I think I’m going to have to go supersize.

May 24, 2024 4:13 PM

Morgan Spurlock, ‘Super Size Me’ documentary director, dies at 53. Morgan Spurlock, a documentary filmmaker whose Oscar-nominated “Super Size Me” chronicled a month of watching his body swell and health decline while eating only McDonald’s meals, launching a highflying career that later imploded after he acknowledged past incidents of sexual assault and harassment, died May 23 at a hospital in New York City. He was 53.

“Super Size Me,” which was released in 2004 and brought Mr. Spurlock his initial burst of acclaim, was an indictment of America’s fast-food culture and a first-person journey into the country’s health problems, including rising obesity levels. Mr. Spurlock and his then-girlfriend, a pro-vegan foodie, become the yin and yang of his high-calorie odyssey. Mr. Spurlock’s belly begins to spread, and his face grows puffy. The bad news from his doctor piles up: cholesterol is spiking, liver dysfunction crops up. Mr. Spurlock talks of his bouts of depression and how his libido seems to have evaporated.

He went on to a long career in documentary film and television, including a show called 30 days in which he asked "ordinary Americans" to step out of their comfort zone for 30 days.

He later came out during the #MeToo movement about his history of sexual misconduct and stepped down from his production company, stating that he was "part of the problem".

More on the documentary that started it all and the change that followed.

posted by Toddles (38 comments total)

Supersize Me and Spurlock episode of the Maintenance Phase podcast

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posted by ursus_comiter at 4:20 PM on May 24 [19 favorites]

I watched Supersize Me during a bad breakup, and I’ve not been in a McDonalds since. I understand that he wasn’t totally honest, but I can’t find it in my heart to object.

The sexual harassment and rape, on the other hand….
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:37 PM on May 24 [5 favorites]

I seem to recall that someone tried doing the McDonald’s-for-a-month experiment to try to replicate it and wound up actually losing weight, possibly because unlike Spurlock they weren’t also constantly drinking soda and booze. Somehow the part where he was actively an alcoholic and also juicing his results with tons of sugar still goes broadly overlooked, as does his wife’s diet plan that he pretty much immediately went on to hawk, if memory serves.

Maybe it’s just that I just watched the hbomberguy video about vaccines and autism and certain themes are still fresh in my mind, but, well, dude was a self-interested grifter who somehow luckily managed to avoid the public as a whole ever putting two and two together about his motives and his willingness to fudge numbers in the interest of ensuring his data match the experimental results he had planned from the start. It feels not shocking that someone with those sorts of personal and professional ethics would also wind up having been much more directly Part of the Problem around the time of the Me Too movement.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:46 PM on May 24 [37 favorites]

I saw this 10 minute critical video a couple of months ago and found it quite convincing.
posted by WalkingAround at 5:15 PM on May 24 [1 favorite]

I’d worked with him. Sad news.
posted by Ideefixe at 5:17 PM on May 24 [6 favorites]

I worked for a while in a film equipment rental house in NYC and they rented to him from time to time, including, I believe, on SSM. He was apparently, for what it's worth, a very good client. Neither this nor the value provided by his work excuses his other behavior, but I at least have those second-hand plaudits to consider. RIP.
posted by Shotgun Shakespeare at 5:30 PM on May 24 [3 favorites]

What doctor fedora said, he went into the movie as a vegan alcoholic and didn't keep a food diary. Not exactly scientific method.
posted by subdee at 5:31 PM on May 24 [3 favorites]

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posted by Silvery Fish at 5:44 PM on May 24

Fanfare post on that Maintenance Phase podcast.

I've never been shy to spray venom at Spurlock, but damn, 53 is too young. RIP.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:52 PM on May 24 [11 favorites]

🍟
posted by clavdivs at 5:56 PM on May 24 [1 favorite]

Supersize Me and Spurlock episode of the Maintenance Phase podcast

Ugh, of course Jared Fogle was in this movie as an inspirational figure.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:19 PM on May 24 [5 favorites]

Yes I know the McDoc was largely bullshit, but does it effectively matter? It helped bolster the message that the food is not good and industry pushing it is even worse. The other side bases their existence on full-fat bullshit and most don't lift an eyebrow.

