Supersize It
More is always better right? Fast food restaurants and take out
joints are all on the supersize it
bandwagon battling it out to see who can offer more for less.
Supersize Me
About 10 years ago Morgan Spurlock made a
film called Super Size Me. He
recorded 30 days of eating all his meals at McDonald’s. Everything he ate or
drank during that time came from McDonald’s. In the movie viewers watched the
33-year-old’s physical condition deteriorate day by day as he gained 25 pounds in one month of living on fast food.
Forget Supersize Me
In 2014, John Cisna, a high school biology teacher
from Ankeny, Iowa, documented opposite results from eating McDonald's fare as he ate nothing but McDonald's for three months. Unlike Spurlock, he managed to lose 37 lbs and says he also lowered his
cholesterol.
Mr. Cisna said he was largely inspired to
do the experiment by Spurlock’s film, which
he called irresponsible journalism because it didn’t teach kids choice.
Cisna’s My McDonalds Diet
John Cisna says he set out to prove that
it is possible to lose weight by eating nothing but McDonald's for breakfast,
lunch and dinner for 90 days straight. Let’s take a closer look to see whether
he managed to do what he said he was doing and see whether he fits in the Fact or Not category.
Calories In vs Calories Out
It’s not surprising that Mr Cisna lost 37lbs.
If you’re overweight to begin with and you cut calories by dieting, you will lose
weight and your cholesterol, your blood sugar and your triglycerides will all
come down as well. However, it has nothing to do with the food from McDonald’s - it
has to do with calories in vs calories out and not where the
calories come from.
It turns out that Cisna has lost
significant amounts of weight before with other plans including Weight Watchers
and Jenny Craig. He was not able to maintain the loss before and I’ll wager he
won’t this time either.
At his age Mr. Cisna’s was consuming
about 3,300 calories a day to maintain his weight. By cutting back his calorie
intake to 2,000 calories a day, there is no other possible outcome but to lose
weight no matter what or where he was eating. In addition, he also started
going for a brisk 45 minute walk each and every day, something he was not doing
before.
It had nothing to do with eating fast foods!
The
Math
It’s not an exact science, but you need
to cut about 3,500 calories in order to lose one pound of weight. To lose one
pound a week, you need to consume 500 calories less per day than usual each day
of the week. Or, you could burn 500 calories by walking briskly for 1 hour
every day.
To lose 37 pounds, Cisna had to cut
129,500 calories from his diet! 139,500/90 days = 1,349 fewer calories per day.
To lose that amount of weight in 90 days,
he needed to eat 1350 calories less than the 3,300 he had been consuming before. That
brings him to his 2,000 calories a day diet at McDonald’s. The extra 400 calories
he was burning up by walking gave him a bit of leeway for the odd snack at
home.
Was Cisna’s Hypothesis Fact or Not
The
fundamental rule in testing a hypothesis is that you change only one thing and
keep everything else the same. That is the only way
to know whether or not your hypothesis is correct. In other words, Mr. Cisna
would have had to figure out exactly how many calories he was taking in before
the trial and then make sure he kept eating exactly the same amount of calories
during the entire trial. He would also have had to maintain the same
lifestyle in terms of calorie expenditure. His experiment was a failure in that
regard as well because he started walking for 45 minutes each and every day,
something he was not doing before.
It's hard to imagine that Mr. Cisna didn't know this since he is a science teacher. The entire trial diet was a sham and more
of a publicity stunt. The fact that he involved his students in this so-called
experiment makes one wonder whether he should be teaching science.
This experiment had nothing to do with whether or not you could lose weight by eating at McDonalds.
Mr Cisna admits that he didn't exercise
or watch his calorie intake before he went on this diet. He also doesn’t
tell us what type of food he was eating before the diet. Was he already a
regular customer at McDonalds?
Which brings us to the point of this
article: Was Mr Cisna testing for the whether or not you could lose weight by
eating at McDonald’s or was he testing to see whether or
not you could lose weight by cutting down your calorie intake in
conjunction with an exercise program?
It’s clear he was testing for the second hypothesis: can you lose weight by cutting calories and exercising.
Mr. Cisna said he was largely inspired to
do the experiment by Spurlock’s film Supersize It, which he called irresponsible journalism because it didn’t teach
kids choice. If he considers Spurlock’s film irresponsible journalism, what
would he call a sham study by a science teacher?
As a science teacher, Mr. Cisna knows
that in order for his experiment to be valid he would have had to maintain his
3,300 a day calorie diet and simply switch to getting all his calories entirely
from McDonalds. He should also have astained from taking up any form of
exercise he wasn’t doing before. Had he held both his calorie intake and his level of physical activity constant, he would have made the point that all calories
are the same no matter where you get them from; and that’s assuming he
wasn’t a regular at McDonald’s before he started the experiment!
The Verdict: NOT FACT
