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If you haven’t had your fill of McDonald’s from reading about my craving for McDonald’s Paneer Salsa Wrap, you should have a look at Morgan Spurlock’s award-winning documentary film ‘Super Size Me’ (via Medea’s comment on my post).
Spurlock’s film follows a 30-day time period (in February 2003) during which he eats three meals a day from McDonald’s, Super Sizes his meal whenever offered, gives up exercise, gains 11 kg in body weight and experiences mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and possibly permanent liver damage.
Spurlock intersperse his personal travails with discussions on how fast food chains contribute to the high obesity rates in the United States, especially amongst children.
The documentary created a huge amount of controversy, won an Oscar nomination and several awards, and grossed $28.5mn worldwide, making it the 7th highest grossing documentary film of all time.
Given the similarities between Spurlock’s experiment and mine, I should probably target a multi-million dollar movie deal, apart from the book deal.
I’m totally fascinated by the ecosystem of counter-experiments spawned by ‘Super Size Me’, and it will be worthwhile to spend a few days researching it.
In the meantime, why don’t you watch the trailer of ‘Super Size Me’ –
– or, even better, watch the entire documentary?
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Comments (4)
It’s becoming interesting. “Going off consumption” is an exercise in self discipline too. And I’ve heard that self discipline is more important than IQ for long term success. All the best.
Now I’m thinking of being off “sweets” for an year. Sweets is a weakness and I’ll look for motivation to be off sweets on yr blog.
@Ranjan: When I tell people that I have gone ‘off-consumption’, the usual reaction is “so what?”
Only when I go into the details of what is allowed and what isn’t do people really understand the scope of my ‘off consumption’ experiment.
A concrete example, like my craving for McDonald’s Paneer Salsa Wrap, also helps people to understand the scope of the experiment.
So, yes, self-discipline is a big part of going ‘off consumption’.
no wonder my girl throws a fir wen she gets to know i was at McD!!!
@Sam: Now, why would your girlfriend do that?