“Fast food frenzy”

I just finished watching a documentary film called “Super Size me.” Pretty plainly as Wikipedia summarizes it “ the film follows a 30-day time period (February to beginning of March 2003) during which the filmmaker eats only McDonald's food. The film documents his lifestyle's drastic effects on his physical and psychological well-being, and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit.”

So the filmmaker survives on 3 meals of Mcdonalds everyday and realizes a few notable things like the following.

FAST FOOD ADDICTION
Fast food is terribly addictive and one gets easily hooked to it and then in a while you star craving it. And then your mind is preoccupied with the consumption of it and directly necessitates its consumption as an essential. And then somehow a correlation is built up between happiness and binging on fast food.


The symptoms of lethargy and a feeling of perpetual tiredness is perhaps what most of our generation who feasts on fast food suffer from as well. We had an interesting diet workshop from this dietician called Anju Venkat during college last year (2008). Her logic was pretty simple, avoid food that makes you feel heavy, which is what fast food epitomizes in any case. So eating stuff like vegetable and fruits keeps you feeling light and fresh and hence, enhances the body’s energy quotient as well whereas the heavy cheesy pizzas, pastas and burgers end up making us feel unnaturally heavy and full.

He also highlights that they seem to stock apparently healthy food items but are they actually what they proclaim? Have you spotted a nutrient chart in any of the ubiquitous Mcdonads outlets. The filmmaker struggled to find one too and a couple that he found had to be retrived by the Mcdonalds managers from the basements.

He also points out that salad’s available with heavy salad dressing actually contain much more calories than a regular burger. As a result, of this diet he gained 24½ lbs. a 13% body mass increase, a cholesterol level of 230, and experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation to his liver. It took him fourteen months to lose the weight gained from his experiment.

I had also earlier read the Fast food Nation (P Sainath’s recommendation) - The Dark Side of the All-American Meal which highlighted how the fast food industry was just virulently spreading the world over. Also, how the industry uses advertising and plenty of other ways to attract people with extensive marketing.

-Most schoolchildren in America, consumed fries for lunch
- A survey found that half of the nation's 9 and 10 year olds thought that Ronald McDonald knew what kids should eat

Haven’t you ever wondered why these corporations don’t sell healthy food? When they can easily make so much money by selling packaged food then why should they bother? And they cannot possibly make money by selling perishable yet healthy vegetables and fruits. And how hard is it to cook our own food. Eating out is not just expensive, but also fat laden and we all know that packaged foods are much worse with their Trans fat. Time to consciously discern and eat, don't you think.