As many of you know, I like Morgan Spurlock. Granted, I also think he's crazy for putting his health on the line with Super Size Me. In case you missed the movie, he ate McDonald’s 30 days straight and nearly died. Don't Eat this Book was the companion volume to the movie.
it contained all the really disturbing things he couldn't fit into the movie. Did you know , for example, that the American Cancer Society takes money from Big Food which I thought would be against policy. As Morgan says, there's a word for that in America “we call it prostituting yourself”. I also found it particularly disgusting that there was a McDonald’s within walking distance of Dachau concentration camp. Isn’t it ironic that there's a fast food establishment which encourages people to overeat within walking distance of the place where hundreds of thousands of people starved to death? While everyone might not agree that having a McDonalds within walking distance of Dachau is a bad thing I’m sure most people would find it at least inappropriate that they put fliers under visitors windshield wipers. I'm sorry, but when I go to mourn, I don't want to be reminded of the existence of big corporations.
Who approved this idea? Now, as you know, I’m a very committed nonviolent person. However, if I win the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship and go to Dachau as part of my fellowship I’m going to be sorely tempted to buy a dozen rotten tomatoes to throw at the McDonalds. Of course, this isn't a good idea as I’ll be arrested for causing an international incident. I'm not quite sure how the fellowship committee would respond to that, but I think I can get sympathy if I told the court it was an act of an outraged human being. I was just informed that because I'm planning it a year in advance, it will not be considered act of rage. However, I can't imagine McDonald’s public relations would like to arrest a disabled person for throwing rotten tomatoes at a Dachau McDonalds.
Puttng aside my momentary lapse into property destruction if not violence, I learned a few amazing McDonalds facts in this book. First, vegetarians beware. McDonalds cannot guarantee that anything they serve you has not come into contact with meat. as Morgan put it, 'they can't even guarantee there's no meat in your sprite!'. I'm as carnivorous as the next person, but really, that’s just gross. They should post this for every vegetarian, but of course they don't because they're McDonalds. I was also disturbed to learn that there was a man who's kept a McDonalds hamburger since 2005, which still looks like a hamburger. Yuck! Food is supposed to decompose, not, as morgan says, be 'processed with chemicals and infused'.
I like burgers and fries as much as the next person, but I don't want to be around when whatever god awful chemicals they put in there wreak havoc on the human race, which I think is coming in the next few decades.
The phrase, 'the average American' has always bothered me. Who does these 'average' things? Not me, most of the time! According to the book, the average American eats 3 burgers and 4 orders of fries a week. Fry consumption, on the whole, is thirty pounds annually. I'm from Pennsylvania, we like our meat and potatoes and I’ve always been partial to burgers as my junk food of choice; however, this statistic is just insane. Do the people who do this never watch the news or read a magazine? As Vinny in My cousin Vinny puts it, “Have you folks heard about the ongoing cholesterol problem in this country?' Morgan called his Mcdiet a case of 'intestinal suicide'. I think these people are eager to join him.
Pets are also something that came up in two shocking statistics in this book. Firstly, 1 in 4 pets are obese. According to Animal Planet, animals don't comfort eat. are we just overfeeding our companion animals as we ourselves pile on the pounds? H ere I may disagree with Animal Planet and Mogan Richard, my cat, doesn't tend to eat when people are around. I think this is because he has better things to do when people are around and entertaining him. However, if I go away and he's alone for a few hours, he'll eat all of his food. When his pet sitter Amy came over she filled his bowl during each of her three daily visits because it was always empty. If that's not comfort eating I don't know what to call it. The second animal fact is that cows are fed in some cases ground up euthanized pets and road kill. Oh my God, that is so disgusting! Not that I would ever drop off a pet to be euthanized anyway, but now I definitely won't.
In a world where there are more cars than drivers we spend #227 million on medication annually and four out of 10 third grade girls wish they were thinner, something's really gone awry. We need to take back our dinner tables, take back our diets, go to the gym, and as Morgan says, “vote with your fork.”
Despite it’s dark subject matter, the book was a total hoot at times! I rate in an 8.75! Read… Enjoy… Learn.
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