- Morgan Spurlock, a ballet dancer turned documentary film-maker,
has empirical evidence that fast food is not good for you, and his health
was the price.
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- Spurlock, whose film Super Size Me wowed the Sundance
Film Festival last week, is set to do for McDonald's what Michael Moore's
Bowling for Columbine did for guns.
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- A news report following a law suit brought by two women
who accused the fast food industry of causing their obesity inspired Spurlock
to live by McDonald's alone for 30 days.
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- "People from the food industry were saying, ,ÄòYou
can't link kids being fat to our food - food is nutritious.' I said, ,how
nutritious is it really? Let's find out," said Spurlock.
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- At the beginning of his experiment Spurlock was fit.
He had studied ballet for eight years and ate a diet including bacon and
eggs, Chinese food and vegetarian chilli with polenta.
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- However, eating at McDonald's every day soon had an impact
on his health.
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- Each morning he feasted on an Egg McMuffin, orange juice
and coffee, lunch was a Big Mac and dinner was a super-size Big Mac meal
and should the munchies appear between meals, which curiously the more
sugar and fat he consumed the more he craved, he would have more super-size
fries or super-size chocolate milk-shakes. His girlfriend, a vegan chef,
was unimpressed. So were his doctors.
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- In order to gauge the diet's effect on his health, Spurlock,
33, who began the project weighing 185lbs, was regularly examined by a
gastroenterologist, a cardiologist and Dr Daryl Isaacs, a general practitioner.
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- "It was really crazy - my body basically fell apart
over the course of 30 days," said Spurlock, whose weight gain of 25lbs
was the least surprising consequence. His libido began to fail, his liver,
overwhelmed by saturated fat, became toxic, his cholesterol level rose
from 165 to 230 and he was plagued by headaches and depression.
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- "He was an extremely healthy person who got very
sick eating this McDonald's diet. None of us imagined he could deteriorate
this badly - he looked terrible. The liver test was the most shocking thing
- it became very, very abnormal," said Dr Isaacs.
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- The best-selling book by Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation:
What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World, highlighted concerns
about what burger joints are selling and where they source their ingredients.
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- Spurlock decided to carry out his own research.
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- Using the funds he had available on eight credit cards
he travelled to 20 cities to quiz diners, health experts and a lobbyist
for the fast-food industry. Despite numerous letters and phone calls, no-one
from McDonald's agreed to an on-camera interview, preferring to release
a statement that read: "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 tastes and nutrition goals." Ironically
McDonald's have recently introduced healthy options such as fruit bags
and salads in an attempt to halt declining revenues and persistent criticism.
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- Spurlock's theme is that McDonald's ubiquity, along with
other fast-food outlets, has resulted in America becoming the fattest nation
on Earth with more than 100 million citizens over-weight, 60 per cent of
whom take no exercise. In one scene, flags pop up over a map of Manhattan
to illustrate each of McDonald's 83 locations. The soundtrack is Curtis
Mayfield singing Pusher Man. "We have let ourselves become franchised,"
said Spurlock. "The whole country's a strip mall."
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- Gluttony, however, is not exclusive to America and Super
Size Me will make uncomfortable viewing for many Scots. The British eat
more fast food than any other nation in Europe and Scots children are the
fattest. In the past ten years the number of overweight Scots boys rose
from 6.4 per cent to 10 per cent, while the figure for girls rose from
10.1 to 15.8 per cent. Dr Jamie Inglis, a consultant in public health at
Health Scotland, believes Super Size Me could act as a warning to anyone
who believes a McDonald's meal should be anything more than an occasional
event. "We always say there is no such thing as an unhealthy food,
just an unhealthy diet and an all-McDonald's diet is just about the worst
you can imagine."
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- In an interview with CNN Spurlock put his finger on the
problem of junk food that no promoter of the common salad can argue against:
the combination of fat, sugar and carbohydrates tastes good. "Big
Macs are the greatest thing on the menu," he explained. "They
are so good you can't stop it. They're great. A little bit of heaven right
there."
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- ©2004 Scotsman.com
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- http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=98562004
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