Blog Post #4

Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Supersize Me is a film that’s been showing up in health education classes for years as a testament to why eating fast food is bad for you. Throughout the documentary, Spurlock makes himself the subject of an experiment, one that proves taxing to his body and to his drive. Food in this documentary begins as something that Spurlock enjoys, as we all do, but once he begins the process of ordering exclusively from the McDonald’s menu, food is then presented as an enemy, a threat. Several times throughout the film, Spurlock meets with doctors and dietitians to track his experiment, and they tell him to stop what he is doing and that it is killing his body. They beg him to at least stop drinking sodas with his meals, and he is forced to modify his experiment in order to keep himself from doing serious damage to his health.

Spurlock’s documentary seems to say a lot about America and about their need for convenience. He uses the chanting of “McDonald’s McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut” at the very beginning of his documentary to show how from an incredibly young age, children are brainwashed into having this sense of brand loyalty and associate fast food with things that are fun and entertaining so that this food then becomes associated with happiness.