Two years ago, I bought the DVD of SUPER SIZE ME in Beijing. It was half a worry: Although it has nothing to do with FAST FOOD NATION, it is also about fast food.
Three years later, when I returned to Shanghai, the first thing I did was to go to my favorite foreign bookstore to buy books. This experience ended my three-year regret. At the same time, I have this book. article.
Let’s talk about DVD first. SUPER SIZE ME talks about Morgan Spurlock’s experiment with himself, eating McDonald’s for 30 days, and seeing what results will come out in the end.
Morgan Spurlock’s experimental rules are as follows: 1. Only eat foods sold by McDonald’s, including drinks; 2. Do not buy extra-large set meals or burgers or drinks unless the waiter proposes them; 3. Eat every food in the menu at least once . In order to prove that it is not a fake, Morgan Spurlock specially invited 3 doctors to record the entire experiment process and regularly track his health status. Then he set off on the road to interview doctors, health consultants, chefs, and children in 20 cities in the United States to explore the relationship between health and fast food.
Before the documentary was filmed, Spurlock, who was 1 meter tall, was in good health and weighed less than 84 kilograms. After the test for two weeks, the doctor said that his liver was severely damaged and the test should be stopped. But he did not follow the doctor's advice. In about three weeks, his heart began to be abnormal, and the doctor ordered him to take two aspirin a day, but he refused because McDonald's did not provide aspirin. As a result, one month later, his blood pressure increased greatly and his weight also increased by 11 kg.
This film won a grand prize at the Sundance Film Festival and also caused a sensation in the United States. More people began to treat fast food again.
After all, it’s the age of images. The power of movies is far greater than the power of books. In books, in 2001, a book that thoroughly exposed the shady and facts of fast food was published: FAST FOOD NATION
If SUPER SIZE ME is a display of the results of eating fast food, then this display is the best annotation of FAST FOOD NATION.
In FAST FOOD NATION, the author goes from the surface to the inside, from the front to the back, from the light side to the dark side, step by step, deepening and pushing forward, making the world of fast food more real, more complete and malleable in front of us.
The first two chapters are about the establishment of fast food history and fast food culture. From the third chapter, the author started to go from side to side:
Counter: They are all young people, but their wages are low, their jobs are unstable, and they don’t enjoy many social benefits. why? Because young people 1, cheap, 2, weak awareness of legal rights, 3, good management, 4, good shaping, 5, good image;
then taste. There are various color and flavor preservation additives in fast food, and the author went deep into these condiment development factories and found that the chemical products, cosmetics, and pesticide factories are all in the same factory. The author analyzes how these products produce flavors and colors that appeal to readers through chemical action.
The author then introduced beef through taste. Because of mass production, many cowboys have lost their jobs and the cowboy culture has disappeared. In order to reduce production costs, the beef production plants have poor production conditions, dangerous conditions, low pay, and heavy work. So they hire immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. Many of them don’t even speak English, but for the sake of living, they can only Engaging in this kind of work; and the power of trade unions is therefore weakened: manufacturers can close factories and lay off workers at will, because such jobs are very rare for those immigrants. No matter how low it is, it is better than no income. I'm worried about rights, safety, welfare, and security.
Modern farming and feeding have created even greater ecological troubles: animal diseases, such as mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease and other deadly viruses spread, and many people die from eating unclean beef.
Excessive consumption of fast food also leads to obesity and many diseases related to obesity: high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease and so on. Because children have cultivated the habit and taste of fast food since they were young, it is very difficult to correct their eating habits, which is one reason why it is difficult to lose weight.
Finally, the author proposes that for us, for the producers, for the ecological and cultural environment, we should stop eating fast food.
This book and this DVD are put together, complement each other, and you can organize watching this movie.
PS: I'm thinking, is it the same in other industries? Beneath the gorgeous and delicious appearance of advertising newspapers, there are so many appalling scandals, so many blood, tragedies, destruction, greed, and lies.
How many truths we don’t know? I look forward to understanding and reading deeper and closer to the truth.
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