2004 – NZ Film Freak

At the beginning of 2014 a science teacher of Iowa released his results after eating McDonald’s three times a day for 90 days. Surprisingly he lost weight!

Boy did the papers lap this up!

John Cisna went about proving that it’s not McDonald’s making us fat, but our choices.

John Cisna lost 37 pounds after 90 days of regular exercise and a < 2000 calorie per-day diet — John Cisna lost 37 pounds after 90 days of regular exercise and a 2000 calorie per-day diet

The articles covering Cisna’s experiment frequently compared his endeavours to Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary “Super Size Me“. Spurlock ate McDonald’s three times a day for 30 days resulting in weight gain, and deteriorating health.

However, Cisna’s and Spurlock’s McDonald’s binge diets have totally different guidelines.

morgan_body — Morgan Spurlock gained 25 pounds after 30 days of eating a 5000 calorie diet and walking just two miles per day.

Spurlock only exercised as much as the average American does – two miles a day – and tried everything on the menu with no daily calorie limit. This often resulted in a 5000 daily calorie consumption.

Whereas Cisna stuck to 2000 calories per day which included daily exercise appropriate to the amount he ate.

I am writing about this because I am concerned about the confusion of many readers. Don’t write off Morgan Spurlock’s results – they shouldn’t be forgotten now that Cisna has lost weight on a similar diet.

When eating a high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt and high-carbohydrate diet, a significant amount of exercise and quantity restraint is needed. This is all Cisna proved.

However, for the average consumer, an intense exercise regime and a strict calorie-count is not a part of the deal. This was proved in Super Size Me.

Just because Cisna lost weight, doesn’t necessarily make his diet healthy!

Iodine deficiency, high cholesterol, liver and kidney problems were just some of the results of Spurlock’s experiment. I am curious to see if Cisna had any nutritional deficiencies or health problems too.

McDonald’s must be happy to hear about this story – I bet it’s smoothed over the cracks in their reputation made by Super Size Me. Especially since they gave all of John Cisna’s meals to him without charge.

Don’t compare apples with oranges. These were two totally different experiments with completely different results. Just because they ate similar food doesn’t mean the experiments can be compared.

I hope John Cisna’s results don’t give people permission to eat crap all the time, and I hope Spurlock’s results are remembered.

In any case, keep a balance!

Jodie.

Shaun of the Dead Poster

Director: Edgar Wright
Writers: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
Released: April 2004
Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton
—

The best black comedy of all time.

I have a weakness for zombie apocalypse movies anyway. However, this film has taken every zombie cliche` in the book and ends up pointing fun at themselves, which is hilarious!

The creators called it a “Rom Zom Com” aka a “Romantic Zombie Comedy” and the “perfect date film” because it has a heart line of a romantic comedy that happens to be set in a time where zombies are attacking the world.

It starts out with Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Shaun’s girlfriend Lizz (Kate Ashfield) at a bar on yet another date at the Winchester Pub, as Lizz bickers about how they never do anything different. The shot slowly widens to show, Lizz’s friends David and Di (Dylan Moran and Lucy Davis) and Shaun’s foul-mouthed best friend, Ed (Nick Frost). Of course, what better to change the monotonous situation than have their lives bombarded with the living dead!?

That’s what I like about the Wright-Pegg-Frost trio. Their ideas are crazy!
Yet they always work.

These zombies are the classic, lazy walker-types where unless you got trapped or are a really slow walker, you would probably not get caught, unlike the kind that is on the TV series The Walking Dead where they run when they are desperate. But these zombies imitate the world we live in – we wake up, go to work, come home again, miserable. So it does have a bit of a wake-up call feeling to it.

Edgar Wright’s signature fast pans, quick cuts and cut always were present which definitely suited the shocking humour and gruesome occurrences.

Another of my favourite things about this film is the parallels between the start and the ending. Such as the trolley boy collecting stray trolleys in the car park of a shopping centre with little enthusiasm. By the end, the remaining zombies are trained and take over the chore in an equally unenthusiastic way… I don’t know. I just find it amusing…

This is the best black comedy because, unlike some others I’ve seen of the same genre *cough* Zombieland *cough*, the comedy element runs through the entire film, not just random crucial parts. Shaun of the Dead make fun of the terrifying situation at every turn.

This is a must-have item in every film-watcher’s collection.

Jodie’s rating: 8/10

Tag Archives: 2004

90 Days of McDonald’s – A Misleading Experiment?

Shaun of the Dead