Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock spent a month doing what 10-year-olds only dream of. He ate nothing but food from McDonald's. No side trips to Burger King, no midnight raids on the fridge in a desperate search for salad greens.
The onetime playwright and former beach volleyball announcer spent $100, 000 putting down on film what happened to his body, which was in quite good shape when the project started.
By the end, he had gained 25 pounds and added 65 points to his cholesterol count. His head ached continually and he was depressed. His doctors were referring to his liver as pâté and his girlfriend reports -- on camera -- that his erections just weren't what they used to be.
"She was interviewed when I wasn't around, so when I saw all that footage I was like, 'This is fantastic. We have to put that in,' " he said in a telephone interview last week.
Spurlock's film, "Super Size Me," is a low-budget, Michael Moore-style documentary that pounds as hard at McDonald's as Moore did at General Motors in "Roger & Me."
The film, which won documentary director honors at the Sundance Film Festival in January, comes to the San Francisco Film Festival Wednesday and opens for wide distribution May 7.
Spurlock's effort to get America off Big Macs is being celebrated by nutritionists and food activists, and vilified as junk science by people who blame the nation's girth on a lack of personal responsibility and exercise. To prove Spurlock wrong, an online columnist for a Portsmouth, N.H., newspaper is spending a month eating nothing but McDonald's in effort to lose weight by choosing healthier options from the McDonald's menu. (Find her diary at www.seacoastonline.com.)
The column delights Spurlock, who hopes everyone who sees his film will think about what they choose to eat. "The fact is that most people don't eat healthily. We wanted to do a film that deals with corporate responsibility and what they're selling that passes for food in this country. We wanted to shake trees," he said. "But we can't keep blaming everyone. We are in charge of what we put in our mouths."
It is no mystery that the nation is in the throes of an obesity crisis. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. The number of obese teenagers has tripled since 1980. About 5 percent of all adults carry 100 more pounds than they should -- the size at which doctors recommend a $25,000 operation commonly referred to as stomach stapling.
Nutritionists can lecture about poor diets and a lack of exercise. Activists can blame "the toxic food environment." Lawyers can debate personal versus corporate responsibility. But nothing makes the case better than Spurlock leaning out his car window and puking up a double Quarter Pounder with cheese.
Spurlock's approach was undeniably extreme. He supersized his meals whenever a counter worker made the offer, and ordered everything on the menu at least once. He also stopped exercising.
As a result, he was often eating twice as many calories a day as he needed. And as any nutritionist will tell you, it only takes an extra 100 calories a day to gain 10 pounds in a year.
Spurlock used three doctors, a registered dietitian and an exercise physiologist to help gauge exactly what he was doing to his body. His health plunged so precipitously after a couple of weeks that his doctors advised him to stop the diet immediately.
The cameras spend some time with food activists and addiction experts, trying to make a case that fast food is inherently evil and addictive. A physiologist explains that fast-food restaurants hook kids in early. With clowns, toys and a chance to spend quality time with Mom or Dad, fast food becomes linked psychologically with fun and comfort.
That moves Spurlock to make an instant parenting decision on camera: "When I have kids, every time I drive by a fast-food restaurant I'm going to have to punch them in the face."
For avid fans of MTV, Spurlock is no stranger. He made 53 episodes of "I Bet You Will," in which he encouraged people to do things like eat a raw clam from a stranger's arm pit for cash. He pumped the money he made from the MTV show into his production company, the Con, to make "Super Size Me."
The idea came to him on Thanksgiving Day 2002, while he was at his mother's house in West Virginia. The first obesity lawsuits against McDonald's, which accounts for 43 percent of the fast-food market in the United States, were on the news, and McDonald's executives were arguing that their food wasn't dangerous, so Spurlock decided to test the theory on film.
He got some inspiration from his girlfriend, Alex Jamieson, a vegan chef who taught Spurlock "the impact food has on your spirit and your energy and sex life," he said. She ends up as something of a co-star in the movie. Spurlock appears on her Web site, www.healthychefalex.com, as a satisfied customer offering a testimonial.
Her role has also given his critics plenty of ammunition, calling the movie a front for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other food- activist groups -- a charge that Spurlock laughs off.
"It would have been great if PETA would have given us some of that money they have," he said.
Spurlock also has been credited with getting McDonald's to eliminate its "supersize" portion option, which the company announced in March. And he's happy to take it. "For our film to have come out at Sundance and for six weeks later for McDonald's to make that decision, it had to have an effect," he said.
Although McDonald's spokespeople have not commented directly, the claim might be inflated. For the past couple of years, the company has been on a vigorous campaign to remake itself. McDonald's launched a new line of salads last year and earlier this month began a new "healthy lifestyle initiative" that is the largest private-sector anti-obesity effort to date.
Highlights include an education campaign featuring a character called Willie Munchright and a fitness promotion starring Ronald McDonald and Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer. New products include Happy Meals with apple slices instead of fries, and an adult Happy Meal featuring a bottle of water and a pedometer.
Spurlock, for his part, is taking the money he made and plowing it into a new hour-long, social issue show for FX that will air in the fall.
He'll tackle topics like poverty and sexuality by taking people out of their lives and forcing them to experience another lifestyle. It's called "30 Days."
source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/21/DDG8767ITN1.DTL&type=printable 21apr04
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