Can you imagine Maria Headly ("The Year of Yes") and Nicky going out together for a night on the town?

I'd hit it.

I call bullshit. How many people can just start out drinking that many units or what ever they call it and not get deathly sick unless they already have a high tolerance? And what age is she in that second picture?

Geez, that's a rough looking 39. I would have pegged her more 49. Was she pickled?

She was monitored by medical professionals. I cut that out of the exerpt because, well, I can't copy everything from the story.

3 kg is roughly 6.5 lbs. I'm not impressed. She obviously wasn't eating anything. I'd have slapped on 20 lbs on a month-long bender. Amateur.

Whoa, whoa, whoa there just a minute cowboy.

Did you say she STARTED OUT with body fat of 37.4%?

I would submit to you sir that its increase to 38.9% had little or no discernable effect.

She was a bovine going into this experiment and what she SHOULD have done was put 516 units of alcohol in the MEN.

Then, and ONLY THEN, was her body going to look any better.

6.5 lbs? Sheesh.

She must have done a lot of purging.

Man, life imitates parody. Some amateur comedians made a film parodying "Supersize Me", except the guy drank a bottle of Jameson every day for a month instead of McDonalds.

forget the fat... what about the skin?

Didn't see it, so I can't comment on the liberal condescension, but his Entertainment Weekly photos were pretty obnoxious.

I linked Lileks' story cause his writing ability make me look like Neanderthal Chuck (you'll have to scroll down, or read a pretty funny rip of James Wolcott on your way to Morgan).

FWIW, as a guy who has shed about 70 unneeded pounds over the last year and a half, I fall into that rare category of guys who pretty much already knew overdoing cheeseburgers and fries isn't really good for you.

Now if I could only put down the crack pipe.

17.2 units = 11.5 beers a day. Again, she had a high tolerance to alcohol to begin with. I don't know of any one binge drinks straight for a month. More like a weekend max. Probably one night at 11.5 drinks is enough to keep you in bed the next day.

What's their point with this experiment? Alcoholism is bad? Okay, I agree. But thier experiment leaves much to be desired.

And do we really need documentaries telling us that eating at McDonald's three or four times a day (always supersized) or drinking like fish five nights a week is unhealthful?

My problem with Supersize Me was the liberal condescension of it all. It wasn't made to actually alert people to the dangers of eating at McDonald's so much; it was made so liberal art-house movie-goers could chuckle in superiority at how the other half lives.

I diverge on this. While I can acknowledge a taint of condescension and understand the anti-authoritarian aversion of "common sense conservatives" to being unnecessarily preached to about junk food being bad for you, the documentary was remarkable in the sense that it quantified HOW bad the stuff is for you.

I mean, before seeing it I could definitely say that McDonald's is bad food. But would I think that eating it for a month sends liver toxicity off the charts, into dangerous territory typically seen in longtime alcoholics? No.

The skin? Well, I find it hard to believe she's only a few years older than me.

Really fair-skinned people tend to crack young anyway; but she looks 49 to me, not 39.

Either its a typo or she's been living la vida loca for much longer than one month.

I call BS on the 37% body fat. That's extreme heffer body fat levels.

And the picture on the right shows a girl with only one, you know, chin. There's no freakin' way that she was that fatty.

Unless her boobs are ginormous. In which case all is forgiven.

And I thought I recognized her...

Is this the same woman who wrote the "Year of Yes" in a previous post? hee hee

I mean, before seeing it I could definitely say that McDonald's is bad food. But would I think that eating it for a month sends liver toxicity off the charts, into dangerous territory typically seen in longtime alcoholics? No.

But Spurlock consumed something to the tune of 5000 calories per day, so this proves precisely nothing specific about McDonald's food. If I ate 5000 calories of good food (whatever that might be) per day for a month, without having a highly active lifestyle, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing too well either.

If I kept up my pace from the age of 22, I might look that worn down. But I submit, she must have been regularly passing out in the noon day sun to look that bad.

Really, I don't know what I'd have to do to make myself look that shitty before I hit 39. Live under a bridge? Pack myself in dessicant? Drink methanol? Marry O.J.? Have sex with Haitian hemophiliacs and take up meth? I would really have to really commit to some kind of self-desructive lifestyle. I don't think I'd have the energy.

Didn't Ruthie from Real World - Hawaii prove this same point a couple of years ago?

.

Permit me to defend the otherwise-disappointing Super Size Me in one respect: the exchange Spurlock had with his girlfriend regarding ham was f'ing priceless.

"You're addicted to ham."

"That's ridiculous. It's ham, not heroin. You never hear of anyone strung out on ham."

(Please note: contrary to popular belief, it *is* possible to be strung out on ham. In fact, I am on ham right now, Sam I am).

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Men start on the Ace O' Spades ™ lifestyle to make women look prettier, not the other way around.
So the AOS ™ lifestyle is an altruistic one.

Ilbis--

how did you do that TM thingee?

I thought alchohol was supposed to make women look better?

This is obvious shit, thought. Her bf went from 37.4 per cent to 38.9 per cent, she put on more than 3kg? That 1.5% change of BF would mean she weighs around 75Kg. Thats 165pounds, or trying a different, better method: she would have had to have weighed 122.7Kg, gaining 3 Kg to 125.7Kg, or about 277pounds. (37.4% of 122.7= 45.7kg of body fat)(38.9% of 125.7kg=48.7kg of bf) for a 3kg gain.

I drank like this woman did all the time. I can guarantee that I actually got better looking the more I had to drink.

Bill,

With all due respect, Spurlock proved that binge-eating at McDonald's was bad in the same way that this woman proved that binge-drinking was bad.

