- Here's the actual human evidence of what happens
if you were to eat McDonald's for 30 days straight.
Huge, thank you to Hello Fresh for sponsoring this video.
- What would happen if I ate nothing
but McDonald's for 30 days straight, would I suddenly be
on the fast track to becoming an obese American?
- Well, it really depends on how much food you're consuming.
You're gonna be consuming more calories
than your basal metabolic rate.
You will be putting on weight.
- [Narrator] America has now become
the fattest nation in the world.
Nearly 100 million Americans
are today either overweight or obese.
- And the way that they do that classification
is through the BMI system.
And I know the BMI system has a lot of room
not necessarily for improvement, but for inaccuracy even
but it's still an accurate representation of risk.
Not for everybody because this is a general usage
of BMI as opposed to individual usage.
'Cause if I see someone who's very muscular
and has a high BMI
I know that they're not overweight,
but in general as a general rule
it's still good to look at it for population metrics.
- [Narrator] When I was growing up
my mother cooked dinner every single day
and we never ate out.
- Sitting down for dinners has been linked
to lower rates of obesity,
but it's not a causal relationship.
We don't know if that's exactly what's causing people
to lose weight or is it because they're more likely
to be affluent and have secure meals,
therefore have money to spend on healthy foods.
There's a lot of variables here that aren't controlled for
which is why we can't say it's a causation.
It's just a correlation,
two things happening at the same time, more bear hair.
- [Narrator] Obesity is now second only
to smoking as a major cause of preventable death in America.
Yet each day, one in four Americans
visits a fast food restaurant.
- I imagine that number's even higher today.
Look at Ryan Treyhan video.
He's in McDonald's every day and it's not his fault.
He has $5 to spend on food,
he's gonna go to the cheapest food.
- [Narrator] McDonald's alone operates
more than 30,000 joints
in over 100 countries on six continents
and feeds more than 46 million people worldwide every day.
- It's interesting because malnutrition before
and still in some parts of the world
was due to not having enough food, food insecurity.
And now in many developed nations,
you're having malnutrition being as a result
of excess food or not the right food in excess
- [Narrator] Are the food companies solely
to blame for this epidemic?
Where does personal responsibility stop
and corporate responsibility begin?
- To me, that's a false dichotomy.
Is it personal decision or is it corporate responsibility?
It's both.
The company has to care about its user
or its eater and the person has to care
about their own health and be educated about their health.
- [Narrator] I knew if I was going to do this,
I would need some serious medical supervision.
So I enlisted the help of not one but three doctors
a cardiologist, a gastroenterologist,
and a general practitioner.
- The general practitioner should be the quarterback
in the situation, it's what I do.
If the family doctor is sending him to a specialist
it's to consult that specialist,
get some kind of explanation
for something that's very complex that's occurring.
Now, if a patient has diarrhea, GERD, dyspepsia,
not every one of those patients needs a gastroenterologist.
It's very important that we understand
that primary care doctors are not refferologists.
Now the gastroenterologist here will probably be tracking
and making sure that he's not having any kind of GI upset.
I think that doctor's probably gonna offer
the least value in this situation.
And the cardiologist can offer some preventive statistics
about high cholesterol, high saturated fat intake
but the primary care doctor could do the exact same thing.
Usually without any of the complicated lingo
and at a much more reasonable price point.
- Your general health is outstanding.
- Your kidney function, your liver function,
they were all perfect.
- Your blood level's fine.
Your iron level is good as well.
- I expect to see an increase in your triglycerides
because that will can be affected.
You're at 87 now and I think that will change.
- What you could also see is elevations in liver enzymes
because what you can have happen
is a fatty liver disease
where you actually have fatty deposits into the liver,
which cause liver inflammation.
And as a result, you have elevations and that your AST
and ALT, which are markers of what we call liver function
but it's really liver inflammation.
- [Narrator] I also went to a fancy New York wellness center
to meet a registered dietician
who would help track my progress.
- Is this nutritionist
and dietician gonna help him eat unhealthy?
What are they gonna track?
- Your calorie needs are gonna be averaging
about 2,500 calories a day.
As far as fat goes for 2,500 calories,
you're gonna want about 80 grams of total fat in a day.
The saturated fat, which is a component of total fat,
You wanna have less than 25 grams a day.
- Probably even lower
if you don't want your cholesterol going on.
- Don't try to overindulge too much.
- Yeah.
- Good luck, Morgan.
- Great, thank you. - Great, thank you.
(upbeat music)
- I will only supersize it if they ask me
and I can only eat things
that are for sale over the counter at McDonald's,
water included.
If McDonald's doesn't sell it, I can't eat it.
I have to have everything on the menu
at least once over the next 30 days.
And I have to have three squares a day,
breakfast, lunch and dinner
- But you could also choose the types of foods
you're eating even in McDonald's and make them healthy.
They do serve salads.
- [Attendant] Hello, can I help you?
- Yeah, could I get the double quarter pounder
with cheese meal?
- [Attendant] I've got supersize.
- I think I'm gonna have to go supersize.
Look at that.
Look at that Coke.
- But then what was the purpose of going to the nutritionist
and dietician who told him
he shouldn't need over 2,500 calories?
That meal alone is probably 2000 calories.
- See, now's the time of the meal
when you start getting the Mc stomach ache
you start getting the Mc tummy,
right now I got some Mc gas.
That's rocking.
- [Narrator] Are you sweating there?
- My arms, I feel like I got some mixed sweats going.
- He's so corny, it's painful watching.
Back to the movie in just a second
but first I wanna thank Hello Fresh
for sponsoring this video.
It should not come as a surprise that as a doctor
I don't recommend eating only fast food
for 30 straight days.
