Super size me

The other day i put on the dvd "Supersize me" for a relaxing afternoon, i had thought.

The movie revolves around an experiment done by the film maker concerning fast food and focused on "Macdonald's".

This was before the time of salat menu and healthy alternatives.

The film maker had decided to eat for 30 days only Macdonald's food, and limit his exercise so that he will resemble the statistics making Americans the fattest in the world.

The film maker had undergone a medical exam and thorough blood tests , cholosterol level  etc. to make sure he could withstand the experiment and also teach about the potential damage as a result of eating  fast food ..this is after the court had rejected two teenage girls claim that Macdonald's caused them obesity and thus health problems.

The film shows how the man in the center gains weight gradually and finally the results are that eating fast food influences one's mood swings, causes depression and a lowered  or nonexistant sexual drive.

I would have liked to see such an experiment done on a number of people thus making it a valid scientific experiment however what facinated me were the following:

The extent of Macdonald's influence:

Children in the first grade were shown photos of George Washington, Jesus, and Ronald Macdonald.

Guess who they recognized and who they did not ?

Ronald was the  number one character the kids recognized !

My daughter , who is 10 and has a photo next to Ronald Macdonald when she was 3 years old, said all of the sudden in clear outrage : " they don't know who Jesus is but know who Ronald Macdonald is!"( since my daughter attends Jewish school all her life i found her wide cultural knowledge amusing , could it have been the visitis to the museum ? For sure and that trip to Italy where i thought a visit to the cathedral was a must, may the Rabbi forgive me..)

Advertisment costs:

Macdonald's , and soft drinks company spend around a billion dollars on advertisement making sure those children know exactly who Ronald Macdonald is..just to compare the compaign to encourage eating more fruit and vegetables has a budget of a  mere 2 million!

So Macdonald is trying to hold sports events and such but the film maker does not forgive , he gained quite a few pounds in 30 days of eating fast food and it took him almost a year to go back to his old self..and ofcourse there is the riskof heart attacks greatly increased.

An important section of the film is devoted to school lunches.

I was shocked to see what children in America eat for lunch..i remember the twinkies well ..

I know that my daughter's school does not give cakes for deserts and keeps fried foods to a minimum as well as no sodas.

Amazing was the school that fed the pupils with behavior problems good healthy food, lots of vegies and no soft drinks and no sugar and got wonderful cooperative pupils! Bravo! 

I could not help telling my daughter on our walk after watching the film, you know there are also people that have problems eating and they are much too thin,

Like M. she immediately mentioned a woman we know..

Could be, i said, that is dangerous too , perhaps more even.

She then mentioned a girl in her class that eats only a noodle sometimes..

I told her that is also not good, we must eat to be healthy and if we eat everything we need, lots of fruit and vegetables we don't need to worry about our weight as long as we exercise as we do .

Shellbee the dog is a good exemple, she eats a lot but exercises , she even eats carrots sometimes-

My own mother was always on diets, eating and feeling guilty.

I do not keep scales at home , i stopped looking at how much i weigh after having the children, i try to eat healthy and buy fruit and vegetables, the latter being a challenge..

It is hard to combine vegetables regularily, we seem to forget them, getting the rabbits was supposed to solve that, lots of salats to be shared with them..

So eat right and be healthy but i will not skip my visits to Macdonald's completely ..recently travelling to the French part of Switzerland that was the only place i knew that i would not be ordering frogs and snails by mistake ..we got nice salats at a reasonable price even though the woman behind the counter did not speak English, somehow it felt familiar.

When my children were small and the weather here did not allow to go anywhere and they needed to jump around, Macdonald provided a nice jumping playing area for the kids while i sipped a milk shake and got to read the paper on Sunday so i would like to speak some good words on behalf of Ronald d Macdonald.

Lets also remember that Macdonald's is smoke free,very rare in Europe where i coughed the clouds of smoke and you can bring dogs! 

One thing is true though that here in Europe i have not seen super size, anyway i never order meat there so i would not know..

We all deserve a break , don't you think?

But the DVD certainly was food for thought and as i had noticed Macdonald seems a haven place for divorced fathers..can't wait to wait till papa tries to take the kids to Macdonald this sunday after the children had learned a bit about the beef..