavily during this period, which will
| further complicate this calorie-level reconcilation you're
| suggesting.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Well, we know now, after many years, that the calories in the
| logs don't actually account fully for his weight gain,
| because he was also consuming huge amounts of alcohol during
| the filming of the movie, which he didn't disclose to either
| the audience or the doctors he interacted with.
| flutas wrote:
| Nope. It's been tried and never able to be reproduced (aside
| from weight gain as expected because calories in > calories
| out)[0].
|
| The underlying thing I've heard (and he admitted to, since
| deleted) is that he was a massive alcoholic during filming and
| that's what led to the health problems. Essentially he's said
| he drank since age 13, and "was never sober for more than a
| week since then." Unfortunately I can't find that direct quote
| anymore on a reputable site, but he mentions the alcoholism in
| this interview.[1]
|
| [0]: https://www.sott.net/article/126285-Supersize-me-
| revisited-u...
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-spurlock-talks-
| sexual...
| hbn wrote:
| The movie was not scientific at all. It was anti-scientific if
| anything.
|
| Not to argue McDonald's is health food, but his method was he
| had to eat McDonald's 3 times per day - even if he wasn't
| hungry. And additionally, if the cashier ever asked if he
| wanted to supersize, he had to say yes. So he was just forcing
| McDonald's down his throat to the point of throwing up. Name a
| food where you wouldn't gain weight eating it in excess.
|
| And it was later revealed he was lying to doctors by saying he
| wasn't drinking when he in fact had a very bad alcohol
| addiction. You even see in the movie a doctor tell him he's
| baffled how his liver has seen such damage from McDonald's
| since that should really only happen from an alcohol addiction.
| Well, turned out years later he was secretly drinking the whole
| time.
|
| The movie is a hoax. McDonald's even gave an official PR
| response and basically the gist was "we actually agree with the
| movie, you should not be eating our food like that."
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I feel really bad for him, that he had an addiction he
| couldn't quit and felt forced to hide.
|
| Anyone know why, given that, he'd make a movie that put his
| health under a microscope?
| hbn wrote:
| There was a moral panic over fast food that was really
| taking off at the time, and cashing in on it clearly paid
| off for him.
|
| It did make McDonald's put more effort into rebranding with
| "we care about the health of kids" - I was a kid when the
| documentary came out and I remember frequent McDonald's ads
| on kids channels that were just Ronald McDonald teaching
| you how to do exercises. But I don't think it really made
| as much of a difference for people binge eating their food
| as much as the past few years where their prices for all
| their food have shot to the moon.
| floor2 wrote:
| Calling it a "moral panic" feels almost offensively wrong
| to me.
|
| McDonald's is very legitimately a serious problem in
| America today. Obesity and related conditions- Type 2
| diabetes, high blood pressure, etc are at mind boggling
| epidemic levels. Americans today are living shorter,
| sicker lives than their parents despite tremendous
| improvements in medicine, working safety, automobile
| safety and less smoking almost entirely due to obesity
| related conditions. Childhood obesity is setting millions
| of children down a path of suffering before they're old
| enough to understand that they're being harmed or having
| the agency and autonomy to correct it.
|
| This isn't a "moral panic" over something harmless like
| kids playing dungeons and dragons or listening to rock
| and roll, this is arguably the largest health and
| wellbeing concern in America today. If anything, as a
| society we probably have too much moral panic about
| stigmatized things like opioids and guns that impact a
| pretty small percent of people and have not enough
| concern about the unfortunately normalized things like
| 3/4ths of people being overweight and 4/10 being obese.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Americans have solved this by making fat into an identity
| which is taboo to criticize.
| rpdillon wrote:
| You're being downvoted, but this happened to me. I
| mentioned at work some years back something about raising
| my kids and emphasizing healthy eating to maintain a
| healthy weight, and a co-worker took me to task for "body
| shaming" my children. I pointed out that I was really
| approaching it from the health angle, but that didn't
| land. Really weird experience that stuck with me.
| monkeyfun wrote:
| I very much agree on there not being enough concern and
| "moral panic" about obesity, but just feel like noting
| that for opioids specifically though they may be
| affecting only a _relatively_ small percentage of people,
| last year alone there was something like 70-100k dead
| from fentanyl overdoses.
|
| In that respect I'd argue that at least compared to guns
| or abortion as common political obsessions, opioids,
| especially high potency ones like fentanyl, are a lot
| closer to obesity in causing catastrophic death and
| suffering in the US.
