"Supersize Me" Redux

By Elizabeth Szlek, LMHC

For The Rome Observer, November 15, 2010

Last night I had a chance to rewatch the movie “Supersize Me”, which came out in 2004. Since the time I first saw it, I have moved to a different understanding of nutrition, largely because I have had to do my own research and find out what is really going on. The fact is, just as with the drug industry, the food industry, or Big Food, as we might call it, is working “in cahoots” with the agencies that regulate and speak with authority on our food supply. And, just as with Big Pharma, a lot of downright lies are being passed on to us at every turn.

But first, the movie’s creator, Morgan Spurlock, as you recall, subjected himself to one full month of All McDonald’s meals. That would equal ninety doses of fast food, or, as one nutritionist put it, eight years worth of fast food, if eaten at a safe rate.

What happened to Mr. Spurlock on this diet? He developed high blood pressure, high triglycerides and cholesterol levels, began on the pathway to gout, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, liver failure, sexual impotency, and other conditions which, thankfully, reversed themselves within a year or so. Part of his rationale for making the film was that two young women had sued McDonald’s as being responsible for their weight gains of seventy to one hundred pounds. When the movie ended, and Spurlock was found on the brink of systemic collapse, it was noted that the women’s case was being reconsidered, after initially being thrown out.

Some Hasty Conclusions

As Spurlock grew fatter and fatter (he gained about 25 lbs.!), he also suffered from other kinds of symptoms, such as mental health issues, including depression. This was particularly interesting to me, since I am now becoming more and more involved in separating nutritional depression from other kinds. My inbox for e-mail is loaded with all kinds of notices about teens and depression, and the rise of depression in general in the modern world. I don’t think anyone could argue that our lives are far more comfortable now that they have ever been in the history of the world.

Really, there are some people in America you could call “poor”, but when you compare our citizens to say, the Haitians, who are living miserable lives of deprivation, the word “poor” is a relative term. Those with shelter, enough food and clothing, television sets and cell phones and other modern accoutrements can hardly be compared to those subsisting on fifty cents a day in Third World Countries. And yet, with all the wealth we enjoy, suicide rates just keep climbing. I realize that material things do not bring happiness, but even if they promote just material comfort and not spiritual ease, why should our people be killing themselves? Of course, I look to their spiritual lives, which are wanting, but first, I like to look at their diets.

Let’s face it: The typical American diet is just horrible! Add to the regular lousy American diet such items as fast food, and you indeed have a recipe for suicide. It is true that the regular American diet produces malnourishment. Don’t confuse malnourishment with hunger or starvation. Well, it is a sort of starvation: The body is starved for proper nutrition. The most easily detected elements, vitamins are present in such minute quantities that we can just write them off. In addition, good fats and enzymes are also sorely lacking. The brain does not function when it is malnourished. Hence, such “symptoms” as suicide. Believe me, all the “counseling” in the world will not help a depression that is based in poor nutrition. Can we assume that many of those drawn into suicide got there because of their terrible diets? I sure think so!

Some Erroneous Conclusions
As Spurlock went from doctor to nutritionist to doctor, they all became more and more concerned for his fate. And, when the final numbers came in, they all made their pronouncements: “See, a diet in too much fat can kill you!” Well, yes and no.

A diet with too much of the WRONG fat certainly can and does kill you! But no one was making this distinction. Fat was just bad for you, according to all of them, and a low-fat diet would cure all that ails you. Except, it doesn’t.

No one picked up, in the film, on the rise in phosphorus levels in Spurlock’s blood, except to say that he would soon develop gout. But what was the source of all this phosphorus? Of course, it was in the Supersized sodas that he drank several times a day.

I have previously written about the problem of soft drinks and gout. The doctors all seemed to look at Spurlock’s diets in a monolithic way. One interesting fact: There was one man featured who ate three Big Macs a day, and he had already consumed over 19,000 of them. Funny thing was, he wasn’t even fat! But, he ate no French fries, and soda was not mentioned either. He just ate Big Macs. Big Macs, which do nonetheless contain sugar, are low in the kinds of fats French fries swim in: Hydrogenated oils. So, this man was relatively untouched by his bizarre diet. Meat and cheese were not killing him. Hydrogenated oils and sugar were killing Spurlock, and all the others who consume them in large quantities. Yet, the doctors inveighed against “saturated fats” as if they were directly implicated in Spurlock’s tremendous weight gain.

Also quite weird was Spurlock’s girlfriend, a vegan chef, claiming that now that he was off the McDonald’s diet, he needed to eat “nutrient dense” foods to cleanse his system. My question to her: What vegan foods are nutrient dense? Vegetables and fruits do have many beneficial nutrients, but the only real nutrient dense foods are of animal origin. Foods like eggs, raw milk products, organ meats, fish and shellfish, saturated fats and fish liver oil are the most nutrient dense foods we know. A little postscript added that after Mr. Spurlock “cleansed his body” of all the fast food junk, he reverted to being a meat eater, and left the tofu behind. Good for him!

It bothers me when I read, as last week, that in San Francisco they want to ban the use of whole milk in the Happy Meals kids get there, or something like that. Children should not be consuming low fat anything, because their growing bodies need fat to create new cells. Low fat milk has added powdered milk, a dangerous product, since it is highly processed. Children who consume it have much higher rates of asthma than children who consume whole milk. Do the research!

Overeating is one of the main problems when dealing with fast food. Huge portions and the use of high fructose corn syrup conspire to create big, obese, fast-food addicted customers. Stay away from fast food, but learn to eat foods that are actually life-giving, even if “they” say they are not good for you!



Elizabeth Szlek is the Director of The Door Counseling Center of Utica, NY, and is a trained chef and Health and Wellness Counselor. Questions and comments can be directed to her at (315) 786-8900 or at info@thedoorcounseling.com.