Savage Popcorn

I finally got around to seeing Super Size Me last night.

It was a gruesome experience and I can honestly say that watching someone almost eat themselves is not a pleasant experience. That said, I imaging eating yourself into an early grave is a lot less pleasant.

While Morgan Spurlock’s experiment is targeted at McDonalds, the film itself is targeted more at fast - and junk - food in general.

I have to admit that I went into this film expecting to be irritated by some healthy eating lecturing. Surely everyone knows that fast food is essentially crap in a bun - okay when you’re out late on a Saturday night and looking for something to soak up the beer, but no-one could think that this stuff constitutes a meal, could they?

Well, apparently there are people that do.

Spurlock does attempt to address the issue of who is responsible for America’s expanding waistline and, although he concedes that people are responsible for what they eat, he also highlights a few relevant bits of information - including the dearth of nutritional information and the appalling diets being promoted in American schools.

The other thing that struck me was how much obesity results from a fast food culture in which people (Americans in the film, but this is increasingly becoming true in Britain as well) resort to fast food because they don’t feel they have the time to cook, sit down and eat a real meal. And, of course, if you constantly force crap into your bodies it’s hardly surprising that you end up looking - and feeling - like crap, as Spurlock’s physical and mental state so amply demonstrated.

So here’s the paradox - the more time you spend enjoying your food, the slimmer you will manage to stay. So forget about diets (they don’t work) and going to the gym (unless you’re an athlete) and instead live slower and enjoy your life more.

Walk or cycle when you need to go somewhere - and if you can’t find an excuse to go for a walk, get yourself a dog. And enjoy your dinner occasionally because, at the end of the day, life’s too short to rush.

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