Downsizing Dave
The new movie 'Super Size Me' claims that if McDonald's had its way with our diets, we'd all be in trouble. But this fast-food loving writer set out to prove otherwise - with astonishing results
By Dave Orrick
Daily Herald Staff Writer
http://www.dailyherald.com/suburban...cdiet/index.asp
I like to eat junk. At least, that's what my mother and wellness types call it.
Junk tastes good. It's fast and cheap and it fills my gut, which is the point of eating. There's no better junk than McDonald's.
With its slippery center-bun and flurry of shredded letttuce, taking down a Big Mac in the car is a formidable challenge. I've raised it to an art form. (Note the left pinkie.)
When the McRib is back, I'm back.
So when I heard some guy did a movie claiming that eating at McDonald's for a month will basically ruin your health, I got suspicious. McD's has been the staple of my diet for years. And I was in pretty good health.
The film, "Super Size Me," opens Friday amid a hail of pre-publicity, much like this story.
In it, filmmaker/instigator Morgan Spurlock goes on a monthlong McDonald's binge. A trio of doctors go from curious to deeply concerned as his health plummets. He gains 24.5 pounds, sees his cholesterol shoot through the roof and watches his liver become, as one doctor put it, "sick."
OK, so man cannot live well gorging himself at McDonald's.
No, duh. You probably can't stay healthy overstuffing yourself on French cuisine either.
But can man do all right on a reasonable McDonald's-based diet?
I decided to find out.
I went on a two-week McDiet.
Friends freaked. "Dude, that's a serious health risk, man," one said.
Co-workers seemed sincerely scared. One pulled the melodramatic, "Don't do it!"
A wannabe high-brow type fired off, "You're gonna get a gut, and your skin will turn yellow." I told him and the free-range horse he rode in on that he'd been slurping too much of his flax-seed rice drink and could use some junk food.
The U.S. surgeon general was warning of an obesity "epidemic," and all these salad-types apparently felt it was open season on the Golden Arches. This only made me hungrier.
A few female colleagues thought I'd pull through just fine, being one of those lucky jerks who "can just eat anything and never gain a pound."
I knew I'd survive, but I figured I'd gain a few pounds.
Turns out, we were all wrong.
My dumb idea
First, I needed a doctor to check me out.
"You need to have your head examined," was the first bit of doctor-patient nutritional advice I got from Dr. Charles Baum. He's a healthy health expert from Alexian Brothers Medical Center's Nutrition & Disease Center in Schaumburg.
I thought it was strange he'd need to give me a mental work-up. But a lot had changed since the last time I saw an M.D., which was 1992. I've never owned a scale, never had my cholesterol taken, and thought lipid might be an Eastern European guy I owed money.
I've never dieted either. I tried being vegetarian once but it only lasted 21/2 days before a Whopper cured the worst headache I've ever had.
The doc was enthusiastic about the barely-scientific experiment.
When I told him my rules, he became a bit wary that my project might lead to a story encouraging "unhealthy eating," a medical term for junk.
In his movie, "Super Size Me," Spurlock cut back on his exercise and upped his appetite to 5,000 calories a day on Mickey D's biggest meals.
But I could eat whatever I wanted. I had to have three McSquares a day, but I didn't have to be stupid. I could snack on fruit.
And I got to keep my sort-of-active lifestyle, which includes usually walking three flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator at work and on weekends canoeing, camping and fishing.
Baum predicted I'd gain two pounds and my cholesterol might bump up a bit.
He was wrong, too.
Mmm ... McCalories
I'm one of those guys who can't figure out why Ronald doesn't serve up breakfast all day like Denny.
So I slipped blissfully into my first-ever food regimen, during which I could be late for work but say, "Yeah, sorry boss, but I had to get the No. 3."
There were a few hiccups of course. I got snared by that irrational nomenclature wherein an Egg McMuffin has ham, but you need to say "Sausage Egg McMuffin" to get that cut of pork. (The Sausage McMuffin is eggless.)
Any McMuffin, however, is fine cuisine: a perfectly sculptured egg puck draped in mostly melted non-denominational cheese sliding against a pig product, all nestled between two muffin-esque dough discs.
With the McRib in season to break up the usual one-two punch of a QPC (Quarter-Pounder with Cheese) followed by a Big & Tasty, the first few days were a blur of burgery belches and a growing pile of bags in my passenger seat. I was lovin' it.
Then things got weird.
It came to a head on Day 6, as I paddled my canoe up the Des Plaines River in Libertyville late one McGriddle morn.
Jacked up on the 440-calorie cocktail of pig fat, chicken life-force and carb-packed, high-fructose-injected pancakes with M's stamped on them like sneaker soles, I paddled a steady clip against the current like an ancient voyageur on steroids.
But that McCreation was five hours old. By now, I should've been tired. And starved.
But I was neither. I was still full. I paddled at least six miles that day and didn't eat lunch until 6 p.m. I had to force down dinner at 10 - the second time in my life I've ever paid money for a salad.
What was happening to me?!
It's good to be full
One of the reasons I don't get fat, Dr. Baum later told me, is that I'm good at feeling full.
