As filmmaker Morgan Spurlock points out, it's every kid's dream: Eat nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. But it turned into a nightmare. By the end of Spurlock's cross-country fast-food odyssey, he'd put on 25 pounds, his cholesterol had skyrocketed, his liver was in jeopardy and doctors were begging him to stop. All thanks, he asserts, to his new diet -- and not exercising at all. The whole ordeal, interwoven with an exploration of America's weight problem, is captured in the award-winning documentary Super Size Me, in theaters now.
Q: So what's your movie really about?
A:
Super Size Me is a look at fast food and obesity in America. A lot of people think I'm attacking McDonald's, but I didn't come into this to attack McDonald's; I came into this to attack the American way of life, which has become a real fast-food culture. It's like Eric Schlosser's book [Fast Food Nation, Perennial, 2002] -- we've become a fast-food nation, where this type of food has influenced everything, from the way we live to the way we eat to how other foods are made to school lunches, so I wanted to explore that. It's a huge problem that has so many facets, it was even difficult to get what we had in the movie.
Q: What did you think would happen on the diet?
A:
I figured I'd gain some weight. I was putting my faith in [three different] doctors that nothing bad was gonna happen. And in the beginning they were like, 'Yeah, your cholesterol may go up a little bit, you may gain 10 pounds, but that's it.' And so when everything kinda starts to fall apart in the movie, it was very scary.
Q: Was there any point where you were like, 'Screw this'?
A:
On Day 21, when the doctors told me to stop, right now. I called everybody [for advice]. And then my oldest brother said, 'Morgan, people eat this s--t their whole lives. You think it's gonna kill you in nine days?' And I said, 'You're exactly right ... I'm gonna keep going.'
Q: Beyond the physical effects, what else surprised you?
A:
School-lunch programs are shocking. And parents don't know. They're trusting that the school is doing what's right for their kids, and they're not. They're serving garbage.
