"Blame the Lifestyle"

 

"Fat Teens Sue McDonald's," "Teenagers' Suit Says McDonald's Made Them Obese," "McDonald's Blamed For Making Teens Fat," are just of the few headlines that bombarded the news late 2002. With the arrival of this lawsuit, David Zinczenko published an article to the New York Times convincing the mass public that these insignificant teenage girls had quite a significant point to make. Not only was nutritional information on fast food practically inaccessible, but most people had nowhere else to eat, whether it be because of cost, time or location. Zinczenko relates these issues with the sharp increase of Type 2 diabetes and obesity in children. To sum it all up in one phrase, "don't blame the eater."

Zinczenko grew up in Pennsylvania with divorced parents eating Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonald's every day for lunch and dinner. By age fifteen he weighed 212 pounds, for which he blames on his diet. Zinczenko then "got lucky" and joined the Navy Reserves and became involved with Men's Health Magazine (which to now he is the editor-in-chief as of 2000). Although he may have shared with us his past to persuade people that food is the cause of obesity, this is where I begin question his argument. If he lost all of that weight by joining the Navy Reserves (which requires a substantial amount of physical activity), is it possible to be relatively healthy and eat McDonald's every day?

Don Gorske was the first name that popped into my mind. My first and only memory of Gorske was from the film "Supersize Me," known as the man who ate a Big Mac every day for some ungodly length of time. I recall him having quite normal cholesterol levels and being quite thin and a good head of hair. After researching more about Gorske I discovered he recently ate is 25,000th Big Mac.

Fig. 1.1 Don Gorske eating a Big Mac at a McDonald's

With my recent purchase of a Fit Bit came the information that in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, one should walk (or run) 10,000 steps a day, or roughly five miles. Dave Whitehurst is a man whose life was changed by walking. Weighing in at 300-plus pounds, Whitehurst decided to change his lifestyle by walking five miles a day. After thirteen consecutive years of walking daily, his weight has leveled out around mid to low 200 pounds.

There have been discrepancies about the "Supersize Me" data results; no one could replicate the experiment and obtain similar results. One prime example takes place in a Swedish university where a group of healthy students were put on a high calorie fast food diet, similar to that in "Supersize Me". Overall there was about 5%-15% overall weight gain and no significant changes in cholesterol. What do college students do more of than most of the general population? Walk.

According to my Fit Bit, my days at home in Ann Arbor, MI consisted of walking roughly 5,000 steps a day, or about 2.5 miles. I worked at Quizno's Subs five days a week for roughly five hours at a time. During my first week of college, my maximum daily score was 17,654 steps (7.8 miles).

Fig. 1.2 A screenshot of my record-breaking day at college

After talking to a few of my newly acquainted friends, they seem to agree that college involves over twice the amount of walking that was done at home. If college kids were asked to eat a high calorie diet, they would be less susceptible to weight gain because of their activity level. Is it just me, or am I seeing some sort of correlation between the amounts of physical activity one completes in a day and one's overall health?

To answer my own question from earlier, it is quite possible to frequently eat fast food, as long as you live an overall healthy lifestyle with plenty of physical activity. Who knows, I may be performing this experiment on myself someday. If only I can get some funding for all those Big Macs!