Before entering the theater to see this much-touted documentary, the gentleman selling me the ticket warned me that I'd never eat fast food again after seeing it. I told him that, actually, I'm vegan and don't eat fast food; he said that in that case, I could look forward to feeling superior to everyone else in the theater.

That superiority complex didn't kick in until after the movie was over, because throughout the running-time of Super Size Me, I felt consistently nauseous. When director Morgan Spurlock vomits up his breakfast on the second day of his McDonalds diet, I felt inclined to join him. I can't believe people actually still eat this stuff! They put it in their body!

And I can't believe I ever did, either. Once upon a time, I was one of those kids who was treated to McDonalds on special occasions; I loved it, looked forward to it, and indeed, one of the damning points Spurlock makes in the film is that fast-food is so heavily marketed to children, with clowns and happy meals and whatnot; and that with such dubious positive reinforcement, kids are predisposed to a future of unhealthy eating. He says at one point that if he ever has kids, he plans to counteract the advertising by punching them whenever they drive by a McDonalds.

By the time you read this review, if you haven't already seen Super Size Me yourself, you've doubtlessly heard about Spurlock's self prescribed 30 day McDonalds diet, and the disastrous effects it has on his health, and how McDonalds, despite its denouncement of the film, seems to have taken a hint and discontinued it super-size menu. Perhaps you've scoffed at the diet, as many have, claiming that no one eats McDonalds three times a day, and that it's obviously unhealthy, and that the movie proves nothing.

The problem with that point of view is that it's missing the big picture, which is that America is a frighteningly obese nation and that the food that makes us that way is incredibly disgusting, and that this is a problem that needs to be looked at not just as a sickness but as an epidemic spurred on by corporate greed. Incidentally, Spurlock is being frequently compared to Michael Moore these days, and I haven't spoken to a single Republican who embraces the concept of the film. They figure that if a person is too fat, they just need to use some good old fashioned will power and not eat junk food.

To avoid soapboxing at this point, I'll just move on.

The scenes that shocked me the most were not the ones in which Spurlock displays the amount of sugar, in granulated form, that he's consumed in soft drinks over the past month, or discovers that most of the ingredients in McDonalds food are chemicals, or explains that Kentucky Fried Chicken is made out of something that can't quite be called chicken; I already knew those facts. What I found really jarring was when he visited public schools and looked at what kids were eating, and what options were available to them. A lot of kids, wisely, choose not to eat the slop that the schools offer. Unfortunately, they limit themselves to what's available in the candy machines.

Call me a socialist, but it makes me sick that the future of these kids is being undermined by capitalistic corporate strategy. Consider: public schools are in dire need of more money. Soft drink companies offer them monetary incentives; in exchange, the soft drink makers install machines in the schools, and kids drink more soda, feeding massive profits back to the company. It's a vicious cycle, and Spurlock admits near the end of the film that the health of the consumer will always be ignored in the face of the almighty dollar.

At the end of the film, Spurlock feels that he's on the verge of death. He's gained thirty pounds, lost his sex drive, and his body has become addicted to fast food in the same way that alcoholics do to drinking; one of his doctors (he goes to three, all of whom are shocked by the results of his experiment) compares him to Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Which is too bad for him; everyone knows that fast food is not healthy in excessive amounts, right? One of the McDonalds execs certainly does: he even goes so far as to say that they are part of the problem (a closing title card enigmatically reveals that he's "no longer with the company").

If you like your fast food, this movie probably won't make you stop eating it, and that's fine. Honestly, I don't think I'm superior to people who eat fast food; I've got friends who eat it from time to time. I'm healthier than them, I know that, but hey, I've got my own foibles. What really gets me, and what really makes this movie important, is the deception that goes on, on the part of the companies who make this stuff. That's the information that's really important, and that I hope people take to heart; and if the film makes a few people give up their fast food habits, too, then that's great. That's really great.

And if you feel the need to bring up that commercial in which the healthy jogger gets hit by a bus, then you're missing the point.