Interview: Morgan Spurlock

Junk Food Flunking

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

April 23, 2004—After Thanksgiving dinner at his grandmother's house in 2002, Morgan Spurlock sat on the couch, watching television in a state of turkey-induced lethargy. A news item came on about two teenaged girls who were attempting to sue McDonald's for making them fat. And, while struggling with his own bursting insides, Spurlock had an epiphany.

Could McDonald's really be blamed for making people fat? How much does free will enter into the equation? Spurlock decided that he would make like a guinea pig and try an experiment. He would eat McDonald's food three meals a day for 30 days and see what happened.

His stunt became the documentary Super Size Me, which opens in major cities May 7 and rolls out slowly across the rest of the country. But the stunt is just the clincher to get people in the door. Once they sit down to watch, they will be treated to an exhaustively researched treatise on advertising, big money, and the way America eats. Indeed, McDonald's recently made the decision to stop serving Super Size portions, though they claim it has nothing to do with Spurlock's movie.

Spurlock's research reveals that 60% of all Americans are either overweight or obese -- a condition in which somebody's weight is more than 20 percent higher than is recommended for that person's height -- and that one in four Americans visits a fast food restaurant every day. In a sequence accompanied by horrifying little cartoon drawings, we learn that obesity has been linked to a long-list of ailments, including: Hypertension, Coronary Heart Disease, Adult Onset Diabetes, Stroke, Gall Bladder Disease, Osteoarthritis, Sleep Apnea, Respiratory Problems, insulin resistance, several cancers, impaired fertility and lower back pain.

Spurlock began his experiment by setting up some rules. He must eat three meals a day at McDonald's, and nothing else, not even tap water or aspirin. He must not skip a meal, and he must Super Size his meal whenever asked. To measure his progress before, during and after the experiment, he enlisted a team of doctors, nutritionists and exercise gurus.

On the second day of his experiment we see Spurlock vomiting after eating his first Super Sized meal. "That was the only day I got physically sick. My body was like 'What are you doing to me? Give me some real food already!' It was a half-pound of meat, a double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a half-pound of fries, and a 42-ounce Coke. A Super Size Coke is 42 ounces! That's three and a half cans of soda. Nobody needs to be drinking three and a half cans of soda, ever! Thank goodness those are going to be gone."

During his first checkup, his nutritionist, Bridget Bennett, was shocked over Spurlock's intake of sugar. She insisted that if he intended to continue his diet he should at least stop drinking sodas and drink more water.

"I was drinking water the whole time," Spurlock insists during a recent trip to San Francisco, where his film played at the 47th International Film Festival. "I'd usually have a Coke, and then in the afternoon I'd have a milkshake, and then I'd have a couple bottles of water. I would usually buy water by the six-pack so that I'd always have water around in case I got to a restaurant that didn't sell water, or it was late at night and I'm in my apartment. I couldn't drink the tap water. That was part of the whole stipulation. I could only eat things from their store. So my fridge at my office was filled with McDonald's water and my fridge at home was filled with McDonald's water."

Spurlock consulted exercise experts and adjusted his daily routine to match the amount the average American exercises every day. Even walking to his neighborhood McDonald's exceeded the average, so he had to take taxis.

"I was an active person before this," he says. "I rode my bike all over New York City, to and from work and to meetings. Two weeks before the diet, I stopped exercising, except for walking. So taking that release out of my life probably didn't help. The depression started to set in about a week in. Around day nine, we were in California shooting. I was starting to feel mentally and physically exhausted, and I think the diet had a lot to do with it."

Surprisingly, Spurlock gained 24.5 pounds during the 30 days. His cholesterol level jumped from a healthy 165 to a dangerous 230. And his liver showed signs of damage that only alcoholics encounter.

Besides the more dangerous aspects of his diet, Spurlock experienced other undesirable side effects. "Oh, I smelled. Right after I got off the diet I was going to the sauna, just to kind of sweat out some of this stuff. That was special. I smelled like I walked right out of a deep fryer. It was unbelievable how bad I smelled. I was walking through the gym and somebody said, 'Man, somebody smells like burgers in here!' It was fantastic! I just felt terrible 95 percent of the time while on this diet."

But Spurlock was lucky to have Alex Jamieson as his girlfriend. As a vegan chef, Jamieson was probably more offended than most at her boyfriend's antics, but her skills in the kitchen allowed him to quickly get back on track. Toward the end of his 30 days, she invented a menu she called "Morgan's Detox Diet."

