Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me

Any person with a sensible ethos knows that with great power comes great responsibility. Similarly, the same must be said about a person’s freedom to choose what they eat. Overarchingly, that great power to choose one’s own food comes with health and bodily responsibilities. In his documentary, “Supersize Me,” director Morgan Spurlock uses his narrative of a month long, specialized diet in order to illustrate this point. To be specific, Spurlock is discussing the trending fast food diet in this nation, and the perilous effects it is having on the health of everyone in the nation. Predominantly speaking, Spurlock highlights that obesity, hypertension, and other health concerns are becoming common occurrences thanks to corporate marketing to

children, a large lack of corporate interest in the well-being of their consumers, as well as a largely under-educated public.

In general, children have always been understood to be the key to influencing the future. In spite of the fact that this is usually a positive thing, the food industry has taken this into dangerously, selfish territories; undoubtedly, this explains the continued upward trend in childhood obesity. In her own words, Dr. Margo Wootan, an expert in sociology, critiques how “by the time kids are able to speak, most of them can already say McDonald’s,” (Spurlock). In the course of an experiment by Spurlock, he interviewed children to find out if this was true. In the interview, children were presented with pictures of famous people and then fictional fast food spokespeople. Out of all the options, many children were quick to recognize almost all the fast food spokespeople. In addition, at the time that

this documentary was assembled, a growing rate of schools are mimicking, selling, and having children consume fast food meals. As a matter of fact, the several doctors and market analyst that have been interviewed during this documentary agree that the corporations providing food and resources for school lunches are leaving a lasting impression onto the next generation of what, how, and where to get food (Spurlock). What is worse, in the best learning years of a human’s life, children are being drawn into a future of unhealthy habits for the meager price of a toy or a playground. Self-evidently, this can only benefit the industry in question, because loyal customers are thought of more for their wealth than their health. All in all, it is a genuine shame that children have become targets of interest for the food industry because they are otherwise helpless to resist.
Marketing and selling cheap food with high profit, with no regard for nutritional content
Throughout the year 2001, McDonald’s spent $1.4 billion in advertising for their restaurants.

Adjusted for inflation, that is the same as $2 billion in 2017.

In another in-film experiment, Spurlock scours each of the McDonald’s restaurants in New York City for the nutritional information about their food. In a stunning turn of events, 50% of those locations had a single wall poster with nutritional information, roughly 20% had pamphlets with nutritional information, and less than 10% had both. Even though these statistics are circumstantial, they nevertheless illustrate how vast consumer ignorance is and how little McDonald’s is concerned about it in their pursuit of business.

The lobby group Grocery Manufacturers of America is keeping a pressure on congress to keep legislation on favorable grounds for the products they are using. While lobby groups themselves are not inherently bad, in this case, it is likely preventing a serious government investigation into what the food industry could do better for the public. While there is nothing illegal about these actions, the health crisis that they are enabling as a reaction sure seems

criminal.
As can be seen, if brute force and
To quote Martin Luther King, “nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance.” In all cases, especially this one concerning our nation’s health, this principle is wise beyond doubt. Frankly speaking, there are some individuals suffering from obesity who should have been able to avoid their complication if they had only known more. For example, at the time of this film’s production, there was only one state in the nation that required schools to have 150 minutes of physical education a week (Spurlock). As of 2017, that number has increased to six states. However, the CDC reports that the childhood obesity rate has almost tripled in the same amount of time. At this rate, it is painfully obvious that a majority of the public remains sorely undereducated about their health. Likewise, in the past few decades, there have been epic revisions made to the public’s impression of portion sizes, the average acceptable amount of sugar in food products, as well when and how often a person should eat. For example, in the opening minutes of the film, Spurlock juxtaposes a large drink cup from 25 years ago and compared it to several modern sizes; what was found was that the large drink cups used to be around 20 ounces, while today’s cup sizes are as little as 20 ounces and can reach as large as a quart. Subsequently, these latest perceptions of acceptable food portions leave many consumers unknowingly choosing the least resistant path into weight related illnesses. What is more, on the same panel of experts for “Supersize Me,” several have compared the magnitude of today’s obesity problem to the problem of smoking. Strikingly, there are actually some deep similarities, in the sense that both businesses have found ways to pedal their noxious products with lobbying and advertising. With that being said, the public has found an effective way to combat smoking: education. If reaching the public with education was the solution that has helped lower cases of lung cancer over time, then it can surely do the same with the obesity problem. In effect, the culmination of tainted public norms, schools not providing adequate health education, and advertising leading the way through it all, all signify how susceptible an under-educated public is in being conditioned into poor decision making.
In succession, Morgan Spurlock and his movie “Supersize Me” connects the dots between the fast food industry continually advertising to children, an under-informed public, and the industry’s passivity in pedaling a nutritionally negative product with an overgrown advertising budget, and obesity. At first glance, it makes sense for any industry to want to advertise to children, considering they are very impressionable and can influence their parents purchasing decisions. However, there is no industry with more hazardous results from this than fast food, as it is fueling today’s weight issue and making tomorrow’s fight against it that much more challenging.
Last of all, the most troublesome issue about the public’s participation in the obesity epidemic is the fact that there is not as much information as is needed to give alternative options. In the end, it is worth considering if the nation wants to end obesity, or if the people want to become too all-fatty patties, especially soft, less us, greasy, over salted, out of breath – on a sesame seed road for disaster.