| keybored wrote:
| Drinking too much is bad for you. Maybe someone should make
| a 30-day heavy drinking trial documentary to demonstrate
| it.
| hbn wrote:
| WKUK actually did a sketch that was exactly that
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOyjzE1vcD4
| happyopossum wrote:
| > The movie is a hoax.
|
| There's no hoax - he actually ate McDonald's 3x a day.
| Where's the false and preposterous claim we're supposedly
| being tricked in to believing?
| practicemaths wrote:
| That it lead to the pickling of his liver?
| dangus wrote:
| Well he ate three McDonald's super size meals PLUS an
| alcoholic's diet of liquid calories, which is about 100
| calories per drink at the least.
|
| Fun fact: if you get a quarter pounder with cheese, Diet
| Coke and small fries, that's 750 calories.
|
| Eat that for lunch and dinner plus a McMuffin, coffee, and
| apple pie for breakfast and you're at 2,030 calories.
| koolba wrote:
| > Eat that for lunch and dinner plus a McMuffin, coffee,
| and apple pie for breakfast and you're at 2,030 calories.
|
| That's significantly less than the average diet in the
| USA. According to Wikipedia it averages about 3781[1]: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ene
| r...
|
| Spurlock was 6'2" so even the higher end of calories
| wouldn't be out of line for a "normal American diet", at
| least for total caloric intake.
|
| Now if he was also drinking half a bottle of scotch a
| day, that's another 1000 calories (plus all the liver
| damage...).
|
| [1]: Divide those numbers by 4.184 for the joules to
| calorie converion.
| crdrost wrote:
| Also note that during the experiment one of Spurlock's
| medical professionals comments on his diet as averaging
| 5000 kcal/day given his food logs. At another point a
| different professional states that these results seem
| impossible without heavy drinking of alcohol, implying
| that he wasn't disclosing the alcohol in his food logs to
| them either.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| 3781!?!?!?
|
| Holy shit. My _bulking_ diet is about that, I 'm trying
| to gain weight whilst lifting 3-4x a week.
|
| Mental.
|
| edit: Looking at the article this isn't accounting for
| food wastage etc so the real figure is likely a fair bit
| lower.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| In the US, there's a concern that some alcohol company
| will start claiming their drinks are healthier than the
| others, so alcohol packaging isn't required to say
| anything about the number of calories in the drink (
| https://www.eatingwell.com/article/2052030/why-your-
| booze-do... ).
|
| It makes me wonder how many people see that calories
| aren't listed and assume "it must be small." I don't
| think anybody believes alcohol is a diet drink, but I'm
| sure many people don't realize how it's packed with
| calories.
| yladiz wrote:
| I think they should treat it like in the UK and use a
| different measurement like "1 standard drink", and,
| probably more importantly, forbid it from being used in
| marketing. I think if the minimum was 1, and even if a
| beer has low calories it still counts as 1 drink, it
| would avoid this issue.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| "diet" soda is still a huge chasm of psychological
| confusion so I wouldn't call it the silver bullet to
| beating the calories in metric. If only life were so
| simple.
|
| But yes, that was part of the point of the documentary.
| Super size portions were triple that of small and instead
| of a quarter pounder we're talking double or triple the
| meat (and maybe more grease in the burger to boot). And
| companies encouraged consumer to supersize because higher
| profit margins.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There's no hoax - he actually ate McDonald's 3x a day.
| Where's the false and preposterous claim we're supposedly
| being tricked in to believing?
|
| That the observed health impacts--the liver like one of a
| heavy drinker, particularly--were a consequence of the fast
| food and not, you know, being a heavy drinker.
|
| These are very different claims:
|
| (1) Eating fast food exclusively gives you the liver of a
| heavy drinker, or
|
| (2) Heavy drinking plus eating fast food exclusively gives
| you the liver of a heavy drinker.
|
| The second is also far less surprising than the first, and
| says a lot less about fast food.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You know, it's funny, because his specific example was
| definitely caused by the alcoholism and not the excess
| calories.
|
| Buuuuut, America is currently experiencing a significant
| increase in the amount of Fatty Liver Disease for non-
| alcoholics.
|
| Being slightly overweight for a long time DOES give you
| the liver of a budding alcoholic. It's not serious and
| can be reversed....... IF you lose weight, you know, that
| thing that people are so bad at doing, they got a fatty
| liver in the first place. So this is going to suck for a
| while.
| crdrost wrote:
| 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-rep... for some quick excerpts from some of these
| different folks.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >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.
