A group of Swedish university students is taking part in a study that is recreating Morgan Spurlock's fast food experiment, Super Size Me, in laboratory conditions. Under the supervision of professor Fredrik Nyström, two groups of young medical school students are stuffing themselves with fast foods and avoiding exercise. All of the calories they eat must come from fast food, although they are allowed to make breakfast at home so long as it was "bacon-and-eggs based".
Nyström thought it would have been more difficult to find people willing to participate, but the students were more than eager. More men than women applied and the chosen were the most highly motivated, who were likely to stick to the 6,000 calories-a-day diet. All their food throughout the study would be paid for and they were provided with bus passes so they would not have to walk any more than necessary. The only control on the study was that the Swedish ethics board said the participants must be removed from the study if they increased their bodyweight by more than 15%.
The students have already reported a number of changes that Spurlock felt, including weight gain and lethargy. They looked forward to not eating again and noted that "going for a month feeling continually sated felt odd." Some also found it difficult to meet the calorie requirement and resorted to drinking milkshakes before bed to get their number up.
Though the full results have not yet been released because a second group of students is participating in the study, Nyström says that no one suffered the same effects as Spurlock did. The film showed doctors telling him that he was destroying his liver, as he might with years of heavy drinking, but while the Swedish liver readings did get worse, they never approached anything dangerous and eventually began to get better, as the liver adapted to the food. The professor speculates that Spurlock may have had some sort of undiagnosed liver problem or had followed a very low-calorie diet before his experiment.
And like the liver, many of the students' bodies adapted to the increased calorie levels and they did not show dramatic signs of weight gain despite the fact that they were eating three times what they normally would. Weight gain was 5-15%, indicating that individual metabolism has a lot to do with weight gain. Nyström's published results will certainly reflect these findings and will probably focus on the adaptability of the human body in changing conditions, food-related conditions in this case.
The full results of the study will be out in December of this year.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-08-2006 @ 1:01PM
jOHN said...
Another considerable factor to Spurlock's declining health due to fast food could be because he was a healthy eater prior to the experiment. His girlfriend was a vegan cook, and she trained him to eat healthier.
The fast food diet might've been a total shock to his system that was used to eating healthy. He spent 30 days in a prison for his TV show and he didn't complain about digestive issues. I doubt that prison food is at all good for you.
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9-08-2006 @ 8:23PM
Tammy said...
It doesn't seem as though this study really replicated the Super-Size Me diet. They ate junk food (such as pizzas), and what fast food they did eat was not American fast food. According to this article, a Swedish "Big Mac with large fries and a large Coke still nets you just 1,164 calories." The US equivalent is 1,450, which may not seem like a big difference but Spurlock did his film during a time when super-sizing still was offered, probably upping the calorie intake by quite a few hundred calories.
There are other differences as well. For example, McDonald's in Sweden uses only organic beef and milk. Perhaps this study will inadvertently show that the problem with American fast food isn't the fat and calories but the ingredients.
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