Let’s cut to the chase: go see Super Size Me . I’ll follow with my normally over-verbose reasons, but seriously. Just go. Everyone in the US should see this movie. If not for their health, for a friend or family member’s.

I saw it last Saturday, and was totally blown away. It made me want to become a filmmaker. What a great way to reach and educate people. It does an excellent job of educating people about obesity and fast food in a fun, reality-TV type medium. Just what people want. (And if that’s not enough, Morgan Spurlock, the star, is blogging the interview circuit, too.)

The premise: a man eats McDonald’s food for a 30 days. And only McDonald’s food. If it’s not on the menu, he can’t eat it. Or drink it. He can only supersize the meal if they ask, and he has to eat one of everything from the menu by the time his month is up. He started out a pretty fit man, and got checked out by an internist, a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist, a nutritionist, and an exercise physiologist. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but he ends up putting on weight, and doing a fair amount of damage to his liver. Now, this is not 2 hours of film watching a man eat. It’s mostly education about obesity, diabetes, the fast food industry, advertising, school lunches, and American eating and exercise patterns. Did you know the McDonald’s salads with dressing have more fat that a Big Mac? Or that the large yogurt parfait with granola has more fat than the caramel sundae? Or how a Chicken McNugget is made? You will after this movie.

The movie does an excellent job of pointing out all the factors that are plotting against us; the advertisements, the lack of nutrition information, the power of industry. But it also notes that none of these things are going to change anytime soon, and if we don’t all work on them starting now, we’ll end up in a world where one out of three children born in 2000 in the US will eventually have diabetes. What a disgusting statistic.

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