Dangerous experiment: Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. Photo: Alami
August 20, 2004 Advertising appeared in British morning newspapers warning of the dangers of fast food. “If you eat too much and do too little, it's bad for you,” read the headline, paid for by McDonald's, the global fast-food chain that sells about 2.3 million Chicken McNuggets annually in America alone.
McDonald's hasn't had any sudden qualms about the long-term health impacts of its menu. He was in damage control mode ahead of the September release of the documentary that had everyone — and certainly the entire fast food business — talking about. It was Super Size Me, directed by Morgan Spurlock, who has died aged 53.
Spurlock's film was that rarest of things: a must-see independent documentary that led to lasting change. The idea was that Spurlock would eat nothing but McDonald's three times a day for 30 days. He also adjusted his exercise regimen so that he averaged 5,000 steps, as most Americans do. And where it was offered, he chose a large size option from the menu.
The impact was immediate and terrifying. On the second day he vomited from the car window. On the fourth day, he began to feel a throbbing sensation in his abdomen and genitals. “I started to notice pressure on my chest and by day nine I became incredibly depressed,” he said. He became addicted. “I ate the food and felt fantastic within an hour. Then I will feel depressed again.”
Doctors monitoring Spurlock warned that he was putting himself in danger. His liver, they said, was “turning into pate.” By the end of the month, his body weight had increased by one-tenth and his cholesterol levels had skyrocketed. His girlfriend, a vegan chef, added that Spurlock «had a hard time getting back on his feet.»
Super Size Me changed the way people think about food and how McDonald's sells and markets it. The consequences were immediate. By late 2004, the chain began phasing out the «super size» option from which the movie took its name (though you could still order extra-large fries «off the menu»). Even before the documentary hit theaters, McDonald's — by pure coincidence — launched a new «Go Active» menu.
Spurlock wasn't the only one to warn of the dangers posed by large corporations. Naomi Klein's book No Logo, published five years earlier, argued that multinational corporations were more interested in selling their brands than making good products. In 2001, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation said the food industry was intentionally putting us on unhealthy diets.
But none of them could compete with the shock waves created by Super Size Me. This hit McDonald's profits, which fell to a 30-year low in the UK by the end of 2004. And it inspired others — would Jamie Oliver, for example, declare war on unhealthy school lunches and the infamous «turkey twizzlers»? Didn't Spurlock go overboard at first?
Super Size Me's impact was partly due to its message: deep down, we all knew that fast food was bad for us. But it was also due to the gonzo nature of his filmmaking — vomiting, bedroom troubles — which may have owed more to spoofs like MTV's Jackass than to established American documentarians like Errol Morris.
After the fast food diet, Spurlock felt depressed, sluggish and had headaches. Photo: Alamy
Whatever the recipe, Super Size Me was a huge success. Made for just $65,000, it grossed $22 million. For many years after this, Spurlock could not eat in public without someone judging his food choices. «Every time I'm in a restaurant, people walk by and look at what I'm eating,» he told podcaster Tim Ferriss. “And sometimes they comment and see what’s on my plate. They'll say, «Hey, hey, better than McDonald's, right?»
However, there was some backlash. In the same newspaper ad published before the film's release, McDonald's claimed that it would take the average customer six years to eat the number of hamburgers that Spurlock processed.
Spurlock was also later criticized for not disclosing that he was an alcoholic or for admitting that drinking alcohol while filming the film may have affected his health. It's also worth noting that McDonald's and its competitors are hardly struggling today: McDonald's revenue grew 15 percent in 2023 to $6.69 billion. A 20-year-old documentary is powerless against the blinding radiance of the Golden Arches.
Spurlock married his vegan nutritionist girlfriend in Fiji, 2006. Photo: Alamy
After Spurlock finished his experiment, the weight dropped. However, he couldn't muster the willpower to ever go to McDonald's again. “The fries taste like smoked plastic,” he told the Guardian. “If I take a bite of a Big Mac, at that very moment it will taste great, and then I will chew it and swallow it, and I will have this aftertaste in my mouth, it is … a McFilm that I cannot describe.”
Whatever the psychological impact, the physical consequences were even more serious. “The most important thing is my ability to gain weight. Since I did the movie, I can easily gain four or five pounds in a weekend. It’s incredible how my body became unstable,” he said. “Part of this happens with age, but also with the addition of extra fat cells in your body that weren't there before. When you create fat cells to store fat, lose weight and those fat cells get smaller, they don't magically disappear. They're still in your body, still floating around, waiting for you to overeat so they can store more fat.»
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