Several years ago I saw the documentary Super Size Me. The documentary focused on the antics of Morgan Spurlock who decided to eat only food from McDonald's for 30 days. He gained 30 lbs.
Recently I watched another documentary called Fathead where Tom Naughton decided to imitate his predecessor. The documentary pointed out that Spurlock ate 5000 calories. Anyone who eats 5000 calories will gain weight. Naughton decided that he would eat only fast food for one month. This documentary is his saga.
While I recommend the documentary, I have two disclaimers.
The first is that while it is obvious that people choose to eat what they eat, people are strongly influenced by advertising. If people weren't influenced, no one would advertise. Advertising is powerful. It can be defeated by knowledge. Rather than try to fight it, I have suggested watching fewer commercials. Here is an earlier blog post where I talk about advertising and food.
The second is the documentary’s lack of concern about saturated fat. Getting people wearing white coats talking about how great saturated fat is does not convince me that saturated fat is not a problem. While I agree with Naughton's premise that the food our ancestor's ate is the best food, he does not take into account that modern animal husbandry is designed to produce an unnatural fatty meat. Hunted game has a low saturated fat percentage when compared to our "normal" domestic meat.
So either eat game, like Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, or do what I do and watch your saturated fat intake.
So keep these things in mind as you watch the documentary, Fathead. And as always think critically no matter what you watch.