He also was likely was a messed-up freak who did bad things to people around him.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:35 PM on May 24 [4 favorites]

I mean, I guess he came out of his own accord during #MeToo?

He saw the social movement and sat down and wrote his op-ed about his own sexual misdeeds and left his job at his production company as public penance.

Maybe there's a larger story going on there but that seems like one of the most noble reactions to #MeToo that I've heard of ever.

If I have found a narrative that requires revising, please elucidate me. But if that's what actually happened, that's truly remarkable. He removed himself from the industry saying that he's part of the problem.
posted by hippybear at 8:47 PM on May 24 [33 favorites]

I really liked the 30 days series, and wish they’d gone on further. They were thoughtful reality tv.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:04 PM on May 24 [9 favorites]

I mean, I guess he came out of his own accord during #MeToo?

My understanding is that is what happened.
posted by Toddles at 9:12 PM on May 24 [1 favorite]

I thought Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! was excellent (on Youtube).

He buys his own chicken barn and raises chickens--and has to deal with the chicken buying cartel and with the oversized, heart-attack prone chicken growing methods. He actually starts his own chicken fast-food restaurant and hires industry consultants for marketing and food design. You really get the inside story of the industry and it is eye opening.

Yes, he was a troubled person, but this video is still excellent.
posted by eye of newt at 9:39 PM on May 24 [5 favorites]

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posted by Ickster at 9:57 PM on May 24

I liked @dril's prescient comment from 2014: a man ate Mcdonald for a whole month . what happens next will Shock you (he passes peacefully from cancer 20 years later)


(it's fake, from "drilhistorian," but still)
posted by chavenet at 5:05 AM on May 25 [3 favorites]

I've detested him for a long time simply because no one eats at McDonalds the way he did, with a bunch of rules and probably eating more than he wanted. My opinion of him hasn't changed, except to go down a bit for lying about being an alcoholic.

I suppose I can be impressed with how perfectly he exploited American preconceptions.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:36 AM on May 25 [7 favorites]

Documentary is a complex form, but the biggest mistake any audience can make is to forget that movies are still movies. Even a movie that purports to represent reality is not really reality. You will never see the full context of any scene, and ultimately we're taking it on trust that no scenes are outright faked -- surely they'd tell us if they were faked, right? Well, maybe. But then again...

I would suggest that a documentary is a kind of persuasive argument. If you're a juror and it's the end of a trial, lawyers for the prosecution and the defense will stand there and present to you their interpretation of the evidence, in hopes of getting you to see things their way. Because they can't stand there all day, they will leave a lot out. Because they're not trying to lose, they will leave out anything that doesn't support their case, and certainly anything that undermines it. A documentary is like that.

Is a documentary a propaganda film? Not necessarily, but you can be sure the filmmaker has an opinion, and a story they're trying to get across. There will be things elided and excised, first because you can't (usually) make a twenty-hour film, and second because those things don't support the case, or undermine it. If that bothers you, if that feels manipulative, this genre is probably not for you. If you appreciate a form that invites you to draw your own conclusions, including conclusions about who the filmmaker is and why they are making this film, it may be for you. What's great about embracing that form in all its complications is that doing so starts us down a path of taking nothing for granted in media. I think that can only ever be good.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:58 AM on May 25 [4 favorites]

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posted by james33 at 6:13 AM on May 25

I'm always disappointed when people say things like, "Does it really matter if it was accurate or true?" It matters if you're a fat person living with fat stigma, and the assumption almost everyone, from doctors to strangers on the bus, makes is that you eat like Spurlock in Supersize Me. I've been lectured by doctors on eating too much fast food at times in my life when I had not had more than the occasional Vernors from McDonald's in months.

Maybe an antidote to SuperSize me might be the newly-out documentary, Your Fat Friend, starring the always valuable Aubrey Gordon. Or take up listening to Maintenance Phase. I've been a fat activist for 40 years, yet I still learn things from that podcast.
posted by Well I never at 7:13 AM on May 25 [40 favorites]

Yes I know the McDoc was largely bullshit, but does it effectively matter? It helped bolster the message that the food is not good and industry pushing it is even worse. The other side bases their existence on full-fat bullshit and most don't lift an eyebrow.

