John Cisna’s All-McDonald’s Diet Illustrates Importance of Choice

Eating at fast food restaurants causes weight gain, right? Didn’t Morgan Spurlock show this in his 2004 documentary Super Size Me, in which he ate only at McDonald’s for thirty days and gained twenty-five pounds as a result?

Not so fast.

As reported by KCCI News, high school science teacher John Cisna ate only at McDonald’s for ninety days yet managed to lose thirty-seven pounds. How is that possible? One might think he ate only salads, but no, he ate many different items from the menu—even Big Macs and ice cream sundaes. He was able to lose weight because he limited his total food intake to a reasonable 2,000 calories per day, and he walked for forty-five minutes per day for exercise. Not only did his weight go down, but his blood cholesterol level dropped from 249 to 170 as well.

Some writers claim that Cisna’s all-McDonald’s diet is unhealthy. Although Cisna and his students made an effort to make his diet nutritionally sound, that wasn’t his primary purpose. As Cisna explains, the point of the experiment was not to recommend eating only McDonald’s; “The point . . . is: Hey, it’s a choice. We all have choices. It's our choices that make us fat. Not McDonald’s.”

Cisna has provided a dramatic demonstration of the fact that we guide our own fates by the choices we make. This is a truth that more Americans desperately need to grasp.

Related:

• Independent Thinking, Morality, and Liberty
• Hats Off to McDonald’s and Coca-Cola for Protesting Soda Ban

About David H. Mirman

David H. Mirman holds a BA in biology from the University of Pennsylvania and an MS in genetics from UC Davis. He is the Chair of Biological Sciences at Mount San Antonio College where he teaches general biology, genetics, cell and molecular biology, and physiology.

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