Super Size Me
Kento and Shinji
The purpose of this movie is to enlighten people especially in the U.S. about how bad fast food is. This film may seem to be unrelated to "Animal Rights", however, the gist of the problems which the film tries to tell us is essential and useful to realize the situations with which many animals are faced and the reasons why a lot of animals must be "consumed" by humans. It was an Independent film, but received great acclaim for its unique and informative movie plot and story. Actually this revolutionary documentary changed some American bad food customs and affected the improvement of social recognition of necessity of food education for children.
In this film, a young American tries to survive for 30 days only by eating Mcdonald's menus. The name of this reckless man is Morgan Valentine Spurlock, who is an innovative American documentary filmmaker and able screenwriter. His girlfriend named "Alexandra Jamieson" is
a vegetarian and is also a skillful vegan chef. Until the making of this film started, they had eaten quite fresh and healthy vegetable food. Thanks to the good diet style, his health condition was diagnosed by doctors with very good. Though he were eventually becoming ill as he continued to eat the junk food.
At the very beginning of the film, he narrates; "Everything's bigger in America. We've got the biggest cars, the biggest houses, the biggest companies, the biggest food, and finally the biggest people." This line is so impressed. Big people need big things. This seems so ironic, but it is right to the point, but the most important thing is why more and more people in American are becoming obese. Morgan says in the film that Americans used to be not so fat. According to his opinion, this terrible obese trend in the U.S. has definitely been linked to the rapid growth of fast food stores. Law Professor John Banzhaf, who are famous for the lawsuits against big cigarette companies points out that those franchises try to dominate the diet style as people especially children eat fast food regularly in various ways.
Bad food habits have made big people. However, there is a simple question. Why do people choose to eat fast food? Probably most people who love to eat it would understand the dangerousness of fast food to some extent. Then, why are those people stick to eating it? The answer would be the price of the food. Simply, fast food is much cheaper than vegetable and it gives the people the sensation of fullness so fast and makes them obese so easily. People, especially poor people, opt for eating fast food because it is cheap and it is easy to get satisfaction. Then they become fat and ill. In short, bad food customs endanger our health. At this point, another question comes up. Why is the fast food so cheap? That is because many animals are "used" to create meat everyday. Meat is a essential part of fast food ingredients. Those junk food stores often insist they are also selling salads for customers healthy diets, but everyone knows that these rebut is merely a facade of sincerity. First of all, people who want to live healthy lifestyle do not go there. The film concludes that eating fast food too much leads to bad health. We eat meat by sacrificing animals life and we become ill.
Some people say that this film is quite biased and nobody eats fast food menu so much. This accusation might partly be right, but the most important thing we need to think about is how to improve our life and diet style. If we can find a way to change our collapsed eating habits, it would be beneficial not only for humans, but also for animals. The precious thing that we learned from this great documentary is that good things for humans are the good things for animals as well.
-Reference-
"Super Size Me." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 9 July 2014.
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/>.
"Pink goop in Chicken McNuggets? McDonald's Canada answers." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 9 July 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua5PaSqKD6k>.
"The Push for Humane." tory. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 July 2014. <http://www.qsrmagazine.com/consumer-trends/push-humane>.
"McDonald's Cruelty: The Rotten Truth About Egg McMuffins." McDonald's Cruelty: The Rotten Truth About Egg McMuffins. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 July 2014.
<http://www.mcdonaldscruelty.com/>.
Shinji, even though, as you noted, the film doesn't appear at first glance to have anything to do with animal rights, actually it has some important connections. You brilliantly made those connections clear in your review.
ReplyDeleteI've watched this documentary two or three times. Morgan Spurlock is a good communicator. Although he speaks rather casually and gives one the impression that he's not highly educated, his enthusiasm is contagious and we can feel his sincerity.
It would be impossible to produce enough food for all the fast food restaurants in America, or even for all the McDonald's, if animals were not raised in an industrial (factory farmed) way. So, whatever McDonald's says about their commitment to animal welfare is complete nonsense.
It's interesting that after the 30-day McDonald's binge finished, his girlfriend put him on a vegan de-tox diet.
Clear skies,
Joseph D.