Quote: People Try to Lose Weight at McDonald's
<!-- END HEADLINE --> <!-- BEGIN STORY BODY --> By VALERIE BAUMAN, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago
Inspired by the documentary "Super Size Me," Merab Morgan decided to give a fast-food-only diet a try. The construction worker and mother of two ate only at McDonald's for 90 days — and dropped 37 pounds in the process.
It was a vastly different outcome than what happened in the documentary to filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who put on 30 pounds and saw his health deteriorate after 5,000 calories a day of nothing but McDonald's food.
Morgan, from Raleigh, thought the documentary had unfairly targeted the world's largest restaurant company, implying that the obese were victims of a careless corporate giant. People are responsible for what they eat, she said, not restaurants. The problem with a McDonald's-only diet isn't what's on the menu, but the choices made from it, she said.
"I thought it's two birds with one stone — to lose weight and to prove a point for the little fat people," Morgan said. "Just because they accidentally put an apple pie in my bag instead of my apple dippers doesn't mean I'm going to say, 'Oh, I can eat the apple pie.'"
Spurlock, who turned his surprise-hit movie into a TV show on the FX network, isn't talking about Morgan or the many other McDieters who have criticized his film and found success losing weight by eating healthy foods off the McDonald's menu, said his agent, David Magdael.
One person went so far as to make her own independent film about dieting at McDonald's. "Me and Mickey D" follows Soso Whaley, of Kensington, N.H., as she spends three 30-day periods on the diet. She dropped from 175 to 139 pounds, eating 2,000 calories-a-day at McDonald's.
"I had to think about what I was eating," Whaley said. "I couldn't just walk in there and say 'I'll take a cinnamon bun and a Diet Coke.' ... I know a lot of people are really turned off by the whole thought of monitoring what they are eating, but that's part of the problem."
As might be expected, McDonald's also objected to the impressions left by Spurlock's film. Walt Riker, the company's vice president of corporate communications, said Oak Brook, Ill.-based company is pleased — but not surprised — that some customers have lost weight eating only at the fast-food giant.
Spurlock's film "really spurred a backlash based on common sense," Riker said.
Morgan used nutritional information downloaded from McDonald's Web site to create meal plans of no more than 1,400 calories a day. She only ate french fries twice, usually choosing burgers and salads. Those choices are a stark contrast with those made by Spurlock, who ate every menu item at least once.
At the end of the 90 days, she had dropped from 227 to 190 pounds.
"It feels great," she said. "Because, the truth of the matter is that beauty is power, and if you're fat, or your overweight, then people don't really take you seriously."
Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, agreed that a low-calorie, McDonald's-only diet can help people lose weight but said it may not offer enough long-term variety. Whatever an individual does to lose weight, they need to do for the rest of their life, she said.
Morgan said she hasn't decided if she will stick with the McDonald's-only plan to reach her goal of 150 pounds. But she does have one complaint about McDonald's.
"If I could suggest anything to McDonald's, I would suggest the McMargarita," Morgan said. "Dine-in only, of course."
It's about time someone finally injected some common sense into the equation.
Wasn't part of the idea of "Supersize Me" to try every single item on the menu, several times over? He had to balance things out that way, to try to prove that one shouldn't live off of ALL of McDonald's foods, all the time. What would be the point in proving that they, overall, sell unhealthy food, if one only ate the healthy paltters? McDonalds definitely sells more greasy, fattening platters than low-calorie platters. Mmm... just thinking about it makes me want to go pick up a McChicken with extra mayo. Fuckin' delicious.
Not that this negates the idea that people who eat McDonalds should be responsible for themselves. I agree with that 100%. The beauty of capitalism is... get this... you have the choice to go somewhere else to eat healthy foods! The gubberment is not your mommy and daddy, who you need to rely on to make decisions for you. Take control of your own god damn life. If your have a poor diet that's deteriorating your health, re-evaluate it. It's not difficult. There are libraries and le intraweb to help you out if you happen to be ignorant on what healthy food is. I have more sympathy for people who happen to live in poverty or are homeless and pretty much have to rely on cheap, fast-food joints.
