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How bad is McDonald's?
Not as bad as some people say:
A Swedish researcher put 18 volunteers on the same diet that filmmaker Morgan Spurlock went on while filming "Super Size Me."
While one volunteer gained 15 percent body weight after following the high-choleric diet for a month, several others experienced only minimal weight gain. [He] was thus forced to conclude that "some people are just more susceptible to obesity than others."
Also: The 12 men and six women were banned from exercising.
While all gained weight, none reported mood swings or liver damage like Spurlock did in the movie.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 30, 2007 at 06:35 AM in Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
The comments at the linked post highlight the problems with such a conclusion. Go ahead and read them.
Posted by: A Tykhyy at Jan 30, 2007 7:31:50 AM
high-choleric diet
This is an ideal name for "reading too many political blogs."
Posted by: Kieran at Jan 30, 2007 7:47:52 AM
I railed against this film and what it supposedly proved when I had to watch it in a nutrition course. For one thing, any drastic change in diet--even when someone goes strict vegetarian--will result in physical changes that may make one feel dizzy, upset, etc.
Secondly, no one lives on MacDonalds for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day. You eat just apples all day for a month and see how you feel, and how traumatized your system is by the onslaught.
Posted by: susan at Jan 30, 2007 8:13:41 AM
The film was pure entertainment. If people took it as some sort of scientific work then they are fools.
Posted by: Stuart at Jan 30, 2007 8:32:52 AM
It seems like McD's get the short end of the stick here; I want to see how much weight you put on eating at the local Chinese joint 3 meals a day and not exercising (or even better, at the French Laundry or some 3 Michelin star restaurant in Burgundy!). I'd bet the results would be even more drastic!
Posted by: cure at Jan 30, 2007 9:10:17 AM
The comment at the linked post by "hunter" was, well, interesting.
Posted by: Peter at Jan 30, 2007 9:19:47 AM
It's also important to note that he ate over 5,000 calories a day. His maintanence level was likely between 2,000 and 3,000 (and without exercise I seriously doubt it
was 3,000). A recipe for nutritional disaster for most people.
Posted by: MDM at Jan 30, 2007 9:21:43 AM
Did anybody see the much less-hyped film made by a woman who ate all
meals at McD's for a month, but she kept to between 2K and 3K calories
per day, and she exercised? I don't remember the name of it, but she
didn't gain any weight and didn't have any adverse health effects. She
had her share of Big Macs and fries, but also ordered salads and the like.
Posted by: Mike at Jan 30, 2007 9:36:37 AM
Me & Mickey D
http://www.cei.org/dyn/pubs_by_author.cfm/pubs_by_author.cfm?expert=245
She isn't quite as charismatic as Spurlock.
Posted by: Dave K at Jan 30, 2007 10:03:44 AM
The big problem I have with McDonald's is just that the food tastes BAD.
Spurlock's stunt did obscure some of the more interesting points in his film, incidentally. I was pre-disposed to be sympathetic to the idea that McDonald's would ruin your health just because it tastes so bad, but then when I saw the other lifestyle changes he made, my researcher side said: Whoa! Confound!
But I think that there's some valuable commentary in the movie about the nutrition that Americans get from their food, particularly in institutional settings. But if you take out the stunt, nobody would watch THAT movie.
Posted by: don Hosek at Jan 30, 2007 10:20:30 AM
"It's also important to note that he ate over 5,000 calories a day."
That's almost nine Big Macs per day. Is that a realistic estimate of the average person's (or even the average man's) appetite -- even in the absence of any concern about weight gain?
Posted by: ben tillman at Jan 30, 2007 10:58:03 AM
Question: Where were the McDonald's located?
Although I have not done scientific research, I have eaten at McDonald's amany times in the United States and many times in Europe. It is not the same food. It seems as though the European McDonald's' (what is the proper punctuation here for a plural of a noun that is properly written as a possessive?) food tastes better (it also seems to be more expensive).
The location of the McDonalds may have skewed the results.
Posted by: Allan at Jan 30, 2007 10:59:48 AM
I think even "Super Size Me" pointed out the fat grams difference between fries obtained in NYC by Morgan Spurlock and fries offered on Northern European McDonald's menus. The cooking methods and choices of oil used for fried foods accounts for the that. As a result, the taste (as mentioned by Allan) is vastly different.
Although no supporter of McDonald's, I'm with Susan when she points out that Spurlock's previous vegetarian diet may have accounted for some of the difficulties he experienced on his "30 days" diet.
