Super Size Me is a 2004 American documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock's film follows a 30-day period from February 1 to March 2, 2003, during which he ate only McDonald's food. The film documents this lifestyle's drastic effect on Spurlock's physical and psychological well-being, and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit.
Spurlock ate at McDonald's restaurants three times per day, eating every item on the chain's menu at least once. Spurlock consumed an average of 20.9 megajoules or 5,000 kcal (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment. An intake of around 2,500 kcal within a healthy balanced diet is more generally recommended for a man to maintain his weight. As a result, the then-32-year-old Spurlock gained 11.1 kilograms (24Â lb), a 13% body mass increase, increased his cholesterol to 230Â mg/dL, and experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation in his liver. It took Spurlock fourteen months to lose the weight gained from his experiment using a vegan diet supervised by his then-girlfriend, a chef who specializes in gourmet vegan dishes.
The reason for Spurlock's investigation was the increasing spread of obesity throughout U.S. society, which the Surgeon General has declared "epidemic", and the corresponding lawsuit brought against McDonald's on behalf of two overweight girls, who, it was alleged, became obese as a result of eating McDonald's food (Pelman v. McDonald's Corp., 237 F. Supp. 2d 512). Spurlock argued that although the lawsuit against McDonald's failed (and subsequently many state legislatures have legislated against product liability actions against producers and distributors of "fast food") as well as the McLibel case, much of the same criticism leveled against the tobacco companies applies to fast food franchises whose product is both physiologically addictive and physically harmful.
The documentary was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature. A comic book related to the movie has been made with Dark Horse Comics as the publisher containing stories based on numerous cases of fast food health scares.
Content
As the film begins, Spurlock is in physically above average shape according to his personal trainer. He is seen by three physicians (a cardiologist, a gastroenterologist, and a general practitioner), as well as a nutritionist and a personal trainer. All of the health professionals predict the "McDiet" will have unwelcome effects on his body, but none expected anything too drastic, one citing the human body as being "extremely adaptable". Prior to the experiment, Spurlock ate a varied diet but always had vegan evening meals to appease his girlfriend, Alexandra, a vegan chef. At the beginning of the experiment, Spurlock, who stood 6Â feet 2Â inches (188Â cm) tall, had a body weight of 185 pounds (84Â kg).
Experiment
Spurlock followed specific rules governing his eating habits:
- He must fully eat three McDonald's meals per day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- He must consume every item on the McDonald's menu at least once over the course of the 30 days (he managed this in nine days).
- He must only ingest items that are offered on the McDonald's menu, including bottled water. All outside consumption of food is prohibited.
- He must only Super Size the meal when offered (i.e., he is not able to Super Size items himself; Spurlock was offered 9 times, 5 of which were in Texas).
- He will attempt to walk about as much as a typical United States citizen, based on a suggested figure of 5,000 standardized distance steps per day, but he did not closely adhere to this, as he walked more while in New York than in Houston.
On February 1, Spurlock starts the month with breakfast near his home in Manhattan, where there is an average of four McDonald's locations (and 66,950 residents, with twice as many commuters) per square mile (2.6 km²). He aims to keep the distances he walks in line with the 5,000 steps (approximately two miles) walked per day by the average American.
Day 2 brings Spurlock's first (of nine) Super Size meal, at the McDonald's on 34th Street and Tenth Avenue, which happens to be a meal made of a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Super Size French fries, and a 42-ounce Coke, which takes 22 minutes to eat. He experiences steadily increasing stomach discomfort during the process, and then vomits in the McDonald's parking lot.
After five days Spurlock has gained 9.5 pounds (4.3Â kg) (from 185.5 to about 195 pounds). It is not long before he finds himself experiencing depression, and he claims that his bouts of depression, lethargy, and headaches could be relieved by eating a McDonald's meal. His general practitioner describes him as being "addicted". At his second weigh-in, he had gained another 8 pounds (3.6Â kg), putting his weight at 203.5 pounds (92.3Â kg). By the end of the month he weighs about 210 pounds (95Â kg), an increase of about 24.5 pounds (about 11Â kg). Because he could only eat McDonald's food for a month, Spurlock refused to take any medication at all. At one weigh-in Morgan lost 1Â lb. from the previous weigh-in, and a nutritionist hypothesized that he had lost muscle mass, which weighs more than an identical volume of fat. At another weigh-in, a nutritionist said that he gained 17 pounds (7.7Â kg) in 12 days.
Spurlock's girlfriend, Alexandra Jamieson, attests to the fact that Spurlock lost much of his energy and sex drive during his experiment. It was not clear at the time whether or not Spurlock would be able to complete the full month of the high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, and family and friends began to express concern.
On Day 21, Spurlock has heart palpitations. His internist, Dr. Daryl Isaacs, advises him to stop what he is doing immediately to avoid any serious health problems. He compares Spurlock with the protagonist played by Nicolas Cage in the movie Leaving Las Vegas, who intentionally drinks himself to death in a matter of weeks. Despite this warning, Spurlock decides to continue the experiment.
