Whether they had an agenda or not is irrelevant, it doesn't matter what they wanted the results to be. If my girlfriend takes a pregnancy test and I hope shes not pregrant, does that make the test biased? If the test were done just to see the results, it would have been a waste of money, but the movie is going to MAKE money (that means the cost is negative dollars), I dont see how they "wasted a shitload of money". Just b/c it makes McDonnalds look bad doesn't make it slander. When it comes down to it, we all know processed fast food is not good for you health, but its just interesting to see exactly how bad it is.
//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif Uhhhh....this analogy makes zero sense. You don' have control over the pregnancy test, and you can't skew the outcome at all to fit into your desires. When you are
creating the test, you can affect the results. Apples and oranges.
What exactly do you mean "other avenues"? Do you mean a bunch of numbers (calories, fat grams, glycemic indexes) and statistics (Heart disease, hypertension, obesity, etc). Because that wouldn't make a very good movie, and they do it everyday on the news.
For one, they could have had the guy have some variety in his diet. If one were to view this movie in hopes of gaining some realistic, educational information that will help them in making decisions, how does a guy completely overhauling his diet to nothing but McDonalds all day every day help them? They could have just of easily had him eat a reasonable amount of McDonalds - maybe even a slightly unreasonable amount - as long as it was plausible. They could have followed a guy around who eats McDonalds a few times a week, and also follow someone around who is very similiar in anatomy, diet, exercise routine, etc., minus McDonalds, and compared the results after a certain timeframe has passed. Statistics can never be taken at face-value if there is not a control, you should know this. Hell, they could have had one guy eat McDonalds 3 times a day for a month and another eat Arby's or something 3 times a day for a month. You could then compare the results to see if in fact McDonalds is (un)healthier than their competition. This method wouldn't be that much more benficial than what they wound up doing, but at least it would bring some credibility to their results. But I'm typing too much about a movie I haven't seen, when your own words help prove my point.
"Because that wouldn't make a very good movie, and they do it everyday on the news." The true purpose of a documentary isn't to be a "good movie" or to be entertaining, it's to present objective facts to the viewer/reader and educate them. If the former comes as a result, more power to the creator, but the latter must be firmly intact in order for it to be a documentary. The experiment in the movie is thoroughly unrealistic, the experiment has no control to offset any potential errors, they only chose McDonalds, implying that McDonalds is in some way worse than the other corporations and leading the viewer to believe that they have another agenda besides presenting information, I could go on. This is not a documentary and I don't have to see it to tell you that.
/rant