A lie is a lie, and giving it a pass because you agree with what the lie was about is a slippery slope. Mostly because most people never hear the debunking and remember it as true.

I think Abraham Lincoln said “we’re better than that” in one of his last postings on the internet. Or maybe it was Martin Luther King.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:14 AM on May 25 [22 favorites]

I suppose I can be impressed with how perfectly he exploited American preconceptions.

This exactly why I've been so critical of Spurlock in the past. People still insist that fast food is not good, or even evil, because that's a self evident. Except that it isn't. There is kind of no such thing as bad, unhealthy food, so much as unhealthy consumption. And I'd be hard pressed to say anything at McDs is significantly worse than anything I'd typically prepare in my own kitchen on any given day. And his experiment, just at face value, was bullshit, even if he were to try it with organic vegan perfectly nutritionally balanced and done with appropriate rigor.

To wave away his flaws because it was justifiable is questionable at best, and paved the way for worse documentarians such as James O'Keefe. Whose fans use the exact same logic.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:41 AM on May 25 [13 favorites]

I did not follow his work after SSM, nor his socials or anything else, so was not aware of the bad things he admitted.

Still, 53 is too young so

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posted by Windopaene at 8:09 AM on May 25

2N2222, I'm not quite that much in favor of fast food-- if I can judge by how meals leave me feeling, what I cook is better for me than typical fast food. I spring for good ingredients a lot of the time.

On the other hand, fast food isn't *that* bad. "Poison" that takes 60 or 70 years to kill is more like a joke than a poison.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:11 AM on May 25 [1 favorite]

I think Abraham Lincoln said “we’re better than that” in one of his last postings on the internet. Or maybe it was Martin Luther King.

Pretty sure it was Albert Einstein, quoting Mark Twain (or maybe Nietszche; I often get them mixed up because Twain and Nietszche were roommates at college).

I disliked SSM without seeing it because the whole idea seemed trite. Like a lot of people, I think, I tended to think of fast food as a treat (mostly when I was younger) and/or as a food of convenience (when I was older). During certain times in my adult life, it was also a treat, because it counted as "eating out" when I had very little disposable income and not a lot of variety in my diet. I was no more in danger of eating exclusively at McDonald's than I was of eating exclusively at a three-star Michelin restaurant. Stunt diets are still kind of a luxury, although less because I can't afford them and more that my aged and multiple-long-term-health-problems body can't take them for very long. If I adopt a certain kind of diet, concentrating on certain foods while eschewing others, it's in tandem with my carefully monitoring my personal health condition, paying particular attention to my blood glucose.

So, as far as I'm concerned, the main takeaway from SSM and Spurlock's life in general is an object lesson in how readily people accept a story that amplifies their existing preconceptions and in turn can affect people, companies, and policy even further, without examining that story for veracity. I can empathize to some degree with how his apparent alcohol abuse probably affected both the "experiment" and, most likely, his need to feel like he accomplished something, but that doesn't excuse that behavior, really.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:43 AM on May 25 [2 favorites]

Yes I know the McDoc was largely bullshit, but does it effectively matter?

It matters less than him sexually assaulting people, but yeah, it matters. First, it’s full of fat-phobia. Second, every piece of bullshit ‘science’ media like this is a brick in a wall with vaccine denialism at the top.
posted by bq at 8:45 AM on May 25 [13 favorites]

Doesn't anyone remember in Super Size me there was a guy featured who ate McD every day but was skinny? I think that was their only counterpoint. Interesting Morgan never published his food logbook, I wonder if alcoholic drinks were listed.

Don Gorske
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:23 AM on May 25

I always thought it might be a more interesting test to spend a month only eating at McD's but trying to make it as healthy as possible. like, how much could you succeed in maintaining your health/weight etc., for that time.

I will not be volunteering for this role, however.
posted by supermedusa at 12:29 PM on May 25

I mean, I guess he came out of his own accord during #MeToo?

My understanding is that is what happened.

He did it to get out ahead of a rumored upcoming journalistic piece about his harassment.