|
| Huh. The teacher either fast forwarded through that
| "interview", or the school version was strategically
| condensed.
|
| Alas, if only it was that easy. Forget fast food,
| McDonald's would be a trillion dollar industry for men
| everywhere.
|
| >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.
|
| That may sound unrealistic, but that's not outside the
| realm of how some people eat. Maybe not all each meal,
| but throughout a day of eating. 5000 can make sense for a
| month to attempt to "prototype" the difference, because
| 3000 a day for years will show the results are much worse
| than any short experiment.
| keybored wrote:
| I'm onboard with the anti-processed food crowd. I don't
| frequent any fast food joints but I get processed food at the
| grocery store.
|
| It's bad. But I also roll my eyes when someone in 2020+ brags
| about their pristine normal diets, goes on a processed-only
| diet (to prove some point that no one needed to be convinced
| about?) and then have embarrassing moans and sighs every time
| they take a bite.
|
| _oooooooooHHHHH_
|
| Am I too far gone? Too numb to the pleasures of processed
| food?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I suppose we browse different parts of the net, but I've
| never come across that scenario.
| baubino wrote:
| I saw the movie when it came out and had distantly interacted
| with Morgan while he was making the film (he was an
| acquaintance of an acquaintance). I don't recall the movie
| ever being presented as "scientific" so it's really
| interesting seeing all these take-downs of it for that
| reason. I remember it being a quirky "documentary" (more
| along the lines of edu-tainment) about this weird funny thing
| he did. It was wild that the film gained as much traction as
| it did, which I don't think was anyone's expectation at the
| time. So yes, it is 100% not scientific but I really don't
| think it was intended to be.
| hbn wrote:
| Well myself and everyone else in school at the time had to
| sit through it in health class. Teachers LOVED this movie.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Name a food where you wouldn't gain weight eating it in
| excess.
|
| You seem to be laser focused on the chemistry and less on the
| psychology. The point was that yes, some people back then
| (when fast food was actually cheap) would eat it 3 times a
| day and not question much. It was only filling enough for a
| couple of hours but highly calorie dense (mostly friends and
| soda, though). Much easier to lose track of that then most
| other foods.
|
| If we could scientifically convince people not to overeat,
| there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic in the US.
|
| Lasty, consider the audience. I watched this in 4th and 6th
| grade. What's obvious to you c. 2024 wasn't obvious to 11 yo
| me, especially not in anticipation of a lifestyle where I
| drive everywhere instead of being subjected to 1 hr of PE a
| day
|
| >McDonald's even gave an official PR response and basically
| the gist was "we actually agree with the movie, you should
| not be eating our food like that."
|
| And people continued to. The shuffled some stuff around as
| PR, but the calorie density remained the same. Coke gives too
| much profit margins to cut but is the biggest problem. Salads
| were still covered in sugar and salt so they were not in fact
| better than burgers. Super size was cut, but large sizes
| increased to 80% of supersize.
|
| So yeah, as you said. Any food in excess gains weight. The
| portions and ingredients continued to be excess.
| appleiigs wrote:
| As part of an intro to optimization class in university, we
| inputted gov't nutrition health guidelines and the McDonalds
| nutritional menu into a model. Solved how we could hit the
| health guidelines (min and maximums) by only eating McDs. Basic
| conclusion is McDs is fine if you don't eat the fries or sodas.
|
| The book "Fast Food Nation" was an optional reading. It
| explained how McD single-handedly improved the quality of beef
| and potato industry in the US.
| m463 wrote:
| Aren't government nutritional health guidelines heavily
| influenced by politics/outside influence?
|
| I know we've gotten past the food pyramid, but don't
| guidelines continue to heavily favor dairy?
|
| (and doesn't mcdonalds still have a lot of saturated fat?)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I could be making huge assumptions here. But I imagine the
| GP's experiment was as simple as focusing on "recommended
| calories" (which is 2000 per day) and secondarily, keeping
| under/over certain nutrients (low sugar/cholesterol/fat,
| high vitamins).
|
| Food pyramid was much less scientific and more of a basic
| guideline for school children (and yes, the dairy campaigns
| were very successful, though dairy at least has nutritional
| value and usually a good "fill" factor). But I don't think
| any of those hard nutrient recommendations were every
| challenged.
|
| Were they? I honestly haven't looked into it.
| keybored wrote:
| From YouTube[1]
|
| > We should all thank Morgan for showing us that eating
| 5000+calories a day while being a raging alcoholic and drug
| addict is unhealthy.
