' Super Size Me Morgan Spurlock's affable, muckraking documentary, elaborates on some facts that everyone seems to know: mainly, that the United States is in the midst of an epidemic of obesity and related health problems, and that fast food is bad for you. His attempt to demonstrate the link between these two matters, using himself as an experimental subject, represents an entertaining, and occasionally horrifying, statement of the obvious. After all, even the Mc Donald's corporation, while defending itself in a lawsuit filed by two overweight teenagers, submitted briefs citing the well-known health risks of its highly processed, high-fat foods. Mc Donald's' victory in the case was followed by the passage in Congress of a bill shielding the industry from future liability. Like suits against tobacco companies, such cases - and the larger issue of the relationship between legal consumables and public health - turn on the question of responsibility. Does it rest with those of us who eat, drink and inhale the products that clog our arteries and corrode our livers and lungs, or with the companies who sell and advertise them? Mr. Spurlock's answer, emphatically anticorporate on its surface, is perhaps more ambiguous than it seems. After all, no one forced him to consume nothing but Mc Donald's food - three meals and more a day, from hot cakes and sausages at dawn to Double Quarter Pounder combo meals late at night - for 30 days. It was his choice. Supervised by three doctors and a nutritionist, and observed by his girlfriend, a professional vegan cook (identified by an on-screen caption as 'healthy chef Alex Mr. Spurlock, a fit, active New Yorker, happily set out to ruin his health, and succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. There was some weight gain - 18 pounds by the end of the experiment - and also mood swings, loss of sex drive and nearly catastrophic.
Theatrical release poster For the Beavis and Butt-head episode, see Supersize Me ( Beavis and Butt-head). 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 Mc Donald'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 Mc Donald'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.[3] As a result, the then-32-year-old Spurlock gained 11.1 kilograms (24 lb a 13% body mass increase, increased his cholesterol to 230 mg/d L, 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 (now ex-wife 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 Mc Donald's on behalf of two overweight girls, who, it was alleged, became obese as a result of eating Mc Donald's food ( Pelman v. Mc Donald's Corp., 237 F. Supp. 2d 512).[4] Spurlock points out that although the lawsuit against Mc Donald's failed (and subsequently many state legislatures have legislated against product liability actions.
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