Fast Food Education: A Real Answer or Naïve Idealism?
Since watching Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock, 2004), I’ve often found myself thinking about the movie and rethinking two ideas expressed by my classmates during our post-film discussion: First, attributing the obesity of those in the film (and a certain segment of the larger population) to a lack of education about fast food is slightly off target. But to then suggest that those of us in the classroom (the so-called “educated”) are somehow different is to miss the film’s message entirely. And second, to say that the two teens in the film (the boys who love McDonald’s) know something we don’t simply because they advocate exercise (pushups) along with fast food is to put too much faith in education and likewise miss the film’s point.
The message or point that Spurlock succeeds in getting across at the close of Super Size Me, I believe, is that none of us knows a fraction of what we think we know about the unhealthiness of fast food (not energetic teenagers, college students, filmmakers, vegan chefs, fitness experts, nutritionists, or even medical doctors). And that fast food as typified by the kind sold at McDonald’s doesn’t just make us fat, it also makes us sick and is surely hastening our deaths. Education? I’d say that what Spurlock shows us doing to ourselves throughout Super Size Me goes far beyond a lack of education; what we really possess, sad to say, is complete and total ignorance.
It takes Spurlock a while to cultivate our receptiveness to this message, however, and he uses three types of the particular — his own experience (logos and pathos), the opinions of medical experts (ethos), and the plight of the overweight (pathos) — to get his larger, more general point across. Spurlock, first, establishes communion by asking aloud the very question many of us only ask ourselves: Is the food at McDonald’s really as bad for us as we’ve been led to believe? He then sets out to answer this question by experimenting on himself, winning a bit of our admiration in the process. During this quest for answers, we connect with Spurlock as he supersizes when he shouldn’t, forces himself to eat his entire meal, then gets physically sick as a result. We relate as Spurlock initially enjoys his fast food, but is soon overtaken by fatigue and sluggishness. We identify and grimace each time Spurlock jumps on the scale and finds that he’s gained more pounds than expected. And we share an affinity with Spurlock even after Super Size Me ends when we learn that it took him three months to lose 20 pounds then nine more to lose a final five. This chronological narrative, which documents Spurlock’s physical deterioration in both a personal and objective way, plays a part in convincing us that fast food is damaging to our health by showing us its detrimental affects.
Next, Spurlock makes sure that he’s not alone on his quest, surrounding himself with experts from the health and medical professions; these are people we tend to trust, believing that because they possess a measure of esoteric knowledge they also possess all the answers. Our willingness to grant these experts credibility — especially the medical doctors — is perhaps Super Size Me’s most powerful persuasive tool. For when we witness the fitness guru’s disbelief at Spurlock’s rapid weight gain, we find ourselves eager to help him reset and double-check the scale. When the nutritionist expresses genuine concern over Spurlock’s declining health and pleads with him to take a supplement or two, we’re right beside her urging Spurlock to pop a few vitamins and take a walk around the block. And when all three doctors admit to being wrong about what they thought would happen to Spurlock, when two of the three compare his overworked liver to that of an alcoholic’s, when each are so worried about his health that they more or less beg him to stop his experiment, we find ourselves filled with an equal amount of shock, dread, and anxiety — along with the hope that Spurlock can make it through just a few more days without harming himself. This part of the film — witnessing the amazement of experts as we all uncover important truths about the dangers of fast food — is completely convincing and moving and the most potent element of Super Size Me.
Finally, Spurlock appeals to our emotions, hoping to arouse our sympathy for overweight kids and teens in much the same way that he stirred our empathy for his plight. Visiting middle schools and watching kids substitute Snow Balls and Coca-Colas for balanced lunches tugs at our heartstrings. And listening to the overweight teen explain that she can’t eat healthfully because she can’t afford Subway sandwiches is heartbreaking. But not just because she’s overweight. This young girl is heavy because her mom is heavy, and every member of the family is most likely overweight because of what they eat at home and the poor food choices they make (like viewing Subway’s fare as “good” food). This is a family problem that begins and ends with the parents. And until mom and dad get smart and make an effort to radically change their family’s eating habits, their daughter has no real hope of ever losing weight. This is what frustrates and hurts the most, and it’s the one place where my classmates’ focus on education (or lack thereof) hits the mark. Spurlock doesn’t say any of this in Super Size Me, of course, but he doesn’t have to. He instead communicates it with two brief shots and some dialogue that last only a few seconds. In this instance, the harm that fast food can inflict on families is made abundantly clear. Spurlock’s powerful images are truly worth a thousand words.
Spurlock also has other tactics up his sleeve: The observations of his girlfriend (who happens to be a vegan chef) and her concern for his health give Super Size Me an additional touch of the personal and credible, while the interviews with school administrators who have removed junk food from their campuses and instituted healthy lunch programs provide the film with yet another layer of expert testimony. And like any good documentary filmmaker who tries to anticipate the arguments of naysayers, Spurlock, in Super Size Me, includes his conversation with the gentleman who has eaten two Big Macs a day for 30-plus years and has a cholesterol count of only 145. There are exceptions to the rule, Spurlock seems to say, but these living, breathing exceptions are not necessarily healthy and well simply because they boast low cholesterol levels. The inclusion of the pushup-happy, McDonald’s-loving teens mentioned earlier may also be another way in which Spurlock attempts to counter the criticism of opponents. Yes, Spurlock acknowledges, exercise can help keep fast-food eaters thin, especially when they’re young and healthy and their bodies are functioning optimally; but no one remains 15 forever, and all the exercise in the world can’t remove the deadly toxins that a regular diet of fast food adds to our systems.
During the course of Super Size Me, Spurlock’s appeal to logic, credibility, and emotion succeeds in establishing communion and connection, while his focus on the particular leads to a larger, more general truth which creates resonance. By putting his health at risk, Spurlock has proven to himself, his doctors, and his audience that the food at McDonald’s is indeed as bad as we’ve always heard. And though few will ever eat 90 meals at McDonald’s in a one-month period, millions of people do eat fast food at least once a day, consuming the same number of meals as Spurlock in a mere three months. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, this is probably just as unhealthy as Spurlock’s ill-advised 30-day binge. Where does education fit into all this? Is “education” even the right word? For if we can watch Spurlock’s Super Size Me (and other films that deal with the same topic) and continue to eat fast food, education doesn’t seem to be much of an answer. Maybe the ignorance I spoke of in my second paragraph is not of our choosing but instead inbred. Maybe in the same way that the cows in Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater, 2006) are unable to bolt the feedlot because they don’t know they should, we too are unable to escape our fast food feedlot or recognize that we so easily could. To expect everyone to run toward healthful freedom, then, is probably unrealistic. I, however, received Spurlock’s cinematic message loud and clear, and I’m stepping through the hole in the fence he’s tried to open for all of us. I don’t have to live in ignorance.