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXtJ12EeaOs&lc=UgyA_kYg7pohG...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "drug addict" is uselessly unspecific in a medical context,
| and socially is just derogatory.
| keybored wrote:
| I agree that saying both _alhoholic_ and _drug addict_ is
| redundant.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Well, you're never going to convince modern culture.
| Something something moderate.
| kbutler wrote:
| https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2022/03/supersize-me-failed-rep...
|
| "the conclusion, weak as it is, is sufficient to show that the
| Supersize me documentary is dubious, or maybe even a hoax.
| Clearly, eating a lot of McDonald's fast food (or Burger King
| etc.) is not really so unhealthy that there is serious health
| risk after a month. The other anecdotes and this study of 18
| people showed that clearly. So what did Morgan Spurlock do? Who
| can say. We can think of benign explanations: maybe McD/Burger
| King changed their ingredients after 2004, or they differ
| between Sweden and USA, or Swedes are more naturally resistant
| to bad diets than English. Or maybe Spurlock engaged in a lot
| of creative freedom."
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The takeaway was not 'bad food is bad' but 'bad food with
| absolutely no activity is bad'
|
| A nutritionist responded with a study where he only ate candy
| and multivitamins but increased his movement exercise 10x. All
| his health metrics went up.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Must have a hell for hunger pains, though. I can take a
| moderate walk and feel hungry (which can lead to overeating
| and cancelling out the exercise gains). I can't imagine the
| discipline to simply ignore your hunger for those early weeks
| with a bunch of water and candy.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Cancer seems to be getting many rather young people :(
|
| With the increase it cancer among the young is concerning.
| mateus1 wrote:
| Ironically this is likely linked to more industrialized diets.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Or is it newsworthy because it's an outlier? Availability bias
| might also be a factor here.
| nostrebored wrote:
| No, by raw numbers cancer under 50 has increased
| substantially.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Cancer deaths as well? Otherwise it could be an artifact of
| better screening.
| practicemaths wrote:
| I wonder how much alcoholism contributed to it here though.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| We never know, but it can depend on the type of cancer and
| the particular cells that could have been mutated by the
| carcinogen. Bottom line is that humans need to figure out how
| to stop cancer cells from dividing so much.
| password54321 wrote:
| Increase in balding, increase in microplastics found in blood,
| increase in depression and loneliness, increase in social media
| addiction. Definitely concerning times.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Super Size Me was pretty good, but I really enjoyed 30 Days. It
| was great to see people's opinions challenged.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| I was in one of the 30 Days episodes. It was... very very very
| much reality-TV, not reality.
|
| They made things up, planted things, and generally hammed it up
| to make things interesting. Still maybe interesting to watch,
| but not something I'd treat as accurate.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Every person who has ever been in a reality TV episode will
| provide stark testimony that it's completely manufactured,
| yet millions of Americans will staunchly swear that it's just
| "embellished" reality, not manufactured reality.
|
| It's truly frustrating.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| We've sadly been in a post truth era for a while. And the
| advertisers have won the war.
|
| The most palatable reality shows are game shows, and it's
| only middling in the day where you can search up any
| esoteric fun facts. Sure, the contestants are highly biased
| in selection, but I assume (maybe wrongly?) that the rest
| of the show is people playing by some set rules and
| answering unprepped trivia. Ripped off in prizes by taxes,
| but everything else is "real"
| jonplackett wrote:
| If you haven't seen it, I highly rate his other film 'The
| greatest movie ever sold'
|
| In it he reveals the way movies use paid product placement, by
| making a movie that is itself funded by product placement. It is
| delightfully meta.
|
| There's a great scene where he's on the phone to I think a
| shampoo marketing department exec and they say 'so how will this
| work exactly?' And he says 'well it will probably start with this
| conversation in the movie, and then we'll cut to some kind of
| scene with your product in it' and then they cut to a horse being
| washed with their shampoo.
|
| Warning: You won't watch another movie again without noticing ALL
| the product placement.
| lamontcg wrote:
| You can also watch Josie and the Pussycats from a decade
| earlier.
| fwr wrote:
| I just found out about the controversy behind Super Size Me a few
| days ago:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cw02ni/til_...
| wholien wrote:
| > 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.
| npsimons wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...)
| rightbyte wrote:
| > 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?
| jrmg wrote:
| Yeah, I agree with you.
|
| The argument is that they're 'misleading' because the
| _dressings_ that are provided with them are surprisingly
| high in calories. Like, a standard size salad with all
| the provided dressing is not lower calorie than one of
| the more traditional menu options - and people may not
| realize that.
