![Dangerous experiment: Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/05/24/TELEMMGLPICT000379218258_17165665306210_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqj-tr9vTXV4z2eew8dUnlFTl5L73aOC7ZwLWAkyAr_-0.jpeg?imwidth=680)
How Super Size Me ruined Morgan Spurlock’s body – and hurt McDonald’s
Spurlock, who has died of cancer age 53, radically changed our relationship with fast food with his extreme film. But what did it do to him?
![Dangerous experiment: Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's for 30 days](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/05/24/TELEMMGLPICT000379218258_17165665306210_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqj-tr9vTXV4z2eew8dUnlFTl5L73aOC7ZwLWAkyAr_-0.jpeg?imwidth=680)
On August 20, 2004, an advertisement appeared in British morning newspapers warning of the dangers of fast food. “If you eat too much and do too little, it’s bad for you,” said the headline – paid for by McDonald’s, the global fast-food chain which sells an estimated 2.3 million Chicken McNuggets in America alone each year.
McDonald’s wasn’t having a sudden attack of conscience over the long-term health effects of its menus. It was in damage control mode ahead of the release that September of a documentary everyone – certainly the entirety of the fast food business – was talking about. The film was Super Size Me, directed by Morgan Spurlock, who has passed away at age 53.
Spurlock’s movie was the rarest of things: a must-see independent documentary that brought about long-lasting change. The premise was that Spurlock would eat nothing but McDonald’s three times a day for 30 days. He also adjusted his exercise regime so that he took the 5,000 steps averaged by most Americans. And where it was offered, he would choose the super sized option from the menu.
![tmg.video.placeholder.alt as2zMlxeOkw](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/as2zMlxeOkw/mqdefault.jpg)
The impact was instant and horrific. By day two, he was throwing up from his car window. On day four, he had pulsing feelings in his stomach and on his genitals. “I started to notice this pressure on my chest, and by day nine, I was getting incredibly depressed,” he said. He had become addicted. “I would eat the food and feel fantastic for about an hour. Then I’d feel depressed again.”
Doctors monitoring Spurlock warned he was putting himself in harm’s way. His liver, they said, “was turning to pâté.” By the end of the month, his body weight had increased by one-tenth, and his cholesterol shot up. His girlfriend, a vegan chef, added that Spurlock was “having a hard time getting it up”.
Super Size Me changed the way people thought about food and how McDonald’s sold and marketed it. The fallout was instantaneous. By the end of 2004, the chain began to phase out the ‘super size” option from which the movie took its name (though you could still order super size fries “off menu”). Even before the documentary reached cinemas, McDonald’s had – by sheer coincidence – launched a new “Go Active” menu.
![Before and after: Spurlock gained 7% body fat in 30 days](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/05/24/TELEMMGLPICT000379218117_17165671846460_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqxbBRpa2dCPmRvjMR9aPV7DLo52wbd2elVw7BGKU2XiI.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Spurlock wasn’t alone in warning of the dangers posed by big corporations. Naomi Klein’s No Logo, published five years earlier, argued that multinationals were more interested in selling their brands than making good products. In 2001, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation asserted that the food industry was deliberately hooking us on unhealthy diets.
But none of these rivalled the shockwaves generated by Super Size Me. It hit McDonald’s profits - which, by the end of 2004, would slump to a 30-year low in the UK. And it inspired others – would Jamie Oliver, for instance, have declared war on unhealthy school dinners and the notorious “turkey twizzlers?” had Spurlock not done gone over the top first?
Super Size Me’s influence was partly due to the message – deep down, we all knew fast food was bad for us. But it was also because of the gonzo nature of his filmmaking – the vomiting, the bedroom woes – which arguably owed more to prank-fests such as MTV’s Jackass as to established American documentarians such as Errol Morris.
![Spurlock felt depressed, lethargic, and experienced headaches following his fast-food diet](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/05/24/TELEMMGLPICT000379218128_17165669098160_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqB9TNGSg3mw1zIYGf6IZil_EeTFgPXoiyxxl0vFVRUd4.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Whatever the recipe, Super Size Me was a huge hit. Made for just $65,000, it grossed $22 million. For years afterwards, Spurlock could not eat in public without someone judging his meal choice. “Whenever I’m at a restaurant, people will walk by and look at what I’m eating,” he told podcaster Tim Ferriss. “And sometimes they’ll comment and see what’s on my plate. They’ll say, ‘heh-hey, better than McDonalds, right?”
There was some pushback, however. In that same newspaper advertisement published before the movie’s release, McDonald’s claimed that the average customer would take six years to consume the quantity of burgers Spurlock mills through.
Spurlock was also later criticised for not disclosing that he was an alcoholic or for acknowledging that his drinking during the making of the movie could have impacted his health. It is also worth noting that McDonalds and its competitors are hardly struggling today – in 2023, McDonald’s revenues rose 15 per cent to 6.69 billion. A 20-year-old documentary is powerless against the blinding glow of the Golden Arches.
![Spurlock married his vegan nutritionist girlfriend in Fiji, 2006](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/05/24/TELEMMGLPICT000379218265_17165675448400_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq2MyDUM6N1qxY9CeHspZGyw-bT0l-AMUqc0STNsLYuAE.jpeg?imwidth=350)
After Spurlock finished his experiment, the weight tumbled away. However, he could not muster the willpower to ever again step inside a McDonald’s. “The french fries taste like smoked plastic,” he told the Guardian. “If I take a bite of a Big Mac, it’ll taste great in that instant, and then I’ll chew it up and swallow it and I’ll get this aftertaste in my mouth, this... McFilm, that I can’t really describe.”
Whatever the psychological impact, the physical fall-out was even more severe. “The biggest thing is my ability to gain weight. Ever since making the movie, I can put on four or five pounds in a weekend so easily. It’s incredible how my body has lost its resiliency, “ he said. “Part of that comes with age, but it also comes with your body having all these additional fat cells that weren’t in your body before. As you create fat cells to store fat and you lose weight and those fat cells get smaller, they don’t magically vanish. They are still in your body, still swimming around waiting for you to overeat so they can store more fat.”