(7 minute read)
I’ve been on an Office binge recently, re-watching the early seasons when I somehow started paying closer attention to the food that people were eating throughout each episode.
For example, we have of course Jim’s “Big Tuna” Tuna sandwich, Michael’s “I Want my Baby” Baby Back Ribs, and Creed’s “Nutritious but Death-smelling” Mung beans. Since this is an Analytics “show”, I thought it would be interesting and good practice to do an analyst’s run down of some of our beloved Office characters’ diets.
To do so I put together a full day’s meal plan based on foods that have been featured in The Office and compared it to the US government’s 2015-2020 “Dietary Guidelines for Americans”.
I then used Nutritionix, one of the largest online databases for food, to record each meal’s nutritional information and measured it against what was recommended for someone of his age. Currently, the beloved and often-hated Michael Scott has some of the richest data I was able to dig up for this analysis. Without further ado, let’s see the report…
I then used Nutritionix, one of the largest online databases for food, to record each meal’s nutritional information and measured it against what was recommended for someone of his age. Currently, the beloved and often-hated Michael Scott has some of the richest data I was able to dig up for this analysis. Without further ado, let’s see the report…
Michael Scott’s unofficial meal plan:
Breakfast:
One Sausage Egg & Cheese Biscuit (from Season 2 Episode 3: Office Olympics) with
One Sausage Egg & Cheese Biscuit (from Season 2 Episode 3: Office Olympics) with
One cup of Milk and Sugar (from Season 5 Episode 25: Broke)
Lunch:
One Whole Chicken Pot Pie (from Season 5 Episode 28: Company Picnic)
One Whole Chicken Pot Pie (from Season 5 Episode 28: Company Picnic)
Snack:
One Soft Pretzel (from Season 3 Episode 5: Initiation)
One Soft Pretzel (from Season 3 Episode 5: Initiation)
Dinner:
One Full Rack of Chili’s Original BBQ Baby Back Ribs (from Season 2 Episode 7: The Client)
One Full Rack of Chili’s Original BBQ Baby Back Ribs (from Season 2 Episode 7: The Client)
See the Appendix below for all Nutritional Information Screenshots!
All the plots below were made using RStudio! Full dataset available for download for the n3rds. Send me a message for the R code if interested, also for the n3rds.
Gathering all this data together, we have a break out of Michael’s total calories, fat, carbs, and protein by meal.
Macro Break Out by Meal
Takeaways:
- That soft pretzel does pack a punch in terms of Carbs.
- Naturally, most of his protein came from dinner, which was a full rack of ribs from his favorite restaurant, Chili’s.
- When comparing meals against each other, most of this looks fairly normal.
More interestingly, let’s see how Michael would fare against the recommended dietary intake for a 40-year old male?
The plots below are a full break out of nutritional info from Michael Scott’s meal plan, and they have been separated because each nutritional category has a different unit.
The salmon color is Michael’s consumption while the turquoise is the recommended intake for a 40-year old man like himself.
Full Nutrition Breakout
Takeaways from left to right, top down:
Calories:
- Michael exceeded his recommended calorie limit by around 30%. Is he trying to bulk up? Probably not.
Macros:
- Michael over doubled his Total Fat recommended goal, and nearly doubled his Total Carbohydrates goal as well. Not too good and definitely would be gaining more than his natural weight amount.
- He is not getting enough Dietary Fiber, but this is not uncommon among the general public. Eat more fiber kids, it helps with healthy digestion.
Other:
- He doubled the recommended cholesterol goal of 300mg per day. All of it coming from the ribs and sausage biscuit. Slow down man.
- Sodium is way too high, definitely over twice the recommended amount of 2,300 mg.
- Potassium is way too low. He didn’t eat any fruits and not nearly enough vegetables in the day to compensate for this.
Vitamins & Minerals:
The only Vitamin/Mineral he was close to matching in terms of percent of diet was Vitamin A thanks to the Chicken Pot Pie, which has some veggies in it.
The iron intake wasn’t bad and surprisingly the ribs didn’t help at all – dinner was very negligible here and the source came from other meals.
Milk helped his calcium intake, while nothing really contributed significantly to Vitamin C.
Final Report:
While some of these observations may look bad, I’m sure all of us have been on this type of diet at some point in our lives. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this stood around the 50+ percentile of average Americans. We’re not a very healthy country so to speak. Yes Michael Scott could be eating a lot healthier, and if he were to keep this up, he would definitely be gaining a few extra pounds. Still, let’s celebrate the fact that he does not consume a lot of sugar, consumed a good amount of Vitamin A, and ate enough protein to rebuild a lot of muscle.
D.N.A Reco:
He could use some green, leafy vegetables and some fruits to increase his intake of natural Vitamins and Minerals. And he should definitely decrease his consumption of fatty, salty foods to stay healthy and lower his cholesterol.
Overall, I’m going to give the boss a solid B- for his nutrition performance. Get to work Mr. Scott.
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Appendix
Source: nutritionix.com