|
| I'd say the salads are pretty good BTW - better than you
| might think a fast food place would do.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| You are correct. They're better than you would expect --
| and the price is reasonable.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| 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 [...]
|
| It's still a little bit ridiculous.
|
| A human being should be eating 90 meals per month, give
| or take. If more than 1 or 2 of those are fast food,
| _that 's_ the problem.
|
| To what standard should we be holding a restaurant meal?
| "Is it healthy for a person to eat 90 of these meals per
| month?" doesn't seem like a useful or realistic thing to
| do.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm confused about why you're confused. The point of the
| movie was definitely _not_ to give the audience the
| shocking realism that if you 're force feeding yourself
| to the point of vomiting, you're probably doing something
| wrong. This aspect of the movie only _lessens_ the actual
| argument of the movie (except that it makes good
| headlines and thus probably drove the majority of the
| media coverage and general interest in the documentary).
| tdeck wrote:
| > I don't get the 'eating 5000 calories of anything would
| make you ill' argument against the movie.
|
| Good thing that's not the argument I'm making in my
| comment. The argument I'm making is about forcing
| yourself to eat more than you want to while the very act
| of eating is making you feel sick. That's what Spurlock
| did in the movie; it's not representative of any
| significant population of people.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Think the point is that it's real easy to force feed
| yourself 5000 calories if it's 2500 calorie meals that
| don't fill you up for the day.
|
| honestly the burger itself isn't too bad. Double quarter
| pounder is 750 calories, really filling. But tripling
| that from fries and drink is the real killer. You can
| probably lose weight from McDonald's simply by only
| getting water or unsweetened tea for a drink, and
| limiting yourself to small sides.
| tdeck wrote:
| > it's real easy to force feed yourself 5000 calories
|
| No it's not. If you have to force it, it's by definition
| not "easy". Overindulging in something is different from
| forcing yourself to do it. My problem with the movie is
| that it takes a very strange scenario (man forces himself
| to eat to the point of puking) and acts like that's
| teaching us lessons about the broader population, none of
| whom are doing that. It might be bad for you to eat
| unhealthy things that feel pleasurable, but it's
| obviously worse to do it so much that it's become an
| ordeal.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "that fast food is out of control in this country and needs
| to be regulated."
|
| Eh, I would rather see change in the area of education and
| alternatives than just food type/portion/etc regulation.
| The education can apply to multiple foods and not just the
| pariah of the day. Ingredient studies and
| approvals/disapproval would be an area of regulation that I
| would support though.
| legitster wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Suddenly this Trevor Moore WKUK video makes a lot more sense:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EIAN1YcEUI
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| pknomad wrote:
| 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.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| There's also the allegations of sexual misconduct
| (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 wrote:
| 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
| password54321 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| thruway516 wrote:
| There are, or at least at the time there were a lot of
| people whose meals come entirely from fast food. There
| wasnt a lot of awareness about how bad that could be and
| there had been a decades long trend towards replacing meals
| with microwave dinners and fast food. Supersize Me did play
| a part in reversing that trend. It was trying to make a
| very valid point about fast food and dining habits. So its
| science wasnt exact, but complaining about that is like
| quibbling with a Michael Moore documentary for being a
| little loose with facts
| tdeck wrote:
| I disagree that there wasn't enough awareness. As someone
| who was alive at the time, there was a pre-existing moral
| panic about fast food and there were constant discussions
| before Supersize Me about how unhealthy it was, not to
| mention pop culture jokes making fun of it. I think that
| pre-existing anxiety was one of the reasons so many
| people saw the film.
| password54321 wrote:
| >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.
| evgen wrote:
| The article only tangentially touches upon his alcoholism without
| noting that the claimed effects of his diet in the 'documentary'
| was in fact not due to eating McDonalds for a month but was
| caused by drinking a fifth of vodka daily. Not really mentioned,
| but I would not be surprised to learn that this alcohol abuse was
| a significant contributing factor for his cancer.
| lupusreal wrote:
| This is the first I heard of this. Did he start that drinking
| habit at the same time as the McDonald's thing? If it was
| already an old habit by the time he started, wouldn't his
| health be in the gutter from the start of the burger diet?
| evgen wrote:
| No, he was a long-term alcoholic and that is why his final
| health report was so bad. Add in the additional calories he
| was drinking each day plus any DTs from a hard-core drinker
| trying to go straight for a few days while filming a movie
| and the results are pretty much exactly what we would have
| expected to see.
