Super Size my Happiness

Diana.

Last night I watched the documentary Super Size Me for the second time since high school. I thought this would be great to blog about, especially since it has so much to do with pleasure and desire. And in an ironic way, from the pleasure of fast food comes much displeasure.

Super Size Me is a documentary written and directed by Morgan Spurlock, an NYU graduate and American documentary filmmaker, producer, screenwriter and journalist. This documentary is Spurlock’s best known piece. We follow Spurlock in his social experiment as he eats nothing but McDonald’s food for a 28 day period. We also see how this high fat diet affects his well being. By the end of the month his liver turns to fat and it takes him 14 months to lose the 25 pounds that he gained.

This documentary touched on not just the ridiculous amount of fat that is in fast food, but it highlighted the American craving for it as well as vicious marketing towards children. It was astonishing to see how large the portions grew over time at fast food restraints. A super sized meal (which is now done away with thanks to this documentary) at McDonalds is 1520 calories. This is the fries, coke and cheeseburger all super size portions. It is madness that there is a meal that people can eat for lunch that is already more than half of a normal person’s diet.

This shows for our culture that has become very extreme in the things we do. Even our food is outrageous and overly gluttonous. For ten cents more, we can order a big plate of diabetes or hypertension. What’s crazy is our craving for the fast food. The advertisements of fast food is constantly put in our faces on all kinds of labels, t-shirts, kid’s toys, night time commercials to get us hungry, and sponsors for sport events. We all know it’s become an average thing to see advertisements on just about everything. This keeps the thought of food in our head, tells us we are hungry and we want that double cheeseburger and McFlurry.

To me the saddest and most confusing part is the irony of it all. We live in a society where fast food and advertisements bombard us constantly. Yet, we are also bombarded with the images of extremely thin models in high fashion magazines and billboards. A teenage girl spoke in the documentary about how hard it is to be happy with her body when she feels the pressure while looking at the models that surround her in magazines. Either way you turn, a person can’t really win in this situation. People love eating fast, fried food that is obvious, but there is an extreme pressure to look a certain way in our society. Both sides are pulling people toward an unhealthy life.  There is not much pleasure in this at all; it seems that there is mostly dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

 

However it is all up to the individual on how mentally/physically healthy they lead their life. We all eat fast food once in a while; I am a little embarrassed to admit that I was starting to crave a Big Mac as I watched Spurlock eat his! We are in charge of our own lives and well being. Our society is spinning out of control but we don’t need to fall into it by sacrificing our health.