Super Size Me (2004)

Iconic in its time, Super Size Me sought to debunk the implied promise by the fast-food chain McDonald’s that their food was healthy enough as a complete diet. The results were spectacular and caused a shift in thinking about fast food at the time and even contributed to McDonald’s doing away with their Super Size option.

The documentary is well structured, following Morgan Spurlock's preparation and journey of only eating McDonald’s for 30 days. The results are predictable, and a continuous stream of data about Morgan's wellbeing is fed to the audience, tracking his decline.

At various stages, we see Spurlock in a state of discomfort, unease, pain and vomiting. Due to medical complications related to the experiment, Spurlock was forced to discontinue it.

And thus the film was a success: you can't eat McDonald’s all day, every day; you'll get sick and end up in the hospital in short order.

There is, of course, one problem.

Many years later it came to light that Spurlock was an alcoholic for the duration of the experiment. The "data" the viewer was fed is therefore at the very least missing important context. Any medical claims Spurlock set adjacent to his consumption of fast food must be discounted; the entire "experiment" was tainted. An alcoholic is not a healthy or viable subject and yet they were presented as one.

Consequently, this detracts sharply from the quality and honesty of the documentary. We don't need dishonest accounts to tell us exclusively eating fast food is bad; we need an exploration of our culture of lack of restraint, both with food and alcohol. Super Size Me may once have been relevant, but no longer feels so.