| jxramos wrote:
| I think they did report his medical readings in the actual
| movie, might be worth going back to visit if they made an
| actual baseline reading and see what glimpse that gives for
| his initial health.
| sp332 wrote:
| The doctor in the documentary tells him that his liver is
| damaged like an alcoholic's. He just let people assume it was
| from the food.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I understand we want to contribute cancer to something someone
| directly did, but that isn't always the case. Cancer sometimes
| just happens.
| evgen wrote:
| Definitely, but alcohol abuse definitely raises the odds of
| certain types of cancer. The specific type of cancer was not
| mentioned, but if it was liver or bowel cancer I would
| suggest alcohol played a role and if not I would classify
| this in the 'probably something that just happened' category.
| vrc wrote:
| Or certain head neck and stomach cancers. Or pancreatic
| cancer. A lot of cancers.
| alan-hn wrote:
| The metabolite of ethyl alcohol, acetaldehyde, is a well
| documented and potent carcinogen
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Correct, but "carcinogen" is still a percentage of a chance
| of mutation developing. For example, there are heavy-
| alcohol users who don't develop cancer.
| nerplinger wrote:
| Rampant alcohol abuse is arguably the worst thing you could
| do to your body so it probably played a part - not talking a
| few beers a night; I mean a "fifth" of vodka a day like he
| said he drank. I used to be a heavy drinker, but at my worst,
| I probably drank half of that a few days a week for two years
| or so - I maybe drank a fifth in a day a few times - but it
| got to the point where I couldn't function, gout, weight
| gain, just generally feeling like dogshit. I don't understand
| how people can do that for decades and live let alone be
| successful.
| npsimons wrote:
| The simple fact is that no amount of alcohol is good for you.
| Same goes for smoking _anything_ , marijuana included. Also,
| processed meats are definitely carcinogens.
|
| Yeah, cancer can "just happen" to anyone, but there are
| undeniable factors that can _significantly_ increase your
| chances of getting it, such as poor diet or being overweight.
|
| You might not like it, but those are the facts.
|
| That said, I'll also put out there that I think a a lot of
| people are overly dismissive of "Supersize Me" by pointing to
| Spurlock's alcoholism, completely ignoring how bad fast food
| is, on every level.
| runjake wrote:
| In fact, cancer is always happening in practically everyone.
| Sometimes the body doesn't successfully kill off those cells,
| however.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > An estimated 6% of cancer cases can be attributed to
| alcohol consumption which increases the risk for cancers of
| the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colorectum, and
| female breast. Approximately three or more drinks per day may
| also increase the risk of stomach and pancreatic cancer.
|
| https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-
| org/research/cance...
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Two of my uncles and my grandpa drank heavily every day for
| most of their adult lives. They went out young, and the end
| wasn't pretty.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Like most people, I think 750ml of liquor daily sounds
| incredible. That is equivalent to what the NIH defines as a
| "binge", three times every day. But to alcoholics that's a
| pretty average level of drinking. I always go back to this
| graph that still leaves me astounded.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/09/...
| zikduruqe wrote:
| And just think, a small percentage of liquor store customers,
| comprise the majority of their revenues. That's why when the
| COVID lockdowns happened, liquor stores and carry out
| restaurants got special provisions to keep this customer base
| still drinking.
|
| You just can't stop drinking alcohol; it can kill you.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| In South Africa they banned alcohol during Covid - it is
| major driver of emergency hospital admissions and gender
| based violence and it dropped during Covid and we could
| treat Covid patients.
|
| But the black market price of liquor and cigarette's went
| up by 300% and somebody delivered by drone.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Alcohol here in Norway is quite expensive. A good friend
| working as a ER nurse during COVID said about a year in
| that the biggest issue they faced were all the alcoholics
| drinking hand sanitizer.
| erehweb wrote:
| I believe that graph was criticized as inaccurate, though I
| can't find a source now. Somewhat different from these
| figures in https://arg.org/news/drinking-norms-in-the-us/
| which seem more plausible to me.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I wonder what "demons" he had in his life.
| karaterobot wrote:
| That's too bad. Seemed like a creative, troubled, self-motivated
| guy with good intentions. A hustler in the good sense of the
| word.
|
| I did not know him, but was in meetings with him as part of a
| project. I found him nicer than he had to be to a random software
| dope. He was polite, perceptive, and open to input. Condolences
| to his family.
