Realizing that sex has made its way into about half of this week's entries, I decided to focus on a different deadly sin: Gluttony. Hei Lun at Begging to Differ has some surprising insights regarding Morgan Spurlock's performance-oriented documentary, Super Size Me. Hei Lun contrasts Spurlock's results—he got real fat—with another documentarian (Soso Whaley) who repeated the experiment—she got slightly gassy—and recognizes a difference:
Whaley is eating about 2,000 calories a day. Spurlock ate 5,000.Pretty significant detail, don't you think? Inspired by Hei Lun's investigation, I decided to outline my own prospective regimen for one day spent filming a bullshit documentary and then count the calories after the fact—to see which number better reflects a McDiet. By my account, Hei Lun's wrong—Spurlock isn't far off the mark.
For what it's worth, I'm 6'2", 1?5 lbs., and devastatingly handsome. I sketched out these meals before looking at this WaPo table to find the calorie counts. I'd call these pretty filling meals, and though taken altogether the day sounds more than gluttonous, none of the meals taken independently seems unreasonable for a person who isn't watching his weight:
| McItem | Calories | Fat Grams |
|---|---|---|
| Sausage/Egg Biscuit | 490 | 33 |
| Sausage/Egg Biscuit | 490 | 33 |
| Hashbrown | 130 | 8 |
| OJ | 80 | 0 |
| Coffee | NA | NA |
| TOTAL | 1190 | 74 |
| McItem | Calories | Fat Grams |
|---|---|---|
| 6-piece Chicken McNuggets | 290 | 17 |
| BBQ Sauce | 45 | 0 |
| Garden Salad | 100 | 6 |
| Honey-Mustard Dressing | 160 | 11 |
| Medium Coke | 210 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 805 | 34 |
| McItem | Calories | Fat Grams |
|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | 590 | 34 |
| Cheeseburger | 330 | 14 |
| Massive Fries | 610 | 29 |
| Massive Coke | 410 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 1940 | 77 |
| I'm fat now! | Calories | Fat Grams |
|---|---|---|
| TOTAL | 3935 | 145 |
Now of course I could tone down these substantial meals, but the point stands that a more or less unexceptional McDonald's order can easily eclipse 2,000 calories. Even the lunch here—smaller than the other meals because I frankly never eat more than an apple for lunch—repeated thrice daily wouldn't be good for you. It would be quite an exercise in restraint to curb your McDiet to under 2,000 calories per day—an effort that I imagine most of the billions served did not go to McDonald's to make. Lun's point still stands that Spurlock's documentary is a crappy scientific effort, but it takes some stretch of the imagination to argue that the McDonald's menu stands to do you any good.
And everyone knows Burger King is far superior in the first place.
Posted by Kriston at April 30, 2004 2:20 PMJust to note that I did no investigation whatsoever; the 2,000/5,000 calories numbers came from one of my links.
And can you refer to me as "Hei Lun"? Thanks.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at April 30, 2004 3:33 PMSorry, changes are in now.
Posted by: Kriston at April 30, 2004 4:04 PMTaking a Diet Coke instead of a Coke will immediately trim off about 600 calories. My limited experience in fast food service tells me that it's not at all unusual (and probably more usual than not) for people to pair their large sandwich and fries with a large Diet Coke.
Posted by: BTD Greg at April 30, 2004 4:57 PMIt's not all about the calories. It's the ingredients. A high calorie piece of fruit would do you better than a low calorie piece of ham, and a trans-fat french fry throws the whole calories issue out the window. Calories didn't turn spurlock's liver into pate.
Posted by: David at April 30, 2004 10:07 PMI was driving from New Orleans to New York some ten years back when my trusty Ford (Found On Road Dead or Fix Or Repair Daily) broke down outside of Bristol, TN. It took them three days to fix it. During that period, the only thing to eat was McDonald's. That was it. Three days of Mc Rib sandwiches and other delights. This was before they started to offer salads. I have not been able to stomach Mc Donald's since. Just thinking about it now makes me shudder. I have no idea how Spurlock managed to force himself to do it for a month.
Posted by: Random Penseur at May 3, 2004 1:53 PMFrom a 5/5 Salon interview with Morgan Spurlock:
Salon: You've probably heard about Soso Whaley, who, for the month of April, also ate nothing but McDonald's, and lost weight.
MS: Well, you know, she's limiting the amount of calories she eats in a day, and she's exercising more: the two things no American does. So, yeah, if every American ate less and exercised more, we wouldn't have an obesity problem. But the fact is we don't. We overconsume and we don't exercise. I think she's kind of missed the point of what the film is about. She's looking at the movie as an attack on McDonald's.
The other thing you should be aware of is that she is a fellow at a lobby group based in Washington, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is a lobby group funded by the food companies and by cigarette companies and, god who knows who else. You have to question their motives.
In 1996, the government was continuing to put through more anti-smoking legislation, and somebody from the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote a report talking about how awful this legislation was. In this report, they said, "There are some things more important than health." My question is -- what is that? What's more important than the health of your kids? What's more important than your own health?
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