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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Super Size ME....

Warning, this is labeled as a RANT for a reason....


Hulu.com has Super Size Me as a documentary you can watch. I have always had an idea in my head, no I make a vow in print: McDonald's (and other fast food restaurants) will not run my life, or my family's life!

I do on occasion "hit" a fast food joint once a month. In the documentary Morgan Spurlock vomits after 2-3 days of eating McDonald's 3 times/day! Fast food may taste great within the first few minutes of eating it; but this turns into a sugar high, a "McBrick" in the stomach, and calories & fat added to the body which in turn causes added stress on the body.

It maddens me about school lunches! I know that I had ice cream and M&Ms for lunch in high school and I know I did not get the nutrition I needed! Why is it that our Public Schools (GOVERNMENT FUNDED) are getting the shaft when it comes to healthy food! I think everyone needs to take a look at Appleton WI alternative school!!! The "at risk" kids are getting the best food, maybe they aren't the "at risk" kids anymore when it comes to their BRAIN food!!!

Good, healthy food equals smaller waist lines and "happier" hearts! Not to mention all the other health benefits from your arteries, liver, kidneys, pancreas, skin, and the rest of the body! Super Size Me also mentions the lack of exercise the average American lacks per day! I think that is different post....

It floors me how Morgan Spurlock's liver heads to failure after eating McDonald's for a whole month!!! His doctors urge him to stop this diet because he is killing his liver, let alone all the other stresses on his body!

Am I vegan? No.
Do I "hit" a fast food joint once a month or so, yes.
Do I try to avoid fast food at all costs, yes!
Do we (Matt & I) make a point to eat 3-5 fruits/veggies per day; yes!
Do we exercise an average of 3-7 days/week; yes!

Making just one lifestyle change starts one on a path to health!

Again, I labeled this a rant for a reason.

This is something I have to tell myself when my body reacts to the addictive smell of good healthy potatoes being molested in hot oil to be turned into a Frankenstein version of itself....Sometimes I control my addiction and sometimes I eat the fries and get a "McBrick" feeling in my gut and tell myself "I am never doing that again!"

6 comments:

H.E.A. said...

Wanna know something that will make your blood boil more...school's are allowed to count ketchup as a vegetable on their menu's so they don't have to serve as many veggies...

yeah...I know...BULLS*%T

BEK said...

They also count French Fries as a veggie!!! And the kids believe them!!!

White Hot Magik said...

School food is not good food necessarily. Ours isn't as bad as it was in some other districts my husband has worked in but it isn't what it could be either. However I see a fair number of parents send their kids with worse junk food even stopping to get fast food for them.

Right now my kids don't eat fries by the grace of God and I hope it stays that way. Luckily we are too poor to indulge in fast food any longer and quite frankly we don't even want it anymore. Before kids we ate it far too much and our waistlines show it.

Joe Skillen said...

Spurlock feeds (pun intended) on the super emotionalism of the discussion. The reason that he was so sick was because it was such a shock to his diet... that is evident.

School lunches are a tough thing. I can't imagine the cost of providing food for students 5 times a week. However the schools do provide activity opportunities during school, which from my memory, not all students decided to take advantage of when they probably should have.

I read an article in Christianity Today entitled, "The Poor will gladly take your trans fat" (or something to that extent). Americans spend twice as much on weight loss than what is given to those who don't even have food. Going back to school lunches, in Wichita, an alarming amount of students have food distributed to them for the weekend because they have no food at home. I doubt that they care if it is a "square meal", just something to get them through the day.

Perhaps there is a "thing behind the thing". I think that there is a tension between us wanting to be our own functional savior (I can do what I want, eat what I want) and not having anything to cope with the fact that we are going to die someday (I'll do gastric bypass, frantic diets, plastic surgery, etc...).

What gets washed away is the idea that we must concern ourselves with the poor who go hungry every day. Part of the early church DNA was a concern for the poor, passing out food to those who needed it. Hard to focus on an attractive figure when other needs are on our mind.

BEK said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Matt Skillen said...

Joe,

While I think you have hit on something that is of grave importance to Americans in general, I think you are missing the "thing behind the thing". Granted, there are thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, of people both young and old who go hungry each day. And, as you have astutely pointed out, there is a great deal that the church could do to help those in constant need. However, I believe there is something bigger that is illustrated in Spulock's film.

If you re-watch the opening of Supersize Me, you will see the premise for the film almost immediately. In giving his background story, Spurlock indicates that his family rarely ate a meal outside of the home. In fact, Spurlock states that some of the best memories he has with his family were created around their dinner table. In this illustration, Spurlock attempts to frame the idea that America's eating habits have drastically changed in a little under two decades. Instead of eating home-cooked meals, America is picking up dinner at a drive-thru window. In essence, quick, easy and fatty have become the very basis of our society's diet.

These eating habits are instilled in us at an early age. Think about all of the pizza, hamburgers, french fries and ice cream that we consumed while in school. The pattern is unchanged even some ten years later. As a school teacher I noticed that lunch rooms that are overworked and underfunded typically utilize a menu of what could be considered fast food because it is cheap to buy, easy to prepare, and makes a considerable profit for the school district's food services department. Guess which days were the busiest for the lunch ladies at Maize South... Papa John's Pizza Day.

Being that you probably never had to worry about your weight, it is no surprise to me that you would be critical of Spurlock's view on the emotionalism toward the food we eat. Think about the tweets you have posted recently. If my memory serves correctly you have celebrated the existence of cheese grits and Chicago dogs. As a person who has lost nearly fifty pounds, and subsequently gained nearly half of it back before trying to loose it all again, I can tell you for certain that there are deep-rooted emotional ties to eating--much like an addict feels toward alcohol or drugs. And, much like the first step to recovery for an alcoholic is admission to the problem, before America can make a trend toward healthy living, those who are addicted to fatty fast-foods will first need to admit that they have a problem. I applaud Spurlock for spelling this out in a film that has appealed to many people. It is an avenue that some will take in order to realize that they need to change the way they are eating in order to live more healthy and productive lives.