| vrc wrote:
| Nice to hear a different take than criticisms of SuperSize Me
| and his alcoholism. While SSM was definitely sensationalism, it
| did bring about a cultural awareness and changes in fast food
| menu.
| bbatha wrote:
| Cynically those changes were just a rebrand to meet changing
| mores about health. McDonald's salad famously has more
| calories than the big mac. Super size items may not be called
| super sized, but an extra-large is the same size a super
| sized item. The obesity epidemic rages on and has continued
| to worsen in the US and has spread to pretty much every
| developed country. Not that I fault Spurlock for any of that,
| just a disappointing outcome to say the least.
| brailsafe wrote:
| In Canada and other places, we just don't have _most_ of
| those sizes; supersize was replaced with nothing afaik.
| Fast food places do still try and trick you into thinking a
| massive soda with your burger is somehow worth the combo
| price.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| We metaphorically cut one head off the hydra when the root
| cause is various government subsidies (or lack thereof for
| healthier foods). And then as you say, thst head grew back
| disguised as new buzzwords.
|
| Stuff is a bit better for gen alpha in school, but there's
| still a lot of work to do.
| thruway516 wrote:
| No the root cause is that Americans continue to be
| indifferent to eating crap. As long as it is sweet or
| salty, packs a ton of calories and has some semblance of
| food in it, theres money to be made from it. It doesn't
| help that how much money can be made is one of the main
| yardsticks of worthiness in this culture often
| superceding common sense.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Sure, the _root_ root cause is Apathy, like many other
| factors. But I don 't think Americans are uniquely self-
| indulgent compared to every other first world country.
| Americans maybe have more food coming in (or grown
| domestically), but I'd be surprised if the gap (if any)
| was that large.
|
| So I think finding the root cause one level up is still
| worthwhile.
|
| > It doesn't help that how much money can be made is one
| of the main yardsticks of worthiness in this culture
| often superceding common sense.
|
| This portion is interesting, but contradictory to the
| statistics. It's actually lower class citizens who have
| higher obesity rates in America. A poignant factor that
| suggests that the costs of certain foods may be something
| to investigate (I'm sure it's already well investigated.
| I just haven't looked it up in years).
| JohnBooty wrote:
| In general, yeah, our portions are too large and we don't
| eat healthily enough! but an extra-large
| is the same size a super sized item
|
| I don't think McDonalds has "extra-large" anything? The
| sizes for drinks and fries in their app are S/M/L. It is
| also perhaps worth noting that both of those items default
| to "M" for me.
|
| I'm in NE USA.
| orev wrote:
| > McDonald's salad famously has more calories than the big
| mac.
|
| Almost all salads have high calories when you account for
| the large amount of dressing most people use. But you can
| control how much dressing you use, and they also have a lot
| more fiber than a Big Mac.
|
| > an extra-large is the same size a super sized item
|
| One of the points of the movie was that he would always
| have to say yes _when asked if he wanted to super size_.
| THAT is a big difference between just ordering a larger
| size. After someone already decided on the size they
| wanted, the clerk would then ask that question. Most people
| are conditioned to be polite, and many no doubt said yes
| simply to avoid being seen as disagreeable. This movie
| caused McDonald's to stop doing this.
| donohoe wrote:
| Yeah. Very simple interactions with hm myself. He interviewed
| my boss at the 'ChipShop' restaurant in Brooklyn as part of
| Super Size Me. If you have the DVD I'm the waiter in the
| background. Just a nice guy. Took time to say Hello.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| This is very sad. I was inspired by his films to think about
| society in unique ways, and enjoyed some of what he produced. It
| is a terrible loss to creativity.
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It probably truly was ligntning in a bottle. I can't comment on
| his other movies, but very very few works become so
| sensationalized that a collective generation all remember
| viewing the same thing in school. Especially in video format.
| Supersize me stands alongside Bill Nye, Magic Schoolbus, and
| maybe Idiocracy as "something everyone my age/country has
| seen", no matter where we grew up.
|
| I say sensationalized simply because I don't think the quality
| of the documentary really influenced that. Maybe his other
| movies are much better from a critical lens (especially in wake
| of criticism over his experiment). It was truly the right place
| at the right time
| littlekey wrote:
| I don't know what's sad about that, it's fortunate enough to
| get one such hit in one's career. Also, the doc he did about
| product placement was also well received from what I've seen.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| It's true. Everything has a peak. All directors have a film
| that did the biggest box office. His was "Super Size Me."
