There are real reasons why a lot of people, particularly working-class folks, are living in bloated, poisoned bodies. Foods full of transfats, cholesterol, sugars, and empty starches don't keep bodies strong in the long run, but they are frequently the only foods available for people who live in neighborhoods without grocery stores, or who work two or three minimum-wage jobs. Crappy food also goes down quick in a 15 minute lunch break, and it gets you through a long shift. It's crazy but true that McDonald's can retail a sandwich for less that it takes to purchase the ingredients and cook them. It's crazy but true that the unequal economies in the world (most of them in Latin America) are among the world's highest per capita consumers of sugared soft drinks. These economic realities, and not just corporate advertising, are really worth considering.
What Spurlock never investigates is how many people who eat fast food actually know it's bad for them. The reasons people eat poorly are often rather complicated. The filmmaker actually has a chance to get at these subtleties in the film's McRoadtrip around the country. However, he squanders this opportunity and instead spends his time filming himself eating Big Macs and chocolate sundaes in Manhattan, now Anaheim, now Houston, now Illinois, now Minnesota. He might have made a better documentary by worrying less about the state of his liver and more about what people had to say about their lives, their bodies, their jobs, and their health. In general, however, only the pious food experts are taken seriously. Others, especially the workers in the fast food joints, get camera time as doltish poison-pushers.
This is probably the film's worst transgression. The fatter the camera subjects, the worse their status in the film. The film is indifferent or even hostile to anyone in a uniform (after all, they are the ones who might ask Spurlock if he wants to supersize his meal, which, according to his own rules, he must do if asked). Most overweight people don't get to speak for themselves, but instead end up with their faces obscured and their bulky rear ends displayed. In one particularly pathetic scene, the camera zooms in on a mother and daughter at some sort of meet-and-greet for Jared Fogle, the Subway spokesman who lost some incredible amount of weight eating two sandwiches a day from that establishment. The mother thanks Jared for being such an inspiration to her overweight daughter. In fact, she says, the whole family fights a weight problem. "They had to bury her uncle in a piano box," she confides to Jared. After a few encouraging words, Jared the Subway Man moves on, and the camera focuses on the forlorn teen who privately doubts that she can be like Jared. "It's like, you have to eat all your meals at Subway, and I can't afford to do that."
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And how much of that unregulated unrestricted growth hormone alchemy's leaching in to the consumer?
