What a waste of my time!!!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

A fantastic documentary with some real eye opening material, but the bad comedy, ug. Tom, leave the comedy to the pros. It would have been a much more enjoyable viewing/learning experience had it just been straight forward the entire way through. A must watch for excellent information on nutrition and how easily government and other fields can go astray. This film came out in 2009 and the information in it did not hit the mainstream until around 2014 or so. In my observations there is no other field in the world as fraught with misinformation as nutrition. Most people just seem to make things up and/or adopt ideas that suit their image. Very little is understood about nutrition, but this movie takes a very scientific and un-opinionated approach. I appreciated that, a rare trait in a documentary now days.

The film maker also claims to debunk the "bologna" of Spurlock's movie with facts. The only problem some of the facts he presents are as he would say "bologna". He claims that African Americans and Hispanics have a "genetic predisposition" to weighing more. When I heard this it sounded so wrong that I actually had to look this up and I found no studies that proved this and only one study that you could really stretch to argue that this is true, but doing so would require a lack of a basic understanding of how science works. He also over estimates how much meat hunter and gatherers ate. It is true that health declined with the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, but meat only consisted of 20% hunter and gatherer's diet. His claim that a vegetarian diet makes people depressed and tired is also untrue. There are studies linking vegetarians to depression and anxiety, but nothing proving that vegetarianism makes you depressed. Some of his points are good, but seeing that some of the "facts" he presents are wrong, it made me lose trust in him. What also made me lose trust in him was his obvious right wing politics and his conspiracy that the government wants us to be fat. His information on heart health was interesting, but he essentially decided to only look at one measure of health. On top of the flaws in his argument and lack of focus, I found his personality rather grating.

This 'documentary' is not worthwhile. It's not funny or informative, or even enjoyable as a snide rebuttal to Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. While both are ham-fisted and over-the-top at least Spurlock's was well produced.Naughton invokes a few straw men and takes poorly aimed shots. Initially he makes the point that maybe calories are more important than fat content, etc. in a reference to Spurlock eating 5000 calories a day. Daily intake of calories has been the yardstick of nutrition for about a century. One of the slides has the words 'rabid vegetarianism' which doesn't apply to Spurlock (he's not a vegetarian) or really anyone making the case that too many calories is bad.Tom Naughton is a comedian? He has no charisma, timing, or humor. He said something like 'I waited outside a McDonald's to see if someone would drag me in and force me to eat fast food. NO ONE DID.' Hurrr. Derp. The 'original music' in this film was funny, but not intentionally. It fit the rest of the production.

I thought this documentary was all-in-all OK. I think the movie accomplished it's goal in a narrow-minded sense, which was to say that ultimately, consumers drive the market and it is up to the individual to make the correct decisions on what they are putting in their bodies. It is not the responsibility of the government to make our food choices for us. The other message that I thought was effectively conveyed was that having an occasional cheeseburger is not going to, in itself, give you a heart attack. However, depriving yourself from your biological urges can be stressful and can cause a backlash of overeating down the road.I also appreciated the point that the movie made that simple sugars and refined carbohydrates with high glycemic indices such as high-fructose corn syrup are really the major dietary issue that our country should be focused on. Type II diabetes should be the target of our concern, and not animal fats (as far as dietary implications are concerned). Also, the sedentary lifestyle that the average American lives is a huge part of the problem, probably more so than what we are eating. Try telling Chad Ochocinco that the McDonald's that he eats before every game is going to make him fat or unhealthy. On the negative side, I was off-put by the unsophisticated jabs that the movie kept taking at Spurlock and also the Vegetarian movement. I thought the movie did a poor and distasteful job of respectfully criticizing its opponents. The campy cartoons and name-calling really took away from the effectiveness of the film, and these tactics can quickly turn off an undecided audience, like me.Also, the movie focused only on dietary/health issues. I thought the movie neglected the important issues of the environmental impacts of eating so much animal meat, the economic impacts, and the treatment of workers and animals.The environmental argument: When humans eat animals, they are only utilizing 1% of the original energy in the ecosystem. When eating fruits/vegetables, we are using 10 x the energy from the environment. The rest is lost as heat/metabolic energy. Therefore, vegetarian diets are more efficient and sustainable for a large population than animal diets. The corporations also tend to be horrifically bad at keeping up to environmental and safety code, and usually find that it is more profitable to pay the fines and continue poor environmental/health safety practices, rather than correct the behaviors.The economics argument: Most major corporations are milking the profits out of local economies and not paying it back to the communities or workers. Most employees of these companies can not live off of their wages and are not provided with decent benefits. In addition, many of these companies receive government subsidies for their ingredients and their employee benefits, which comes out of the taxpayer's paycheck. So there is a hidden expense to these companies and their affiliates that you are paying out of each pay check.The animal ethics argument: The conditions that the animals live in are ridiculously poor. Most low-quality meat comes from just a few mega-slaughterhouses in the country, which is run upon the principle of "the more meat the better". The animal meat that you are eating is most likely from terribly unhealthy and mistreated animals (or in some cases genetically engineered), which hardly seems natural or healthy.In the end, I thought the movie made some interesting points and deserves a watch if you are interested in nutrition, but still needs to be taken with a grain of salt (harharhar). Some of the points were good, but the movie was overall narrow in scope and a bit cheesy.