| paulpauper wrote:
| maybe it was the fast food that did him, in the end
|
| For Supersize Me, notably Mr. Spurlock failed to disclose to his
| doctor or viewers his drinking habit, which more likely
| contributed to his abnormal blood panel readings, not the fast
| food. The whole thing was propaganda that the public ate up. It's
| hard to overstate how big of a deal that movie was in 2004-2005.
| Colleges organized group screenings of it. The ensuing bad press
| from Supersize Me forced McDonald's to discontinue its eponymous
| meal upgrade option.
| parhamn wrote:
| I dont understand this recent talking point. Surely eating a
| "supersize me" multiple times a day is going to cause an
| increase in fat, weight, cholesterol etc. We know this.
|
| Plus the fact that the whole documentary was intentionally
| extreme: no one eats mcdonalds 3 times a day. Its sorta
| pointless to begin with.
|
| Pointing to his alcoholism to dismiss the health concerns,
| which are obviously true, seems very odd to me.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The point of the documentary is to track how his health is
| affected by the food. Consuming a lot of alcohol is a
| relevant, major confounder. It discredits the work.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're saying that the results of the experiment would be
| "obvious", so what's the reason for doing the experiment at
| all? If you're going to do the experiment, why do it with an
| alcoholic?
|
| Far from being odd, his alcoholism was almost an ideal way to
| dismiss any concerns about fast food. Having a reasonably
| healthy non-alcoholic go to McDonald's when they are hungry,
| and still doing the gimmick of accepting "Super-sized" when
| offered, would be what you should do. The problem is that the
| effects of that wouldn't be very dramatic. McDonald's isn't a
| magical gypsy curse, it's rich, high-quality food with too
| much sugar (in the soda.) You can do the same thing to
| yourself cooking raw ingredients at home and drinking sweet
| tea. If you're an alcoholic, you can fuck up your liver
| without eating a thing.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > no one eats mcdonalds 3 times a day
|
| Wasn't there a guy claiming to eat _only_ Big Macs in the
| documentary?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I can believe it back then, when the big mac was either on
| the dollar menu or very close to value prices. I wouldn't
| believe it in 2024 where the sandwich alone is $5 + tax
| (disclaimer: high CoL area).
|
| Big Mac is probably the worst burger because of that stupid
| middle bun, but it's not awful by itself to eat. 700
| calories or so. It's the drink and soda that double that
| and really puts you over.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Pointing to his alcoholism to dismiss the health concerns,
| which are obviously true, seems very odd to me.
|
| The very doctors talking to Spurlock in the documentary told
| him that what they saw of his liver should be impossible if
| he wasn't an alcoholic, thirty days of eating 5000 calories a
| day or not. It takes a significant amount of time to do that
| kind of damage to your liver.
|
| Turns out he was an alcoholic.
|
| SuperSize Me wasn't "about" "hey did you know if you eat a
| lot of fast food, it's bad for you?", the thesis of the
| production was that thing that America loves to ignore: A
| company wants you to buy more of their products and services,
| and will happily sell them and push them to you, no matter
| how much it hurts you.
|
| "SuperSize me" was about how McDonalds had their cashiers
| push supersizing at every single purchase, as if it was
| Gamestop pushing their magazine, despite that empirically not
| being something the vast majority of purchases SHOULD do,
| because it's profitable.
|
| Like christ folks, it's the damn title!
|
| The "it made me unhealthy" portion of the movie was basically
| fraud though, and quickly called out as such. But it wasn't
| there to "prove" anything, but rather because American
| Documentaries from the period (and probably still now) view
| themselves first and foremost as "shock" entertainment,
| second as spectacle, and only have meaningful content if
| there's some spare room in the runtime. Documentaries
| "compete" with action movie schlock in the US
| goles wrote:
| Passed away due to complications from Cancer.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/morgan-spurlock-documen...
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Super Size Me 2 was even better than the first one and I haven't
| seen it mentioned here at all. It was an interesting and eye
| opening look at the chicken industry and what goes into those
| delicious chicken sandwiches we all love.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Born in 1970, in a place massively polluted with carcinogens by
| DuPont.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkersburg,_West_Virginia#Pol...
|
| The wikipedia article really gives short shrift to that issue.
| grecy wrote:
| The first episode of his TV show '30 days' remains the best show
| I have ever seen.
|
| He and his fiance try to live on minimum wage in Columbus, OH. It
| is staggering what that life looks like in the richest country
| the world has ever seen.
|
| All politicians should be forced to do it for 12 months, no
| exceptions.
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