One of the most eye-opening documentaries I have seen in a long time has been the documentary that Morgan Spurlock created in 2004 called Super Size Me. This movie was entertaining, educational, and horrifying at the same time.
The inspiration for the movie comes from a court case of two girls that were suing McDonalds over being the cause of their weight issues and declining health. Both of the girls were clinically obese and ate McDonalds a lot and wanted to place the blame somewhere. Morgan Spurlock heard about the case and wondered what it would do to an average person that ate nothing but McDonalds for thirty days. This is the set up for the film. Before his all McDonalds diet began he enlisted the help from several experts (a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist, a nutritionist, and a general practitioner) to watch out for his safety and to help medically document the changes he was to undergo. He soon was to find out that he had gained significant weight and began to suffer from many ailments that generally obese people suffer from.
The film covers many other topics from other fast-food establishments as well as their dangers, how the "junk food" market targets to children, and to those who seem to eat it all the time and never have any adverse health effects from their diet. He concludes the film with the fact that the two girls suing lost their case due to the lack of evidence showing that eating McDonalds has much of an effect on a person's health and appearance.
Due to the making a release of this Sundance award-winning film, McDonalds and other large corporations cracked down. Most establishments do not any longer serve "super sized" meals and seem to be more careful with their advertising. Due to the film's content, I think in the society in which we live today that it is important to watch the film and understand that eating unhealthy is just as bad as smoking. Maybe then we will not slowly kill off ourselves.