On March 2, Spurlock makes it to day 30 and achieves his goal. In thirty days, he has "Supersized" his meals nine times along the way (five of which were in Texas, four in New York City). His physicians are surprised at the degree of deterioration in Spurlock's health. He notes that he has eaten as many McDonald's meals as most nutritionists say the ordinary person should eat in 8 years (he ate 90 meals, which is close to the number of meals consumed once a month in an 8-year period).
Findings
The documentary's end text states that it took Spurlock 5 months to lose 20.1 pounds (9.1Â kg) and another 9 months to lose the last 4.5 pounds (2.0Â kg). His then-girlfriend Alex, now his ex-wife, began supervising his recovery with her "detox diet", which became the basis for her book, The Great American Detox Diet.
The movie ends with a rhetorical question, "Who do you want to see go first, you or them?" This is accompanied by a cartoon tombstone, which reads "Ronald McDonald (1954â€"2012)", which originally appeared in The Economist in an article addressing the ethics of marketing to children.
A short epilogue was added to the film. Although it showed that the salads can contain even more calories than burgers if the customer adds liberal amounts of cheese and dressing prior to consumption, it also described McDonald's discontinuation of the Super Size option six weeks after the movie's premiere, as well as its recent emphasis on healthier menu items such as salads, and the release of the new adult Happy Meal. McDonald's denied that these changes had anything to do with the film.
Reception
Super Size Me premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where Morgan Spurlock won the Grand Jury Prize for directing the film. The film opened in the U.S. on May 7, 2004, and grossed a total of $11,536,423 worldwide, making it the 22nd highest-grossing documentary film of all time. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary but lost to the film Born into Brothels. Super Size Me received two thumbs up on At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper. The film overall received positive reviews from other critics, as well as movie-goers, and holds a 93% "Certified Fresh" rating on the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
Caroline Westbrook for BBC News stated that the hype for the documentary was proper "to a certain extent", because of its serious message, and that, overall, the film's "high comedy factor and over-familiarity of the subject matter render it less powerful than other recent documentaries â€" but it still makes for enjoyable, thought-provoking viewing."
Criticism and statistical notes
Critics of the film, including McDonald's, argue that the author intentionally consumed an average of 5,000 calories per day and did not exercise, and that the results would have been the same regardless of the source of overeating. One reviewer pointed out "he's telling us something everyone already knows: Fast food is bad for you." Robert Davis of Paste implied the film is an example of "how the ignorance of, or willful distortion of, basic scientific methods is used to manipulate public opinion."
In his reply documentary Fat Head, Tom Naughton "suggests that Spurlock's calorie and fat counts don't add up" and noted Spurlock's refusal to publish the Super Size Me food log. The Houston Chronicle reports: "Unlike Spurlock, Naughton has a page on his Web site that lists every item (including nutritional information) he ate during his fast-food month." The film addresses such objections by highlighting that a part of the reason for Spurlock's deteriorating health was not just the high calorie intake but also the high quantity of sugar relative to vitamins and minerals in the McDonald's menu, which is similar in that regard to the nutritional content of the menus of most other U.S. fast-food chains. About 1/3 of Spurlock's calories came from sugar. His nutritionist, Bridget Bennett, warned him about his excess intake of sugar from "milkshakes and Cokes". It is revealed toward the end of the movie that over the course of the diet, he consumed "over 30 pounds (14Â kg) of sugar, and over 12 pounds (5.4Â kg) of fat from their food".
After eating exclusively at McDonald's for one month, Soso Whaley said, "The first time I did the diet in April 2004, I lost 10 pounds (going from 175 to 165) and lowered my cholesterol from 237 to 197, a drop of 40 points." Of particular note was that she exercised regularly and did not insist on consuming more food than she otherwise would. Despite eating at only McDonald's every day, she maintained her caloric intake at around 2,000 per day.
After John Cisna, a high school science teacher, lost 60 pounds while eating exclusively at McDonald's for 180 days, he said, "I'm not pushing McDonald's. I'm not pushing fast food. I'm pushing taking accountability and making the right choice for you individually... As a science teacher, I would never show Super Size Me because when I watched that, I never saw the educational value in that... I mean, a guy eats uncontrollable amounts of food, stops exercising, and the whole world is surprised he puts on weight? What I'm not proud about is probably 70 to 80 percent of my colleagues across the United States still show Super Size Me in their health class or their biology class. I don't get it."
Impact
Six weeks after the film's debut, McDonald's dropped its supersize portions. In the United Kingdom, McDonald's publicized the website www.supersizeme-thedebate.co.uk, which included a response to and criticisms of the film. In theaters in the UK, the company placed a brief ad in the film's trailers, pointing to the URL and stating "See what we disagree with. See what we agree with".
Internationally, Super Size Me was a major success in the box office of Australia. Thus, McDonald's in Australia took that documentary very seriously, and tried to respond. They created an advertising campaign that included three elements: two advertisements for TV and one produced to be shown in movie theaters.
The film was the inspiration for the BBC television series The Supersizers... in which the presenters dine on historical meals and take medical tests to ascertain the impact on their health.
See also
- Criticism of fast food
- National Weight Control Registry
- New York State Restaurant Association v. New York City Board of Health
- John F. Banzhaf III#Obesity
References
External links
- Super Size Me on IMDb
- Super Size Me at AllMovie
- Super Size Me at Rotten Tomatoes
- Super Size Me at Box Office Mojo