Fat Head

"You've been fed a load of bologna."

A 2009 documentary created as a reply to Super Size Me. Since eating five thousand calories a day of anything would make anybody fat, comedian and former health writer Tom Naughton began wondering if it was possible to lose weight on a fast food diet. To this end he crafted a diet with three main points:


 * 1) He has a functioning brain.
 * 2) He may only eat fast food for thirty days(cut short to 28 due to his doctor's schedule).
 * 3) He would consume two thousand calories a day or less and avoid going over a hundred grams of carbs a day as much as possible.

While it parodies Super Size Me in a few places, the film largely goes in its own direction, choosing to look at the science behind what makes a healthy diet and largely ignores the diet itself.

The movie is available on YouTube, as are Naughton's talks Big Fat Fiasco, which delves deeper into how obesity became so rampant and Science for Smart People, which goes into detail about good science versus junk science.

""You don't go to McDonald's for carrots. You go to McDonald's for fries.""
 * Captain Obvious: When one interviewee was asked whether she'd buy buy carrots if McDonald's sold them:


 * Fridge Logic: It's pointed out that in Super Size Me Spurlock was supposed to be eating over 5000 calories a day and that five thousand calories of anything would make you fat. Naughton tries at one point to come up with a five thousand calorie day and it takes two supersized meals(the option was never available for breakfast) and two desserts to even get close.
 * Fun with Subtitles: At one point there's a clip of the lawyer from Super Size Me claiming that it has to be McDonald's causing the obesity epidemic. The subtitles replace his (fairly tenuous)logic with It's All About Me(in particular, "hundreds of years" becomes "they don't have much money").
 * Limited Animation: "The Guy from CSPI" has no real animation. Characters slide and flip, but that's about it.
 * Stylistic Suck: "The Guy from CSPI".
 * Viewers are Morons: The movie points out this is a driving factor in a lot of reform movements targeted at the fast food industry, so at one point Naughton interviews several people to reveal that the ability to recognize that fries and a cheeseburger is a high calorie meal is pretty much universal.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: A guy ordering a double cheeseburger? Sounds like a job for !