"A lot of people can't do that, feel satiated," he said. "You're lucky."
This is important because -Atkins-inspired carb controversy aside - we get fat by taking in more energy than we spend. It's basic physics.
Extra energy gets converted to fat. Calories are energy. So, if more calories come in, by eating and drinking, than go out, by living and exercising, we get fat. All of us.
But if we're full, we generally don't eat.
I also smoke, and that might help me feel full, Baum said. Of course, smoking makes men impotent - then it kills you. Thus, it's not a valid tool for waist management. I will quit.
I found out from Baum I had other things going for me. I wasn't a normal fast-food eater.
I'm not big on fries or pop, but I love milk. A normal meal for me is a QPC and a milk.
"No, just the sandwich, and a milk ... not meal, miiillk," are my most-spoken words to the staff, who appear to be trained to give you more food than you want.
"That's, well, that's just off the charts," Baum said of my menu selection. "I mean, it's good, but it's really unusual."
It's important because soda and fries have lots of calories. Did you know that for many adults to "burn off" the 150 calories in a small Coke, you'd have to run a mile?
I haven't run a mile in years. So it's good that I drink a lot of water and milk instead of pop. For most of us living the suburban life, it's a lot easier to switch our eating habits than become marathoners.
For me, my McDiet wasn't as high-calorie an affair as many fast-food lovers because I wasn't doing value meals or super-sizing.
But still there I was: perpetually full. Obviously, I didn't normally eat this much, and the switch that tells my brain I'm full was on. But it seemed like I must have tripped the whole circuit breaker.
Day 8 was a miserable affair of nonhunger that culminated with a 10:15 p.m. order of a medium fries and two plain McNuggets, the wimpiest McDonald's meal I've ever had.
Meanwhile, I was beginning to feel soft, sweet and syrupy, like my Day 6 strawberry shake.
One morning in the shower, I realized that for the first time since college pizza-fest days, my, um, view, was becoming obstructed.
Hash-brown gambit
I didn't get weighed during those full times, so we'll never know what happened. But I had to find my McCenter or I might just turn yellow.
I refused to count calories or do any of that stuff. That would go against the whole point.
There was one exception to my diet: I had tickets to the symphony with my girlfriend the night of Day 10. I floated the McDate scenario, but, well, diplomats call this kind of thing a nonstarter.
At that non-Mac dinner, the curry, venison and duck jump-started my taste buds - and gave me the brain power to figure out my problem. My beloved McBreakfasts were tipping the scales. My normal oat meal or banana-and-apple breakfast were no match for Mr. McMuffin.
I regrouped and opened Day 10 with a breakfast of a mere hash brown. Some mornings I'd do a breakfast burrito. You know, McD's Lite. It worked.
I got my appetite back and could once again enjoy my tasty junk, but I figured the damage was done. Baum and his irrefutable First Law of Thermodynamics of Food kept telling me how hard it is to get rid of fat.
Finally, it was time for the big weigh-in.
McDonald's Jared?
After 13 days, I had lost three pounds, including a pound of fat.
This prompted the majority of women I told to issue the following statement, separately but in a clearly coordinated campaign: "I hate you." My reminders that they live longer and are better equipped to survive the famine that Americans appear to be stocking up for didn't earn me any points.
Most guys just thought it was "cool."
Spurlock said, "Wow," but wasn't surprised when I told him what my meals were.
Baum called me an "oddity" and concluded: "You basically showed that you can do this, and if you do it reasonably, you're going to be OK ... obesity-wise."
So that's it, right? All this freaking out over fatness, as I had suspected, was some fashion-industry conspiracy to make larger people feel bad because they aren't lucky enough to have thin genes and a magic metabolism like me.
I was lovin' it once again.
Then the blood work came in.
My cholesterol shot up from a "normal" 181 to a "borderline high" 201. And my "bad" cholesterol shot up from 102 to 116. At 130, doctors start thinking about "treatment."
Keep in mind, this happened during a period where I was burning more calories than I was eating.
"It's pretty startling to see the rapidity with which your cholesterol increased," the doc said. "It just goes to show you that McDonald's is so high in saturated fats, within two weeks, you overwhelmed those mechanisms that your body uses to keep cholesterol in check."
It also became clear I had snacked less. That meant less fruit, and Baum suspected if I continued on my McDiet, I might be at risk of developing vitamin deficiencies.
So my figure was good but my veins were pumping grease. I guess I can't live on McDonald's.
Downsize that?
Oak Brook-based McDonald's says they're getting unfairly plastered.
"You can design meals at McDonalds that can easily fit into daily diets," says Walt Riker, vice president of corporate communications. "With the wide variety we have, you can easily design these meals."
But McDonald's is getting rid of super-size meals, and a colleague recently had the bizarre experience of being offered to downsize an order of fries. New Happy Meals with the theme of being active are scheduled to come out this month. McDonald's says none of this has nothing to do with Spurlock's movie.
Spurlock doesn't buy that, but he lauds the changes. "But we can always do more," he said in a recent interview.
Me, I'm going to lay off the saturated fats for a bit ... until the McRib comes back.
Losing Weight by Eating McDonalds
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