Yes, and...?

It really says very little about the occasional Big Mac, or the occasional drink.

The guy consumed a tremendous amount of calories and did no exercise whatsoever, deliberately. What would someone imagine would happen?

Yes, he graphically presented the answer.

But it's kind of like me making a documentary about the dangers of dropping a bowling ball on to my 'nards.

for a 3kg gain.

altneratively, half a stone, for the British types.

Dave in Texas™

ace, use ampersand trade ;

no spaces

& trade;
With no spaces between & and Trade.
Iblis™

Or for you PC people, hold down the ALT key and press 0153 (™)

(on the numeric keypad, that is)

Test &trade

Yes, and...?

It really says very little about the occasional Big Mac, or the occasional drink.

Occasional drink less than occasional Big Mac. Why do I say that?

The guy consumed a tremendous amount of calories and did no exercise whatsoever, deliberately. What would someone imagine would happen?

The concept that his changes in liver function, etc. were strictly related to excess calories and no exercise is incomplete. What was remarkable was the added physiological impact of the McDonald's itself. I'd state that this effect is probably significant if he ate McD's 3 nights a week for dinner, nevermind 3 meals per day.

For example - if I mimicked his diet with homecooked versions of chicken sandwiches, cheeseburgers, etc., the results would not be the same, as the make-up of the fast food is not bad simply as a function of its fat content and calories; it's badness is augmented by its massive sugar content (in everything from ketchup to buns), its scarily cheap cut, additives and preservatives. There is something chemically wrong with Mickey D's beyond a simple calories and fat equation, and Spurlock's blood tests helped illustrate this, I believe.

Some of these differences are documented here, I believe:

http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/books/schlosser.html

As a more general example - though people tend to simply think of bad food in terms of the calories, fat, etc., look at the example of trans-fat.

Trans-fat is a recently widely acknowledged bugaboo that was previously as common as table salt in your grocery store. In just about everything it seemed, it's addition of a hydrogen atom keeping liquid fats solid at room temperature. Metabolically however, it's been since shown to additively increase rates of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease, above and beyond the simple fat content of which it was supposedly just a part.

Thus, an artificial chemical was widely added to our food for convenience and stability at room temperature that was an effective "poison." That may sound dramatic, but it's a pretty accurate characterization, and it's illustrative of why I'm sort of in the middle about people preaching (even liberal preaching) about bad food practices and the like. because a food industry without checks would add motor oil to milkshakes if it gave them a special viscous preservative quality.

So while I appreciate the common sense perspective of conservatives ("Occasional cheeseburgers are ok") and the libertarian perspective ("get your hands off my cheeseburger, Commie!"), I also think that in order to make common sense free choices about food, we need complete information. And we were sucking down transfat and other chemicals for decades without any idea of what the shit does to a human body. Thus, as ostensibly informed adults, we were working from an incorrect/incomplete set of assumptions while making choices about our health.

That dork got fat off the fries, the shakes, the cola and the salad dressings.

Dr. Melik: ... wheat germ, organic honey and... tiger's milk. Dr. Aragon: Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties. Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge? [chuckling] Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true. Dr. Melik: Incredible!

Shit, let me try that again.

Dr. Melik: ... wheat germ, organic honey and... tiger's milk.

Dr. Aragon: Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?

[chuckling] Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Dr. Melik: Incredible!

Bill,

Of course, there are others, a man and a woman, who have followed Spurlock's lead, eating only McDonald's for a month, and both claimed to have lost weight.

Of course, they still exercised and stuck to an appropriate number of calories. The guy even had to raise his caloric intake because he was losing weight, and being a body builder, he didn't want to.

I'm not saying that McDonald's is health food, but much of what you eat at fine restaurants isn't health food either.

Why single out McDonald's? Because it's easy I suspect.

"But it's kind of like me making a documentary about the dangers of dropping a bowling ball on to my 'nards." - ace

Put a vid of that on the site and I'll hit that tip jar!

And the lefties hate it as a symbol of America

That's what she gets for drinking Smirnoff Ice.

it *is* possible to be strung out on ham

your momma's so fat, after sex she smokes a ham!

That after picture looks a lot like Ann Althouse.

If you check out the extras on the Super Size Me DVD, Spurlock does an experiment where he leaves some McDonald's food and some food from a regular diner in jars for 8 weeks. Amazingly, the McDonalds food took forever to rot. The fries, in fact, never did rot at all.

Liberal proaganda or not, I haven't been to a fast-food joint since then.

Hey Bill. . . know where I can find any of those motor-oil milkshakes?

Those sound *fantastic*. . .

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Super Size Me: With Whiskey!
http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1599380/

Ilbis,

Thanks... I tried that yesterday using & trademark ; and & TM ; but I didn't have the right magic word, obviously.

Rob,

Thanks for that too.

Supersize Me was propaganda. Take a little bit of truth and shape it to fit your agenda.

Who the hell doesn't know someone (you maybe?) that ate fast food for every meal for some period of time in college? And he was supposed to be puking after a few days of eating at McDonalds...oh, sure. I ate at a gas station for a month after getting laid off because all I had was their credit card. It was boring and unhealthy, but I didn't get sick.

Fast food isn't the best choice to make, but it's still freaking food. It's not pressed asbestos in a tobacco wrapper.

Thank G_d that in America you are free to succeed and also free to make really bad choices and get real fat. Because if you aren't allowed to fail, then you aren't really free.

I thought alchohol was supposed to make women look better?

It does, but that's because it's the guy drinking it...the uglier the woman, the more you drink.

Here's the story of a guy who lived off Guinness for a week.

Here's a useful chart of HTML characters like ♠.