Super Size Me: Seven Years Later

Anyone entering a McDonald’s restaurant today in the post-Super Size Me era will notice subtle advertising and nutritional changes, a ripple effect from the 2004 Academy Award nominated documentary. Gone are the posters coaxing customers into “super sizing” their meals for only a few more cents. As your car pulls up to the drive through today you’ll notice new posters of “fresh” salads, apples with milk and grilled chicken in a healthy tortilla taped over the signage of McDonald’s past. In one of the films most telling scenes, director and star Morgan Spurlock enters several McDonald’s looking for nutritional information and finds that 1 in 4 restaurants either couldn’t locate the information or McDonald’s didn’t supply it. One nutritional chart in Washington D.C. was tucked behind a Big Mac advertisement. Spurlock’s strategies in the film are effective, not as arguments against the establishment but as opened ended questions aimed to set the wheels of change in motion.

Who’s to blame for America’s obesity problem, the consumer or the company?

It should come as no surprise that the most heavily advertised foods are the most consumed. Spurlock interviewed a group of 1^st grade students who struggled to identify images of George Washington and Jesus yet recognized a picture of Ronald McDonald instantly. If children are being bombarded with ads promoting McNuggets and Happy Meal toys from the time their old enough to turn on Nickelodeon how could you expect them to make sensible choices when they have the freedom to? Spurlock brings the camera into the cafeteria to investigate this question, only to find that the schools administration and parents have turned a blind eye to their children’s well being. Children when given the ability to choose their diets lean towards the heavily advertised products like Gatorade or candy bars, often supplanting sugary treats for entire meals.

While Spurlock succeeds in establishing some level of corporate responsibility, his experiment must be taken with a grain of salt. Even McDonald’s “heavy users” most likely don’t eat at the restaurant three times a day every day. Spurlock’s weight gain, depression and sexual frustration are extreme examples of living an unhealthy lifestyle. In a 2005 interview, Spurlock warns that in a country where we take weight loss pills, anti-depressants and Viagra, we must “fix the cause rather than the symptoms.”

Morgan Spurlock is a true muckraker, a voice that challenged an empire few have dared to stand up to. The effectiveness of Super Size Me can be seen from the re-branding of McDonald’s to a more nutritionally savvy company over the last seven years, although the company denies the film had any impact on their decisions. The current McDonalds.com nutritional page reads:

“It started with you. Moms and dads are trying hard to get their kids to be more nutrition-minded. We listened.”

As Americans we are too deeply rooted in a fast food culture that corrupts our eating habits. If the consumer can’t take responsibility for changing an unhealthy lifestyle then who will?

 They must have listened to Spurlock.