Our Health Journey

Last night MSNBC broadcast the documentary “SuperSize Me”. I know it’s a few years old, but somehow I missed seeing it when it first came out, and just never got around to renting it. I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I stayed up late to watch it. Boy what an eye-opener! I highly recommend that EVERYONE see this movie - especially if you have kids.

You can check out the Super Size Me website for the full story, but I’ll give you the brief synopsis if you haven’t seen it - the filmmaker (Morgan Spurlock) goes on the road to interview nutrition experts across America, and along the way sticks to his self-imposed rule of eating nothing but McDonald’s food for the entire 30 days, 3 meals a day. The information he gleans from the experts is very interesting, what happens in school lunchrooms in our country is appalling, but what is really shocking is the resulting negative impact on his body from the month of fast food - substantial weight gain, skyrocketing cholesterol, liver damage, along with other physical and mental problems.

Now for many years I’ve been just a VERY casual fast-food eater - maybe once a month if that often I’d have a burger at some typical fast-food joint - but not any more! I hereby resolve to cut back to no more than once or twice a year (it’s hard to avoid when we go on a vacation road-trip with the kids, but believe me it will now by my LAST choice and only if no other healthier options are available).

The movie also made me very angry to learn how our grocery shopping options and our overall food supply is manipulated by the food and grocery industries to sell us what they want to sell us (that makes them the most profits) instead of what is really the healthiest food for us. Another reason why everyone should see this movie - maybe if more people become aware and angry then we can do something to effect positive changes.

Next up I’m going to rent “Fast Food Nation” - although I’ve been told I should read the book first so I’ll try to do that soon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 10:22 am and is filed under Health News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.