Maintenance Phase - "Super Size Me"

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Aubrey thought she could swear less in this week’s episode. She was wrong. Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreLinks!Super Size Me Trailer"Super Size Me" - CBS NewsWhere's the Beef? The Challenges of Obesity SuitsMorgan Spurlock on Sexual Misconduct Confession, 'Super Size Me 2'Former Employees Say Morgan Spurlock's Production Company Was 'Fratty Boys' Club'Food and Drug Law Journal“Cheeseburger Bill” protects food industry - The LancetMeet the science teacher who lost 60 pounds eating nothing but McDonald's three meals a dayImpressed by the demise of Supersize? Take a closer lookSupport the show

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Welcome to Maintenance Faze, the podcast that has 30 days to fend you up, or melt you down, or whatever that movie was about. We're all of a sudden we're just like the witch in Hansel and Gradle. I know, it doesn't hold together as a metaphor. I apologize. I'm Michael Hobbs.

I'm Aubrey Gordon. And if you want to support the show, you can do that on Patreon at patreon.com slash maintenance phase. Last month's bonus Patreon episode was a mailbag episode where we read a bunch of, I'm not fat phobic, but emails and responded to them. And that was fun. This month's bonus episode is going to be a continuation of our Bell Gibson episode. We got a really big response to that. So we're doing a kind of spiritual sequel where we talk about other illness influencers, including one who was friends with Bell Gibson.

Yeah, we talk a lot about real illnesses in this month. We're talking about fake ones. I know. Those are the best ones. Those are the ones we can laugh at. So it's much better that way. And today, we are talking about same sex marriage. No, it's the other SSM. Aubrey keeps texting me about she's like, I'm ready for SSM on Sunday. And Mike just hears the opening bars of go into the chapel.

That was super size me. We're talking about super size me. Yes, which I asked you, should I watch the movie before we record this? And you specifically said you wanted me fresh. I do want you fresh for this particular conversation. With my aging memories. So talk to me about your aging memories.

Did you see this movie when it came out? And like just generally, what do you remember about the film and what do you remember about sort of how it was received? I think I saw it in the theater. I may have seen it very quickly after it came out on VHS. I mean, this was something that I was looking forward to, and I was excited about because I have been obsessed with this issue for so long,

and I don't like fast food companies, and I don't like soda companies, and it seemed like an interesting vessel for roasting such companies. Yeah. I mean, the premise of the movie is that he's like this ostensibly healthy dude.

He spends, yeah, I think it was 30 days, eating nothing but McDonald's. And by the end of the 30 days, it's like his kidneys about to fail, his heart is just pumping milkshakes. He's just on death's door by the end of this. And I think people were like, yeah, these companies suck and look how bad they are. It's a little bit like Jackass Food Systems Edition.

Yeah, like pumped, but for fast food. So what's your relationship with the movie? So I saw Super Size Me at the time. I don't know, I would have been like 21 when it came out, like a fat 21-year-old. And I remember watching it and thinking, this makes me feel gross and bad, but I don't know why. And everyone I know seems to love it. And I didn't really give it more thought than that. But like, truly everybody I know was like, okay, fast food is the reason that everyone is fat. That is the core, that is the thing. And as we will see today, you know,

I don't actually think that this film illustrates a causal link. I mean, I have no idea where this episode is going, but in general, I think that you can smuggle in a lot of really retrograde ideas if you package them as like anti-corporate or social justice or anti-iniquity. I don't know if that's what we're going to find in this, but most of the people who eat it McDonald's are like, you know, poor people. Yes, yes. You can see, I have a bit of a radar for where we might be going with this.

Yep, you might just have a radar for it. You might have been hosting this show with me for a year and a half. No, I don't. That was such a heavy sentence, then, to fucking go. It's not a blank slate over here, unfortunately. One thing before we dive in, folks may be familiar that there was a very unusual sort of me too situation with the director Morgan Spurlock a couple of years ago. So there will be discussion today

of specific weights, calories, health marker numbers, all that kind of stuff, but also toward the end, sexual assault, sexual harassment and alcoholism. So just like, take care. I didn't even know he got me, too. Now I'm in suspense. Oh my fucking god, Mike, if you don't know about this part were I really don't get ready

We're at this extremely bleak cultural moment where it's like there's so many Crash dudes in this particular industry. Yes, it's like I lose track of like who has been exposed and who hasn't oh The way I'm in a structure most of our conversation today We're gonna do a little overview of super size me.'re going to talk about the sort of cultural response to it. And then I'm just going to go in on what I think are five major fucking problems with this movie that were knowable in 2004 when it was released. I'm excited. Yeah.

I know you like a little structure. So we got a little structure. I like a little skeleton on the episode. A little skeleton. It's giving skeleton. Yeah. So super size me was a very splashy documentary released in 2004 that was both directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock. At the time he had been a playwright, he had done some stand-up comedy, he'd worked on some sort of like gross out kind of shows for MTV, and this was his big sort of claim

to fame. So just to start us off, we're just going to watch the trailer together. Ooh. We're going to have clips today. We're going to have clips on clips on clips. And after our fat camps episode, there are a bunch of like emotionally brutal moments in this and I was like, you know, we don't need to do is watch those. We're only doing the lighthearted. Well, we're just doing shit we haven't felt bad about before.

A, on this show. Because it's gonna get some of this show. All right, I say the link, let me know when you're queued up and then you can just count us down. Hello, man, welcome. Yeah, can I get the double quarter pounder with cheese meal? I think I'm gonna have to go superside.

