Tag Archives: Book Deal

If You Haven’t Had Your Fill of McDonald’s Yet, Try ‘Super Size Me’

Super Size Me Movie Poster

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.

Nirvana 2.0: Happiness is Equal to Consumption Divided by Desire

If you have ever taken Economics 101, you’ll know that happiness is equal to consumption divided by desire.

Even otherwise, most of us understand this equation intuitively and, therefore, equate buying things with buying (the promise of) happiness.

However, I have been asking myself for a while if consumption itself follows the ‘bigger is better’ rule, if an increase in consumption results in an increase in happiness (tweet).

If you have ever maxed out your credit card buying the most recently fashionable clothes, gadgets, accessories or (insert your addiction here) you didn’t need, you’ll also know that consumption rarely satisfies desire.

In fact, instead of satisfying desire (consumption increases, desires decreases, happiness increases), consumption often fuels the desire to consume more (consumption increases, desires increases more, happiness decreases).

Once you have everything you need (want), buying (consuming) more of everything rarely results in more happiness. It results in ennui, which doesn’t quite taste like happiness, when I last checked.

So, if happiness is equal to consumption divided by desire, does the key to happiness lie in increasing consumption or decreasing desire (tweet)?