Mayor McCheese Would Be Proud

While we at Open Market know that there’s nothing inherently bad about fast food, we’re still willing to believe that an outragous stunt like eating nothing by McDonald’s every day for a month can lead to a sub-optimal health results. Now, however, Swedish researchers are suggesting that even an all-QSR diet might not be all that bad for you:

A month-long diet of junk food does not necessarily cause devastating health effects like those in documentary film Super Size Me, scientists say.

Experts asked volunteers to follow the binge-eating habits of film-maker Morgan Spurlock (pictured) and were surprised by the results.

Many of the healthy twenty-something students showed little change in their cholesterol levels after stuffing themselves with up to 6,000 calories a day.

This story is not the first, of course, to express skepticism about Spurlock’s findings, motives and agenda. Our friend Radley Balko was hot on the trail in 2005 with Spurlock Watch (no longer updated, but a great archive of related stories), and the video tubes of the Internet are still crowded with responses and parodies of the original film. One, which Radley links to, asks whether or not it is safe to drink nothing but whiskey for a month:

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Slightly more serious were the other 30-day dieters who replicated Spurlock’s premise, but managed to actually lose weight and improve their general state of health, like documentarian Soso Whaley:

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