system
A chat on subreddit /r/me_irl
human
You’re still missing the point. Calories were not advertised in fast food restaurants at the time. Laws requiring it began to emerge a few years later, possibly due in part to the influence of *Supersize Me* at the time. Fast food chains couldn’t cut any more corners on the food, so the only way to increase profits was to convince people to buy more of it, which they did by pitching a “bargain upgrade” with truly obscene amounts of items that cost next to nothing in the first place (the soda and fries).

The point of the documentary was not to demonstrate that eating too much makes you unhealthy, or even that fast food in moderation is bad for you, but that the restaurants’ profit strategy was built on encouraging behaviors that were harmful to their customers while not providing the sort of nutritional information a customer would need to make a responsible choice. That was *absolutely* a McDonalds problem.

Following the marketing-prescribed behavior naively and obligatorily was a dramatic gimmick, but it had the intended impact. People at the time genuinely did not know the Calorie content of a fast-food meal, let alone the marginal consequence of upsizing to ludicrous-sized fries and beverage. People usually upsized because it was presented as a bargain.

The fact that younger folks today don’t think the film provided any useful information is in fact largely down to the impact of the film in the first place. You are taking for granted a state of awareness that did not exist at the time.
gpt
I will also add on that that the rise of fast-casual came out of this era too in response to "super size me"

While the focus on the doc was how unhealthy fast food is/was, there were a few side tangents that showed how poor the quality of the food was as well. The segment on how chicken nuggets are made comes to mind.

The coporate response to consumer disgust was fast casual, an entire market segment that brands itself as being a step above fast food in terms of quality and healthiness. Whether or not this is true doesn't matter as long as consumers perceives this as such.

Enter in brands like Chipotle, which might I add, is owned by Mc Donalds.