McDonald's Food For Thirty Days example essay topic

"Analysis of Super Size Me" Morgan Spurlock decided to make this documentary to investigate the fast food companies, and the effects of certain fast food chains products, particularly McDonalds, on the health of society. This Documentary explores the United States growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes as well. Morgan decides to eat nothing but McDonald's food for thirty days. He must eat one of everything on the menu at least once, and when asked to super size his meal he must do so.

Another stipulation of Morgan's experiment is that he can only take 5,000 steps a day to replicate the exercise that most average Americans get on a daily basis. He must also eat three meals a day, no exceptions and if McDonalds doesn't serve it Morgan can't eat it. To start, Morgan enlists three doctors to assist him through his thirty day documentary. A cardiologist, gastroenterologist, and a general practitioner all check him out at the beginning of the experiment and everything they check up looks "perfect".

The cardiologist says that he expects to see a change in Morgan's triglycerides, but he says that his liver will probably be able to metabolize the excess fat. The general practitioner says that Morgan will probably gain weight and that his cholesterol will probably go up as well. Morgan also hires a nutritionist and dietician named Bridgett Bennet who will help track his progress. During Morgan's 30 day McDonalds frenzy he experiences many side effects.

Morgan noticed that he became tired very easily and he always felt lethargic. He also experienced headaches which can probably be associated with all of the extra sugar he was taking in. Morgan constantly complained of a stomach ache during the experiment, throwing up once after a meal Super Sized Meal. Mentally, Morgan experienced irregular mood swings. Overall Morgan gained 24.5 Lbs. and his cholesterol rose 65 points from the thirty day binge.

The doctors told Morgan that he was ruining his liver and that he had doubled his risk for coronary heart disease which was proven with a weekly blood test. He was told that he might do permanent damage to his liver due to having to metabolize all of the excess fat in his new diet. Not to my surprise, McDonalds did not want to participate in this documentary whatsoever and did not ever give Morgan the interview that he sought after, even after over 15 telephone calls. In a sense that obesity is a growing epidemic I think that the documentary was fairly realistic, but who actually eats McDonalds three times a day? Morgan did say that 22% of all McDonald's consumers were known as super heavy users, which means that they eat McDonald's food 3 times a week or more. I think Morgan conveyed his negative opinions about the fast food chains, particularly McDonalds very well although there may have been some dramatization.

The people who are most affected by McDonalds marketing and pricing practices are definitely kids and / or lower budget people. The cheap food that supposedly fills you up for longer due to the long list of ingredients in it is easy for lower income families to provide. The extent to which McDonalds is marketed to children can be seen in the installation of playgrounds, birthday party hosting, toys with kid's meals, Ronald McDonald the clown, and many other sly advertising techniques such as a cartoon on TV. All of these marketing techniques lure kids in at an early age.

Uneducated people are more likely to eat at McDonalds at a larger scale because many times they are not informed of the effects of eating the unhealthy foods. McDonalds makes it very difficult to access the health information about their products by not posting them in the restaurant, and unfortunately many people could really care less what is in the food they are eating or what it even means. I believe that the government at some point will have to regulate certain practices in the fast food industry in order to keep the public from eating so unhealthy. I don't believe that the government can or would even try to convince the American public to not eat fast food, in part due to the fast food industries legal leverage and multi-million dollar lobbyists.

McDonalds could be forced to sacrifice some of its profit margin in order to put money into the production of healthier foods, but as Morgan says in the film McDonalds is a business whose loyalty resides with shareholders not the general public.