She pulled four roast chickens from a Kentucky Fried Chicken bag and divvied them up. One for herself, one for her thirteen year old daughter, one for her twelve year old dughter, and one for my sister and me to share. Then the fixin’s were laid out on the table – potatos, gravy, corn, biscuits and butter.

Those girls, our friends, were obese because they were taught to eat like sumo wrestlers in training.

I blame their mother to some extent, but then again, she was a huge woman and was unknowingly passing her bad relationship with food down to her kids.

Maybe she could sue KFC for making her and her daughters fat.

But, really now, where does a company’s social responsibility end? Should KFC employees be forced to ask, “How many people are you planning to feed with these four chickens? What? Only five? I’m sorry, madam, you’ll have to take your business somewhere else. We care too much about your health to sell you this much food.”

If it worked that way, every business in America would be forced to close down, because no matter what you make or what service you provide, someone somewhere will undoubtedly find a way to misuse it.

So, no, I do not agree with people suing McDonald’s for making them fat.* On the other hand, I hesitate to side with McDonald’s about anything, for the simple reason that the company is an environmental nightmare.

It is with that same reluctance, that I admit to having mixed feelings about the new movie Super Size Me. I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I ended up liking it.

In it, the moviemaker, Morgan Spurlock, uses himself as a McGuineapig to demonstrate just detrimental McDonald’s food can be to a person’s overall health. He eats nothing but their food for a month and gains 20% of his body weight during that time. He also raises his cholesterol and damages his liver.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, he didn’t quite make his case. One thing that kept creeping into my mind was the huge amount of food he was eating on camera. Had he eaten this much before his McDonald’s diet? If he was doubling his intake of food, of course he’d be expected to gain weight. Increasing food intake equals weight gain, and I got the impression throughout the film that he was purposely stuffing himself.

Also, I didn’t like the fact that he gave up any and all exercise during the course of his experiement. It seems that since his keypoint was that the food was the main cause of his weight gain and his health problems, then he’d need to keep his activitiy levels exactly the same as they had been in order to effectively prove his thesis.

I also got the idea that Spurlock was hamming it up a bit for the camera. I mean, how much melodrama can one man squeeze into his consumption of a quarter pounder? The answer may surprise you.

On the other hand, the movie does offer up lots of wonderfully wicked looking paintings of Ronald McDonald for your viewing pleasure. So, by all means, take your kids and scare them away from that cholesterol ridden garbage forever.

The film also brings up a few interesting points relating to how the fast food industry has made it’s way to our children’s schools and the alternative to having them there, so it’s worth seeing once.

And, on a somewhat related note: If you want the whole ugly truth about McDonald’s and you have a strong stomach, you should read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. It’s as disturbing as it is detailed, and it’s very detailed.

*That said, I think that making it unlawful to sue fast food companies sets a dangerous pre
cedent. Lawsuits should be judged on a case by case basis and stupid, frivilous ones should be thrown out of court. But, ultimately, setting up legislation like that to protect these corporate giants would effect civil rights in America.