I feel bad for anyone who dies at such a young age, but man, he did some damage in his life, and you can see how much it persists right here in this thread.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:40 PM on May 25 [7 favorites]

I only saw Super Size Me because my roommate was trying to guilt her fast-food-eating boyfriend out of doing that so much. She also bought him some Lean Cuisines, which I suspect were ignored.

I do wonder if Spurlock came out about his bad behavior to get it over with before people started outing him.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:41 PM on May 25

Yes I know the McDoc was largely bullshit, but does it effectively matter? It helped bolster the message that the food is not good and industry pushing it is even worse.

But if you are looking for a reason not to believe that message and then find out the documentary was bs, you're going to have a perfect justification to go on scarfing fast food.

I found the claims hard to believe from the get-go because really? You can really do that level of damage in one month from burgers and fries? Add heavy drinking into the mix, now, and I can well believe the amount of wait gain and overall malaise he claimed to experience. But again, claimed. The whole thing is hopelessly tainted.

My condolences to everyone who cared for him.
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posted by BibiRose at 1:03 PM on May 25 [1 favorite]

I was just explaining to someone on Wednesday how problematic Super Size Me was, including how Spurlock's alcoholism tainted the results, and how the doc just increased fatphobia and was part of a health movement that still wastes money combating the supposed "obesity epidemic." Spurlock died literally the day after that conversation.

It's all sad, really.
posted by limeonaire at 4:29 PM on May 25

So sad for him and his loved ones that he died so early.
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I have a question, though. Everyone is saying that his drinking disrupts the project, and I get that it does because he was lying. But from a technical point of view, if he was already an alcoholic before the project,and he remained an alcoholic after, how would that change the results of the month of eating fast food? Relatively, fast food was the difference, not the drinking.

There is a lot of discussion out there today that ultra-processed food is bad for us. I don't think it is really even controversial today. So even though he didn't know the science, he was ahead of the times.
posted by mumimor at 5:03 AM on May 26 [1 favorite]

But from a technical point of view, if he was already an alcoholic before the project,and he remained an alcoholic after, how would that change the results of the month of eating fast food?

I mean, we'll never know, because he lied. It's impossible to go back and retroactively figure out what was caused by drinking, and what was caused by fast food. Like, the fact that the whole thing is based on a lie should be the concern, not if he reached a conclusion you agree with.
posted by Gygesringtone at 6:20 AM on May 26 [5 favorites]

There is a lot of discussion out there today that ultra-processed food is bad for us. I don't think it is really even controversial today.

This is what I mentioned earlier. The idea of bad food is taken on faith and held as self evident, without rigorous evidence or consideration of how food is consumed. And this isn't even getting onto a definition of "ultra-processed", because it's kind of meaningless. It's still just food. Barring specific conditions like allergies, diabetes, etc, there really isn't such a thing as food that's bad for us. Very few diets, consumed to excess, which is what Spurlock actually claimed to have done, will lead to healthy outcomes. This is just his experiment taken at face value. That he also withheld significant information on what he was consuming, presumably to make a point, doesn't make his claim stronger. The outcomes he claimed at the time sounded bullshitty, because he was trying to attribute his especially bad results to something about McD food that's uniquely bad. Not only was McD food lacking nutritive value, it was toxic. Which is pretty absurd, but jibes very well with how many people have viewed diet for decades now. And still poisons how many people view food, obesity, personal and corporate responsibility.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:56 AM on May 26 [4 favorites]

But from a technical point of view, if he was already an alcoholic before the project,and he remained an alcoholic after, how would that change the results of the month of eating fast food?

To expand on what Gygesringtone said, his alcohol consumption would have affected both the reliability of his self-reporting and also lowered his inhibitions, as alcohol generally does. Tom Naughton, who directed the response documentary Fat Head, has noted that Spurlock never published his food diary for the month, and we already know that Spurlock was eating about twice the number of calories during the experiment that a man of his age and weight needed to maintain his weight, so we don't know that it wasn't simply an increase of calories, or, for that matter, that he really only ate McDonald's. WRT the lowering of inhibitions, Spurlock may have been tempted to juice the results, especially given that the documentary really did make his career.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:48 AM on May 26