Online Companion: The Complete Student, Achieving Success in College and Beyond

Chapter 13: The Whole You

Case in Point: Morgan Spurlock

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, 33, a tall, rangy New Yorker, shocked audiences across the nation with his film Super Size Me, a look at America's addiction to fast food. Spurlock made himself the guinea pig in a daring experiment. He decided to eat exclusively at McDonald's for a solid month-three meals, every day-and took along a camera crew to record his experience. The deal was that if a counterperson offered to supersize his portion, he would say yes…and would then have to eat everything on his plate, including the pickles. Neither Spurlock, nor his three attending physicians, were prepared for anything like the ravages caused by this diet. Within days, he was vomiting up his burgers and battling headaches and depression. He bid farewell to his sex drive, too. By the end of 3 months, his liver, overwhelmed by saturated fats, was in revolt. "The liver test was the most shocking thing," said Dr. Daryl Isaacs, one of the attending physicians. "It became very, very abnormal." Spurlock put on 25 pounds during this period, and his cholesterol spiked from a healthy 165 to 230. "I got desperately ill," Spurlock told the New York Post. "My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I've never had in my life…It was amazing-and really frightening."

The idea for Super Size Me came to Spurlock on Thanksgiving of 2002, as he watched TV after a dinner that had left him overly full. He saw a news item about two teenage girls in New York who were suing McDonald's for making them obese. The company responded by saying that their food was nutritious and good for people. Skeptical, Spurlock set out to test their claim.

While Super Size Me has been a hit on the art-house film circuit, generating much press attention, McDonald's maintained a lengthy silence on the film, finally addressing it with a formal comment. "Consumers can achieve balance in their daily dining decisions by choosing from our array of quality offerings and range of portion sizes to meet their taste and nutrition goals," a McDonald's spokesman said. In fact, many people in low-wage jobs live in situations where they have no refrigerator, no microwave, no oven, no hot plate, and, for lack of any other options, their food comes from convenience stores and fast-food outlets. So Spurlock's "adventure" is really a way of life for a lot of poor people who are not only suffering from bad nutrition, but are literally paying a high price for it.

Spurlock claims that his goal was never to attack McDonald's as such. Among the issues he highlights in his film is the willingness of schools to feed students nothing but burgers and pizza. "If there's one thing we could accomplish with the film, it is that we make people think about what they put in their mouth," he said. "So the next time you do go into a fast-food restaurant and they say, 'Would you like to upsize that?' you think about it and say, 'Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll stick with the medium this time.'"