Three Monkeys Online Magazine

Supersize me? Fast Food's Power Without Responsibility.

Depending on what side of the sesame seed bun you stand on, it’s either the best or worst of times for the fast food industry. Sure, the fast food chains have been taking some big hits of late; not least from Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me which has helped put burgers and fries firmly back on - or off - the menu on both sides of the Atlantic. Spurlock’s low budget film – which saw the man behind MTV’s I Bet You Will subsist on a supersized diet of McDonald’s for 30 days to considerable detrimental impact to his health - has been largely credited with McDonald’s preemptive decision to launch the GoActive Happy Meal one day before the film had its US premiere. Showing remarkable powers of prescience, McDonald’s also decided to employ Spurlock’s weapon of choice – the pedometer – as a free GoActive giveaway to offset any further criticisms raised by the film’s central contention that McDonald’s fails to make its customers aware of the dangers of a sedentary Big Mac based lifestyle.

The film, which helped Spurlock bag the best director prize at the Sundance film festival, shows in graphic detail (we see Spurlock vomiting out of his car window on only the second day of his 30 days in the wilderness dietary experiment) the effects of a fast food only diet. Predictable gags about reduced libido aside, Spurlock’s film is a potent and timely reminder of the health dangers associative of slavishly following a junk food lifestyle. Considered by his medical team to enjoy above average health before his junk food splurge, Spurlock’s cholesterol level raced to 65 points as he gained an extra 25 pounds and saw his liver turn to the sort of toxic sludge normally associated with the drinking habits of the more battle hardened residents of skid row.

Such has been the unexpected success of Spurlock’s film that Soso Whaley, an animal trainer and adjunct fellow of the Washington based Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank ('a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government'), embarked on her own 30 day McDonald’s diet as a response to Supersize Me. Whaley, who claims to have lost 10lbs and dropped her cholesterol by 40 points, intends to release her own alternative documentary later in the year. Critics point to the fact that, despite Whaley’s insistence on being baggage free, the Competitive Enterprise Institute issued a press release claiming that Whaley would “eat at McDonald’s for 30 days and lose weight” before she had even started the diet. Whaley herself has also strongly aligned herself with the fast food giants, decrying Spurlock’s efforts as “junk science”.

Speaking on Paul Harris’ St. Louis radio show (“The big 550 - KTRS”), Whaley attacked Spurlock’s deplorable assault on McDonald’s. "The thing that really kills me is that Morgan Spurlock claims he's going after a corporation or trying to 'save a population' but McDonald's doesn't own all of those restaurants. Some of those are owned by franchisees or families or smaller corporations, so to pick on McDonald's is really unfair."

Following Moore’s Law that you cannot be said to have earned your spurs as a guerilla documentary-maker until you have your own cottage backlash industry, Spurlock has also managed to raise the collective ire of Tech Central Station, an 'award winning news site that focuses on science and technology at the intersection of public policy.' According to Tech Central Station’s James K. Glassman, “Super Size Me is not a serious look at a real health problem. It is, instead, an outrageously dishonest and dangerous piece of self- promotion. Through his antics, Spurlock sends precisely the wrong image. He absolves us of responsibility for our fitness. We aren’t to blame for being fat; big corporations are!” Claiming that the numbers don’t add up, Tech Central calculate that Spurlock would need to have eaten more than 5,000 calories a day to account for his weight gain, yet super-sizing the highest calorie McDonald’s meal every day for 30 days and having the biggest breakfast every day with hash browns and a large orange juice still creates more than a 10,000 calorie shortfall. Tech Central Station counts The Coca Cola Company and McDonald’s among its corporate patrons who enjoy a shared faith in technology and free markets (that the opinions expressed on the site conveniently dovetail those of contributing corporate sponsors is mere happenstance).

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