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Every Super Sized Lie in Super Size Me
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Jul 9, 2025
Today on Weird History Food we are examining the 2004 breakout film 'Supersize Me' by Morgan Spurlock. For a 'documentary', this expose took the country by storm, even being nominated for an Oscar. The film rooted itself deep into the public consciousness for a number of years, until skeptics began to try and replicate Spurlock's claims.
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In 2004, director Morgan Spurlock shocked the world by showing everyone quite how bad McDonald's food really is
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in his non-fiction documentary film, Supersize Me. However, while many of his broader points about the food industry are valid
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it turns out the results of Spurlock's experiment may have been deliberately misleading
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Today, we're going to take a look at everything that was misleading about Supersize Me
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In Supersize Meat, Spurlock claims he consumes roughly 5,000 calories per day
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which causes him to gain a whopping 25 pounds in just one month. He also says his cholesterol spiked through the roof, his liver was ravaged
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and that he became depressed as a result. The implication is that it is unhealthy to eat fast food regularly
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The only problem is no one else has been able to replicate Spurlock's results
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A group of researchers who were determined to figure out the secret of being unhealthy tried to duplicate Spurlock's results
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They recruited seven healthy medical students in their early 20s to spend a month gorging on hamburgers, french fries, pizza, and other fast foods
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They also asked participants to avoid exercising. Based on Spurlock's work, the experiment should have yielded some supersized me-like body horror
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But instead, their results were notably different. Weight gain in the area of 5 to 15% above normal and decreased energy were common
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Yet none of the test subjects reported feeling depression Similarly their livers were not impacted the way Spurlock allegedly was Meanwhile cholesterol levels were largely unchanged One of the researchers speculated Spurlock results might have been caused by switching
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from a deliberately low-energy vegan diet, as he points out in the film
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Spurlock was dating a vegan chef at the time and specifically mentioned eating a vegan meal
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with her once per day before starting his fast food experiment. It could have made his body even less capable of dealing with the greasy fried foods
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To challenge the findings in Spurlock's film, comedian and former health writer Tom Naughton set out to lose weight on a fast food diet and recorded the results
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Unlike Spurlock, Naughton's blood pressure stayed the same. He also lost weight and body fat, and his cholesterol even dropped a little
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The suggestion that fast food could be harmful to a person's liver was one of the film's more eye-opening moments
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The thing is, Spurlock was hiding something significant. He had been consistently drinking since the age of 13
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and hadn't been sober for more than a week in 30 years. In other words, there's a reason his liver looks like that of a binge drinker
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And it ain't Mickey D's. The question of personal responsibility often comes up in criticisms of Spurlock's film
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In fact, Super Size Me never mentions how things like portion sizes or exercise factored into his results
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That's a significant point because Spurlock intentionally circumvented these things. which is to say he rigged the results essentially spurlock set out to make a movie about how
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mcdonald's was contributing to the obesity epidemic and was never trying to make an
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impartial evaluation of including fast food in your diet
#Nutrition
#Substance Abuse