The film was shot in February of 2003 and the couple is still together. "I could never get rid of that girl. That girl is so fantastic!" He explains that though Alex joined him at the San Francisco film festival, she is spending the day at Alice Waters' famed Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley. He credits her with saving his life.

Spurlock recognizes that one man does not a science experiment make. So he tracked down a man named Don Gorske. Gorske ate his 19,000th Big Mac during the filming of Super Size Me, yet he is not overweight and his cholesterol level is normal.

But Spurlock is not convinced that Gorske represents an average test subject. "The thing about Don Gorske is, that's all he eats. He doesn't eat anything deep-fried. He doesn't eat any of the French fries. And 90% of his solid food diet is Big Macs. He loves them. So it's not like he's going off and getting salads and other things later on. He eats maybe two Big Macs a day and maybe two Cokes. A Big Mac's 590 calories: 1200 calories, plus two Cokes. Maybe 16-1800 calories in a day. So he's below what he needs, because he's tall. He's six-three or six-four. He's a prison guard. That's the other thing. So this guy's burning calories all day."

Before going on his fast-food binge, the 33 year-old West Virginia native worked as a producer in Manhattan, making commercials, industrials and music videos through his production company The Con. He has also written plays and created an internet-based television show, but Super Size Me is his first attempt at feature filmmaking. "We had a show on MTV that was cancelled and so we took that money and used it to make the movie.." Even before the film has opened commercially, he has developed and sold a new television show, 30 Days, based on the same concept.

"I wanted to create a TV show that, like the film, could be a catalyst for change," he says. "We take someone out of their environment, out of their life, and we subject them to something completely different for 30 days straight. Something that they may not believe in or something that they are questioning, whether it's a hot-button issue such as religion or sexuality or poverty in America. The show will deal with really serious topics through one person's journey every week, in a fun way. I'll host the show. Having been through this, I'll be able to relate to a lot of the walls that these people are going to hit, mentally."

The energetic filmmaker also plans a narrative feature film and another full-length documentary by the end of 2005. In fact, it's not long after you meet Spurlock that you realize he's serious. He did the McDonald's experiment not to attract attention to himself like so many reality show contestants, but to make a point.

"I chose McDonald's because they're iconic and they're everywhere. There are over 13,000 of them in America. Everywhere you go you can go to a McDonald's. But the biggest reason that I picked McDonald's was that every company emulates their business practices. Every company imitates them. So I knew that by picking them, I was picking the company that in my mind could most easily institute change. That if they decided to make things differently, then every other company would start to follow suit."

"Now they've done away with Super Size options, which they say has nothing to do with the film whatsoever. So now, wait and see. In the next year, I believe you'll see the Burger Kings, the Taco Bells, the Biggie Sizes the King Sizes, they're going to go away. Now McDonald's is rolling out the Go Active Adult Happy Meal, which once again they say has nothing to do with the film. But when are they launching it nationwide? May 6th. When does the movie open? May 7th. Just another incredible coincidence in McDonaldland," he grins.

Spurlock says that if he had access to a larger budget -- the film was made for about $65,000 -- he would have traveled to other countries to look at the fast food effect abroad. "That's when you can really start to see the impact. You bring a McDonald's into a country that hasn't had anything like that and so here's their piece of America. Our lifestyle is now being bought and sold in the form of burgers. To a lot of countries, this is America."

Spurlock believes that if McDonald's starts making healthier options available then the other fast food establishments will probably follow, but not because they care. It's because they merely want to appear as if they care by jumping on the healthy food bandwagon. "When you feed 46 million people a day worldwide, you have a huge responsibility. That's why this has to turn. McDonald's represents 43 percent of the total fast food market. I applaud them for these small steps, but a lot more has to happen."

"For me the most shocking thing in the whole film, beyond my diet and all the things that happened to me, is the school lunch programs. School lunch programs in America are terrible. They're disgusting. And parents have no idea. They're eliminating phys-ed programs, they're eliminating nutritional education programs, and we're feeding them garbage. So no wonder we can't pass tests. No wonder we can't pay attention. Over the course of my diet, I could barely pay attention to anything. I was so filled with fat, sugar and caffeine. I physically got dumber."

The greatest reward for Spurlock in making this film has been talking to people about fast food and getting them to re-appraise their habits and attitudes. He says, "people walk out of this film wanting to look at their life and change how they eat or live or exercise. They're truly affected."