Fortunately, there are healthier options
for everyday dining like Hello Fresh.
If you watched any of my cooking videos before,
you know I'm not exactly an iron chef
which is why I like Hello Fresh
whose recipes come with easy to follow instructions
and all the ingredients I need saving me time
on shopping and prepping my meals as well as less waste.
They deliver the freshest meat, fish produce
that goes from the farm right to my door in under a week.
And I could really taste that difference.
I'm talking Mexicali black bean soup, spinach caprese salad,
nacho mac 'n' cheese, delicious.
They also make it easy for me to increase
the size of my order, which allows me to feed a whole group
or enjoy some leftovers throughout the week.
There are all sorts of options
for different diets like vegetarian, pescatarian and more
which makes it so easy to stick to your goals.
Go to hellofresh.com and use promo code, DOCTORMIKE16.
Remember, doctor is spelled out and it's all in caps
for 16 free meals across seven boxes and three free gifts.
All right, let's get back to the movie.
- I don't feel good today.
Not that I feel sick, but I just feel really depressed.
- You're not gonna get depressed off any McDonald's,
that's not what I'm trying to say,
but if you don't get your nutrients
you will experience mood changes and instability.
You're exerting a lot of willpower to only eat the same food
that you're sick of, that you don't like
that you know is unhealthy.
This is taking significant, a mental toll on you.
So no this isn't a regular day in your everyday life.
- [Narrator] I really noticed I'll eat some
and just a little while later, I'll be hungry again
and I'll want more.
- You're getting such a strong insulin spike,
glycemic index on that food is probably so high.
You instantly wanna refill and replenish
that high that you got, which is basically a dopamine hit
each time you eat one of those McDonald's meals.
And because they're primarily made
of quick digestible carbs, the fries, the white bun
you do get hungry real quick.
- It's hard for me to watch him go through this.
I worry about his health.
He's exhausted by the end of the day.
- Me too and I don't even eat McDonald's every day.
- And now, he gets all jacked
up on sugar and caffeine and then he crashes.
And then when we do have sex, I gotta tell you
he's not quite as energetic as he used to be.
- Well, yeah, he's crashing hard.
So he is gonna have less drive,
less circulation, less energy.
- I think the saturated fats are starting
to impede the blood flow to his penis
and he's having a hard time getting it up.
- My body officially hates me.
- All the vitamins that you see here, vitamin E, thiamin,
riboflavin, niacin, and so on are all under 50%
of what you need.
- He's not even getting the RDA
which is the required dietary allowance
of some of these vitamins and minerals.
- [Narrator] The total cholesterol is 165 before,
now it's 225.
- Wow, that's a crazy fast increase
but likely due to the huge amount
of saturated fat content that he's consuming
and lack of fiber.
- These numbers are absolutely outrageous.
Oka, for the first time we're seeing uric acid elevated.
So you're giving yourself hyperuricemia
and the danger of hyperuricemia-
- Eating a ton of meat.
- Kidney stones.
The results for your liver are obscene beyond anything
I would've thought.
- [Narrator] In only 30 days of eating nothing
but McDonald's I gained 24 and a half pounds.
My liver turned to fat.
- His liver didn't turn to fat, had fatty deposits.
- [Narrator] My body fat percentage went
from 11 to 18% still below the national average
of 22% for men and 30% for women.
I nearly doubled my risk of coronary heart disease
making myself twice as likely to have heart failure.
- Not only did he develop high blood pressure,
his cholesterol is through the roof,
he's now in the overweight,
if not obese category with his BMI.
So his rate definitely went higher than just double.
- [Narrator] I felt depressed and exhausted
most of the time, my mood swung on a dime
and my sex life was non-existent.
I craved this food more and more when I ate it
and got massive headaches when I didn't
and my final blood test,
many of my body functions showed signs of improvement
but the doctors were less than optimistic.
- They probably started returning to normal
'cause he started feeling terrible,
so he changed what he was ordering.
Remember it's not just that he's eating McDonald's
it's what he's ordering in McDonald's.
If you eat milkshakes multiple times a day,
it's very different
than getting a chicken sandwich three times a day
the calories are different.
The macronutrients are different.
Therefore the effects
on your blood work is gonna be different.
- Should people eat fast food?
- No.
- It certainly needs to be very restricted
and balanced with overall a healthy diet.
- We're not as doctors
parents to tell people what to do.
We can tell them that the risks
of eating these unhealthy foods often
is gonna put them at serious risk.
But at the same reality, we also have to be pragmatic.
We're aware of so many things
that put a risk into our patients' lives
that we know we can't control everything.
So trying to be perfect
actually usually yields to worse outcomes
'cause it creates problems we weren't expecting
or even destroys the initial goal
after a while 'cause it's unsustainable.
So eating fast foods generally unhealthy,
eating it for 30 days on its own is a definite no-no.
- [Narrator] I consumed 30 pounds of sugar from their food.
I also took in 12 pounds of fat.
- I hate these demonstrations.
You remember when I lost my mind on Freaky Eaters?
Oh my God.
- We wanted to show him the amount of French.
- Show, show the fries.
- [Narrator] If this ever growing paradigm
is going to shift, it's up to you.
But if you decide to keep eating this way, go ahead.
Over time, you may find yourself getting as sick as I did.
And you may wind up here or here.
I guess the big question is who do you wanna see go first?
You or them?
- I love that he's hoping to put McDonald's outta business.
Good luck sir.
Check out "The Harsh Reality of Living At 800 Pounds."
Very important video, click here
and check that out and again huge thank you
to Hello Fresh sponsoring this video.
As always, stay happy and healthy.
(upbeat music)