Supersize Me

Obesity is a concern for many people that eat out a lot. The United States is known to be the fattest country in the world. Actually, that is true…Well, specifically, Mississippi is the fattest state in America where 1/4 people are obese. People have tried to come up with a way to stop fast-food restaurants from expanding by explaining to people that it’s dangerous for your health. Obviously that is true, but to prove that it’s dangerous to your life is another story. Morgan Spurlock decided to take matter into his own hands. For one month, Morgan’s goal is to eat McDonalds for every meal and see how his health develops.

The first 2 days seemed good for Morgan. He enjoyed eating the food as everyone does and he had no problems. The 3^rd day, however, while he was eating his meal in his car, he felt queasy and threw up out his window. Hs exact words the next day were, “Once you get through the 3^rd day, you’re good.” Every time he checked up at the doctors, they came to a conclusion that if he didn’t change his diet, that he would be at risk for health problems.

There are 3 rules to this concept:

1) He can only eat foods that are sold in McDonalds as well as drinks.

2) He has to eat at least 1 of every product within the month.

3) If the cashier asks to supersize, he has to say yes.

He also tried to level the circumstances by becoming as close as a regular American as possible. How he does this is that he has to limit himself to at most 5000 steps per day. If he feels he’s going to go over, he has to take a cab or stay in and order McDonalds for delivery. In the end, it was clear that an all-diet McDonalds was unhealthy and the statistics showed and proved that. Morgan went back to his normal diet as well as back to his normal health.

This documentary is, in my opinion, one of the most educational videos I’ve seen. I enjoyed watching it because it had a direct effect on me since I do eat a lot of fast-food. The visuals were well shot as well as the narration. I found that the clips where he talks about related topics (such as schools using junk food instead of healthy food) were very effective as well as it tied in to what Morgan was talking about before. A lot of things they mention put a different perspective in your mind. One part they showed how much sugar consumers digest from just soda in a week and it was a full glass bottle. And although I do have a new perspective with fast-food, I still tend to buy McDonalds even with this new knowledge, but now I don’t eat as much as before.

I strongly recommend everyone watching this, teenagers and adults because it really educates you about this serious issue and really makes you think differently about fast-food restaurants.

A Haunting (Hell House)

Ghost stories are a great way to entertain people. But for the Beckwith, they were part of a ghost story. Before we get into this story, let me explain a little bit about the show, “A Haunting”.

A Haunting is a documentary-style show that aired on the Discovery Channel. Every episode, it follows an unfortunate family’s experience with the paranormal in their home. It’s all based on actual events, however, the names of the people may have changed for security purposes. Each show is an hour long or around 45 minutes without any commercials.

The episode that I watched was called, “Hell House”. The summary of this true story is that a family moved in to a new house. The youngest female daughter (she’s also the second born child) had a suspicion about this house but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Right when they stepped in the house she felt unsafe and uncomfortable. After a couple of nights in the new house, the youngest and the oldest child started to experience unnatural things in their room. When they told their mother, she finally began to listen to them and believe them. They called in Ed and Lorraine Warren, a psychic research team, to investigate the house. The Warrens were the ones to resolve the Amityville Horror. After their short investigation, the Warrens agreed that their house was definitely haunted and said they would return in a few days to try and resolve it. When they returned, they brought a Medium and 2 researchers to record the paranormal activity with video and audio.

A Medium is someone who can communicate and interact with the spiritual world from the physical world.

A bit after they all started to get settled in the house, the Medium suddenly started to shake and began to write something on a piece of paper hastily. When she stopped, they all looked at the paper and saw she wrote “get out” several times. Frightened for their lives, the Beckwith family decided to call an exorcist. Because they can’t do an exorcism on a place, they had to use the Medium as the gateway to put an exorcism on the demon in the house. It was a battle that took over 8 hours until the demon was finally vanquished. The Beckwith family was finally safe from evil.

My personal opinion of the documentary was that it was very well done. I watched many episodes of A Haunting and all of them are very similar. The lighting is good because there’s not too much light that makes the scene more dark and scary, but there’s enough light that you know what’s happening. The composition is well done and the acting is pretty good as well.

For those of you who haven’t watched it, I suggest you do watch it because it does have a different documentary style plus it gives a lot of suspense to the viewer. It is scary at times but that’s what makes it an intriguing and addicting show.