Super Size Me: Obesity Epidemic

Super Size Me is a 2004 documentary film when Morgan Spurlock engages a social health experiment to see the mass effect on a person who eats McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for one month. In the process, his weight, energy level plummets and experiences all sorts of unexpected and terrifying side effects. He also examines the corporate giant's growing role in the lives of American consumers and explores its methods of young people and its contribution to America's obesity epidemic. The condition of the experiment is that Morgan Spurlock can only eat food from the McDonald's corporation. The health issue that is presented during the “McDiet” was obesity epidemic. According to the most recent data, adult obesity rates now exceed 35

percent in five states, 30 percent in 25 states, and 25 percent in 46 states. They are mostly POC adults in the urban areas. The causes of obesity come in many factors such as genetics, overeating, a lifestyle high in simple carbohydrates, a frequency of eating, physical inactivity McDonald's products are for the most part unhealthy and provides bad health conditions, like obesity. There was a lawsuit back in 2003, about two workers that got obese during their time working in McDonald's corporation. The girls are Jazlyn Bradley and Ashley Pelman. Bradley, 19, is 5 feet, 6 inches tall, and weighs 270 pounds. Pelman, 14, is 4-foot-10 and 170 pounds. McDonald’s food caused obesity and for others heart attacks and diabetes. Although the lawsuit got dismissed, it raised some series concerns. McDonald's promote the children brand to bring more families into their home, which causes more epidemics for the younger generations. Customers of various ages and background are consuming the food, gaining weight and sufferings detrimental effects of McDonald's food. In the movie, Spurlock revealed by the US Surgeon General and his opinion of the franchise that McDonald’s fails to properly label and categorize their products as they are both physiologically addictive and physically harmful as much as tobacco or cigarettes. McDonald’s franchise these foods to make them appealing without health warnings attached. There are many companies who are and still endorsing McDonald corporations even with the health risk in factor. Furthermore, there are posters and billboards all around advertising Mcdonald’s and stores all around, which makes it easily accessible. The direct cause of the problem is that McDonald’s continue to give unhealthy food and the poor nutrition of it is not a concern.

Children know the logo, even before they can talk and they consume it just as much as the adults, which starts the obesity epidemic early. In the movie, they offered Spurlock a total of nine super-sized meals. The conditions of the experiment are that he must order from the McDonald's menu, all three main meals and all food to be eaten must come from McDonald’s, every menu item at McDonald’s must be eaten at least once over the course of 30 days. Lastly, he must super size meals only when offered by McDonald’s staff. He must not engage in any exercise beyond that which the typical US citizen engages in, which is approximately 5,000 standardized distance steps per day. The supersized meals contained the choice of any McDonald’s sandwich, a 42-ounce soft drink, and a 7-ounce supersized french fries. In the film, Spurlock buys most of his food from Texas, where most of the supersized meals came from. The large or the supersized option was one of the contributors to the problem obesity because of how many calories that is being offered to the buyers. One drink and one supersize fries contain at least 1,000

calories. The supersized options created more problems because of more calories equal to even worse health. Spurlock had weigh-ins to track his weight and health, where his weight was increasing and his health was declining. At his first weigh-in, he gained a total of 9.5 pounds. The doctor immediately told him to stop the experiment on the McDonald’s or it will kill him. Before he started the primary intervention was that Spurlock knew the effects of eating McDonald's from day to night and the nutritional facts about it. Spurlock noticed he was throwing up, feeling sluggish, and had poor sex drive from eating the abnormal amounts of the food. The secondary intervention was him going to the doctor and them noticing his poor health and warning him to slow down on the high-based calories because he was intaking more than the human body can handle. The tertiary prevention occurred after he gained 25 pounds and left the experiment, he was in the worst health he had ever been. He had help losing the weight and bringing his health back together. This is the tertiary prevention.
Approximately 300,000 Americans die from obesity-related causes. Soon obesity may be responsible for as many death as cigarettes. Sixty-one percent of adults are overweight or obese. The population that is most affected is the poor urban community. The rich have better opportunities and better access to organic and healthy food. This causes a major problem with health, diabetes, and sugar. Obesity is linked to increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, certain cancers, and other chronic conditions.
One of the interventions that the guidelines of management required is 6 months of high-intensity, comprehensive lifestyle intervention, consisting of a reduced-calorie diet, increased physical activity, and behaviour therapy. Another intervention can be church interventions that can reduce obesity disparities by empowering participants with knowledge and skills within an established community. Church interventions can greatly influence people ideas and mindset in a set religion. For example, there are many religions who do not believe in eating pork, which can be bad for you, and they avoid it. Another intervention can be Public Health should address the problem we have with not having enough groceries available to the urban communities. Studies link children's weight status and sex/race-ethnic differences with meeting recommendations for physical activity and diet. Physical activity and diet will help reduce significantly obesity because physical activity decreases fat around the waist and total body fat, slowing the development of abdominal obesity. Also dieting protect against heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. The recommendation that I would most likely use to prevent this epidemic in the movie is to have all the food intake to be less than is 1,000 calories by building healthy supermarkets up to 5 miles around street corners, so it can be easily accessible to those who do not have a car or urban areas. The rule should be that they can only drink water in all different sizes. Once a day Spurlock run. Just like in the movie he was getting advised to slow down and start physical activities. The etiology of obesity is multifactorial, involving complex interactions among the genetic background, hormones and different social and environmental factors, such as sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy dietary habits. The key factors that might promote or protect against weight gain and obesity are regular physical activity, home and school environments that support healthy food choices for children and breastfeeding, low glycemic index foods, increased eating frequency healthy stuff. Major dietary changes include a higher energy density diet with a greater role for fat and added sugars in foods, greater saturated fat intake marked increases in animal food consumption, reduced intakes of complex carbohydrates and dietary fiber, and reduced fruit and vegetable intake.
The development and implementation of obesity prevention strategies should target factors contributing to obesity, should target barriers to lifestyle change at personal, environmental and socioeconomic levels, and actively involve different levels of stakeholders and other major parties.

An after-school program started off by Washington D.C trained SCORES staff members collected BMI and fitness data from participants during the 2004-2005 school year at nine San Francisco schools at baseline, in the fall and at follow-up, after the spring session. Fitness was assessed using the 20-meter shuttle test, which has been validated as a measure of aerobic capacity in children. This justifies the movie because, after the whole experiment, Spurlock gained 25 pounds and was the worst health if his life. His partner and doctor took precautions and he started a detox-recovery program and reports to it took Spurlock a total of 14 months to gradually lose the 25 lbs. that he had gained in one month. Basically, detoxification means cleansing the blood. This is done by removing impurities from the blood in the liver, where toxins are processed for elimination and weight loss programs does work, however, takes more time than gaining. Studies show that it helps with losing weight and helping regain some nutrients. Also, studies show eighty percent of weight loss programs

work.