Posted by: Dray at Jan 30, 2007 11:30:42 AM
Was I the only one that noticed that the film was about the fast food/McDonald's industry in general and the McDonald's eating was just a narrative structure so it didn't feel like you were sitting in a class? The dude was straight up with how much he was eating at every meal. Hell, he ate it right in front of you sometimes... yeah, two huge burgers, large fry, milkshake, 500oz coca cola, yeah we get it, it's not representative of the average person who eats at mcdonalds. His point WASNT that if you eat lots of mcdonalds every day without exercising you'll get fat; that point is clear and obvious. His point was that he had a lot to say about the marketing and produce development of fast food in America based on reasonable investigative journalism. Funny how douchebag wannabe scientists don't necessarily argue with THAT portion of his film, but somehow feel obligated to defend McDonalds. McDonalds has enough cash to defend themselves.
Posted by: Garrett at Jan 30, 2007 11:41:51 AM
If you get the large soda that's 410 calories (if you don't refill it), super size fries, add another 600 calories to each meal. The large shake is 1150 calories. The 500 calorie big mac burger is relativly light compared to those "sides".
Posted by: nelsonal at Jan 30, 2007 12:09:36 PM
Garrett:
That's because that point was too tendentious and foolish to even bother with.
Do we really expect, or, frankly, even want, and advertiser to go out of his way to highlight the negative aspects of his product? That's just not their role in society.
Posted by: Scott Wood at Jan 30, 2007 12:09:49 PM
I recommend looking at the current New Scientist cover article on the recent experiment. Sadly, it's only available on-line with subscription, but it's much more detailed than the Wired article, and is very interesting. The main point though is not how bad or not bad McDonalds is, but rather how varied the responses are of different people to essentially the same high calorie high fat diet.
Posted by: michael vassar at Jan 30, 2007 12:59:39 PM
just 2 points: 1) Swedish people do exercise a lot and that may influence the result.
2) i second the guy with different portion sizes - the portions you get in Japan are smaller than what you get in Europe, for example.
Posted by: a at Jan 30, 2007 1:31:20 PM
From the Metro story (pointed to by the Wired link), the research subjects were "twenty-somethings." Since this was a university, I'd venture a guess that they are university students and thus are in their EARLY 20's.
According to IMDB, Morgan Spurlock was born in 1970 and Super-Size Me was released in 2004. Assuming the film didn't take over 2 years to produce, he was at least 32 years old at that time -- i.e. he was about 10 years older than the test subjects.
I don't know about you, but I have noticed some pretty significant differences in the way my body processed food in my early 20's and my early 30's.
Posted by: steve rodrigues at Jan 30, 2007 3:53:21 PM
When Consumer Reports used to test food for nutritional value, they would put rats on an exclusive diet of it and see how long they lasted. Even in their extreme 1970s Naderite mode, they acknowledged that the rats lived a lot longer eating McDonalds than they did with a lot of other food that might seem "healthy." Peanut butter also did pretty well, if I recall.
BTW, a quarter-pounder meal for dinner often causes me to lose a little bit of weight; people underestimate the portion sizes they consume in non-McDonald's contexts.
Posted by: srp at Jan 30, 2007 9:00:10 PM
I can guarantee you that if you ate even every night at a top French restaurant you would, barring considerable exercise, put on weight. Partly because they try and froce you to buy entree main dessert combinations which add up to soooo much (yummmy) food.
I thought the film should have been pilloried from one coast to the other - imagine McDonalds making a similarly misleading film about Spurling (ie someone talks to Spurling trhee times a day for an hour each time and ceases all other social contact and by the end of the 30 days that person has mood swings, is depressed, suffers homicidal urges towards Spurling, etc).
Posted by: Patrick at Jan 30, 2007 9:56:02 PM
The real reason the educated hate McDonalds is because it's so LOW CLASS.
Posted by: Half Sigma at Jan 31, 2007 2:15:22 PM
"the portions you get in Japan are smaller than what you get in Europe, for example."
Unless you order a MegaMac:
http://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/sales/new/megamac/
Posted by: Rich Rostrom at Feb 3, 2007 2:02:11 AM
To all the people talking about "people are moderate" one of the few things of interest in the film was the information that the fast food outlets actually target and encourage "heavy users" and "super heavy users" (i forget what the precise definitions were, i thing SHU was eating 4+ times a week but I might be wrong). Now I entirely think it's your own responsibility to maintain moderation yourself, but human beings (very much including me) tend to fall into habits unless they really exert the willpower all the time to avoid it. The knowledge that a food outlet can think of me just as potential a SHU is one of the things that motivates me to ensure I don't become one.
Posted by: dave at Feb 5, 2007 3:36:52 AM
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