a dog-eared town

Remember that piece o crap movie Super Size Me? I know, not many do and it’s a cross that I can barely bear. Anyway, there was an interesting story in the UK’s Guardian Newspaper.

To be honest, I was shocked to see it there. They’re so left of the NY Times it’s not even funny. I guess someone there must have been off their meds or just was honest because it turns out the premise for the “movie”, when subjected to real science, didn’t happen.

Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary Super Size Me, in which the American film-maker ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a month. Lots of people are disgusted to see what happens to the 33-year-old’s body as he accepts Super Size shake after Super Size shake and limits himself to 5,000 steps a day and are shocked as his liver becomes toxic, his cholesterol skyrockets and his libido sags.

And when a real scientist decides to try and replicate what was seen in the movie, what was found with the human guinea pigs?

The students managed to gain between 5-15% extra weight over the month. They felt “tired and bloated”, especially during the first week, but there seemed to be no signs of the mood swings towards the end that the rather despondent Spurlock reported.

Final results from the questionnaires will be released at the end of the study. But judging from the provisional results, no one suffered anything like as much as Spurlock. One of the most shocking scenes in the film is when his three doctors urge him to abandon his experiment after getting the results of blood tests which show that his liver is so badly damaged it looks as though it is the result of heavy drinking - “You’re pickling your liver!”. While Nyström and his team also noted “significant” changes in the liver, relating to the liver enzyme levels in the blood, and the content of fat in the liver, the changes were “never even close to dangerous”.

You mean, he may have exaggerated for his movie?

No. Surely you must be wrong!

Nyström is puzzled about why Spurlock had such an extreme reaction, musing that he could perhaps have had an undiagnosed problem with his liver or, he says, “Maybe his hardcore vegetarian girlfriend held him to a low-energy diet, making him incapable of coping with this kind of food.”

You mean doctor, it was his fault? Come on, don’t you know he was oppressed by the giant McDonald’s Corporation? It could never be his own fault, dammit.

Interestingly, in the Swedish experiment, while the liver readings got steadily worse until the third week, they then took a turn for the better. The liver, it would seem, adapts. Cholesterol, meanwhile, was hardly affected.

Bascially in a controlled scientific environment we find out that that rediculous piece of crap pretending to be a “documentary” was pretty much the opposite of what one finds in a scientific study. Good thing we’re basing our public policy on movies like this. I mean, I’d hate to think we have people like Nanny Bloomberg telling us what we can and can’t eat.