![[Hwan]](images/journal/hh_sthuberts.jpg) Saturday night Angela convinced me to watch Super Size Me (imdb.com, here's the rottentomatoes.com link), which we saw at Bayview Village, one of the nicest theaters around. You've probably heard about the film -- the famous bit is that the dude (Morgan Spurlock) tries a 30 day McDonalds diet. He vows to eat everything on the menu and must order the "Super Size" version of his meal if asked. He starts off as a very fit, buff individual, weighing 185 lbs (he's over 6 ft tall). By the end, he's gained 25 pounds and the deterioration of his health manages to shock his 3 doctors and the fitness team who were keeping tabs on his progress into Flabnation. The film has been compared with the in-your-face "journalistic" stylings of Michael Moore, but if you see their respective works you'll note some pretty obvious differences. Morgan Spurlock does not have a political agenda -- the film is more about awareness than rebellion. And the side story of his 30 day McDee diet is personal, even self-deprecating. As such, there's a much stronger sense of honesty.. of earnest curiosity. Super Size Me is hilarious, frank, disturbing, entertaining, informative. True, it has its share of innumeracy, but not in such a forced way as is often prevalent in Moore's rantpieces. Rather Spurlock presents you with the facts and allows you to draw your own conclusions. And the conclusions that I walked away with? Hmmm... well, I've always said that advertising is the art of skillful lying, the art of subtle thought control, of indoctrination. Also, we are confronted with the greatest variety of food ever available. Unfortunately, advertising would have you believe that only the mass-produced kind is worth consuming. Which tends to be of the lowest quality, of the lowest nutritional content (yet the most expensively packaged, the most wasteful on manufactured resources). Because for some reason nutrition is too expensive, too inconvenient, too low a margin, according to the businesses that would feed us corn-syrup sawdust whilst taking our coppers. But what was most upsetting to see was the decline of health and physical education in schools -- I fear for the coming generation and their lard-laden bellies.
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