It should be common sense that food so greasy (not to mention fast food in general) will make you fat, clog up your arteries, etc. Don't their doctors let them in on this? Were these people never taught this idea as kids? Even if they weren't, don't McDonalds nowadays have the information posted on the wall? I have no respect for people trying to victimize themselves for illegitimate reasons for a shortcut to big bucks, not to mention the scum-bag, bastardly lawyers responsible for taking on these cases and deteriorating our culture and social psyche. I don't believe in hell, or even karma, but god damn... I wish I did. Then, these things wouldn't make me half as angry as they do.
It's about calories... this is 2,000 versus 5,000. Hmm, I wonder why the results were different...
Because one person was being responsible about their menu choices, and one person was doing something that very few people actually do in an effort to blame McDonalds for something that is the diners' fault?
I think it speaks volumes.
If you cram five, large, greasy hamburgers down your throat every day and get fat, who's fault is it really?
It's the universe's for functioning in such a manner as to allow that to occur!
Yes, McDonald's food isn't the most healthy in the world, but that's not by too huge a margin. The reality is the food we cram down our gullets today is some of the healthiest stuff we've ever had in the history of humanity. Processing is a PART of making things healthier.
That said, McDonald's isn't a prime example of that, but it is certainly healthier than what we may have eaten back in 2000 BCE.
That doesn't make it tasty though...
And that doesn't mean that the more we eat, the healthier we get. A lot of people go on insane diets with the idea that if eating low fat food makes you healthier, eating a LOT of low fat food must be even better! Nope, the thing about eating low fat food is that you are eating it INSTEAD of high fat food, and if you eat a whole lot because it's better for you in your current state, well you just managed to get your fat intake back up. CONSERVATION OF MATTER/ENERGY PEOPLE!
Part of it is that people need to be taught some basic science, and more than that, a basic skeptical attitude.
I remember Supersize Me. The man did something insane just to prove a point, except for two problems. First of all, the logic wasn't solid enough to form evidence. Second of all, and this is something a lot of people don't realize, science isn't about "proof". Science can't offer that. Math and logic offer proofs. Science offers observations and explanations that accuratly explain and predict said observations. Evidence is merely that which corroborates said explanations using observations, but ALL explanations are subject to revision if later evidence comes up. So, there are no absolute proven facts in science, just the most plausible explanations given current observations.
That said, one scene in particular really annoyed me in that thing. Namely, when he showed that McDonald's fries don't decay for very long periods of time. He was very misleading. All that experiment showed was that the fries don't decay after long periods of time. However, he decided to use the unscientific term of "natural" (which is a spiritual thing more than anything, a very arbitrary term that a scientist has no real business using) in a deceptive way. He was all "doesn't that frighten you? Look how the natural process of breaking down happens in all this but the natural process doesn't happen here? I'm not a doctor, but that says something there...". He managed to not tell a blatant lie, but deceptive and misleading statements aren't really any better. He is banking on the fact that the people may not be equipped with the right mental tools to figure out the problems in what he's saying. Not that they are stupid mind you, it's just that a lot of people aren't taught basic logic in schools.
What are the problems? Well, why should that frighten me? Is the lack of the ability to break down via decay (which occurs because bacteria and other things are eating up the various food items he was using, not because the materials themselves are molecularly unstable) something that should incidate that it is unhealthy? There is no evidence to support that. I would submit evidence to the contrary! Water and salt do not decay over that same period of time. Indeed, lots of food is packaged in such a way, or has been injected with nontoxic preservatives in such a way, as to prevent them from breaking down for a long period of time. This may be the case with these fries. There is no reason to assume the fries are unhealthy simply because they take a long time to break down. Indeed, all that says is they remain viable as food for longer periods of time. They won't taste any good at all after waiting that long (well McD's fries aren't too good to start with), but you may be able to eat them after that period of time without worrying about getting ill.
That experiment yielded some interesting data, but he was not equipped to interpret it correctly. At least he admits that much, though if he knows that he should have just kept his mouth shut.
In the end, I do not recommend a McDonald's diet of food, but if you do eat it, you can sustain yourself on it if you use restraint and you will live a much healthier life than anyone did a few thousand years ago.