It's hard for me to watch him go through this. So it feels like you're starting to get addicted to it now. You saw these numbers, right? These numbers are outrageous. to him go through this. So it seems like you're starting to get addicted to it now. Usually these numbers, right? These numbers are outrageous. Unfortunately, you cost some major harm to your heart. You'll ever be blood. You're gonna die.

You're gonna die. Now, more, more, more, more. You better stop. So there was, I guess, the sort of normal stuff that you can hear about how the food is addictive, and he's, quote, going to die. But then it's intercut with shots of a doll of Pennywise, the clown from it. It's like, no, no, no, no, it's Ronald McDonald Pennywise.

Oh, is that what it was supposed to be? It's a painting of Ronald McDonald as Pennywise. Oh, that's a little on the nose. Even for 2004. Then we have the comedic music, which they always put into these trailers. And then we cut to a bunch of like, B-roll of like, headless fat people.

Just fat butts in sweatpants or leggings, preferably leggings. I don't know if it's disappointing to see that in this because you've kind of primed me to find all the ways that this movie is trash but it's like, oh yeah, we were doing that. We were just doing that everywhere. It was astonishing how much of that footage was in this film. Oh really? If there were shots where there was like a belly hanging out over pants or something they would find

that. If there was like a butt with a lot of cellulite in it, it felt really clear that they were trying to use fat bodies to gross people out, as part of illustrating the sort of proposed villainy of this, uh, of McDonald's. On some level, it's pretty fucked up that I remember this as like a fun anti-corporate romp. Yeah, totally. It's not even worth remembering in my head that this movie had any of those tropes. I think that's also indicative about how my thinking has changed on this issue. But also just there.

Like that stuff was everywhere. It was totally everywhere. So essentially the central conceit of the film is that Morgan Spurlock, who has a girlfriend who's a vegan chef, he's very careful to emphasize that he lives in New York City. So he walks a ton all the time. He is going to do this experiment where the only food that he eats for 30 days

comes from McDonald's. Anytime they prompt him to supersize, he supersizes. Which was for folks, God, I guess we have to explain what Super Size was. I know, right? So there used to be at McDonald's in the US, there was you could get small, medium, large, and then they added this category called Super Size, and the whole ad campaign was like for 39 cents

or for 49 cents or for some very nominal amount, you could get this gigantic container of fries and soda. So anytime they asked him that, he would supersize. He also aims for what he says is the average amount of steps in American gets in a day, which at that point he says was 5,000 steps. So he wears a pedometer and when he's getting close to 5,000 steps, he starts taking cabs. Oh, so he's he's trying to live the average American lifestyle.

Like he's trying to recreate the car centric, no walking, all fast food lifestyle of like the average American as conceived of by him. He's doing that on the exercise side, but on the food side, the average American is not eating three meals a day at McDonald's every day for a month, right? Also, I think none of the rules say that he has to eat everything that he orders, but he seems to do that. None of the rules say that he has to get full sugar sodas, but he does that too, right? So obviously, he's stacking the deck so that his health markers get as bad and he gains as much weight as possible.

Yes, so the results of his experiment as the film presents them are also really splashy. So we're gonna watch this clip from the end of the film where he sort of recaps, here's what happened to my health. I remember this. And only 30 days of eating nothing but McDonald's, I gained 24 and a half pounds. My liver turned to fat, and my cholesterol shot up 65 points.

My body fat percentage went from 11 to 18 percent. Still below the national average of 22 percent for men and 30 percent for women, I nearly doubled my risk of coronary heart disease, making myself twice as likely to have heart failure. I felt depressed and exhausted most of the time. My mood swung on a dime, and my sex life was non-existent. I crave this food more and more when I ate it, and got massive headaches when I didn't. In my final blood test, many of my body functions showed signs of improvement, but the doctors were less than optimistic.

Tell me what you think, seeing it now. I mean, now I host a podcast that debunks health junk science. So now I'm like, I see some red flag. Tell me about the red flag. I mean, the addiction stuff seems fake. The, I get headaches when I don't eat it stuff seems fake. I doubled my risk of heart attacks

is also an interesting question because people his age are extremely unlikely to get a heart attack. Yeah, I don't know what that actually means to say that he's twice as likely to get heart failure. Well, and risk is prediction based in other markers. You don't like go to the doctor and they don't like put a stethoscope to your heart and go,

oh, you've doubled your risk for heart disease. Like no, they're like looking at multiple other markers to predict that risk. It's not as hard and fast as say his cholesterol going up. Like that's alarming. I get that. Also speaking of hard and fast, the stuff about sex doesn't check it to me either.

There was a little circle, it circled his junk, and then it said worthless next time. Which is actually pretty funny as a visual, but the idea that fast food affects your sex drive, I don't know. Yeah. And also, there is some stuff in the film of his girlfriend, who, as we mentioned earlier,

is her chiron in the film says, healthy vegan chef. There's quite a bit where she talks about we're not having good sex, but there's not really an exploration of, she talks quite a bit about being really unsettled by this project, really not into it, really opposed to it. And she is also a very thin person.

So I don't know how much of that is a direct result of food that is impacting his performance. And how much of that is her being like, I'm grossed out by this dude who's eating at McDonald's which I'm morally opposed to. Or I'm grossed out by this dude who's gaining weight, right? It's like also a very possible thing, and is a thing that people would happily and proudly say out loud in 2004 to anyone who would listen. Also, they needed some tension in this movie that, sure.

You know, you have to have some stakes in the main personal narrative. Yeah. So, I mean, not to say that they were faking it or anything, but it's like, again, they have the incentive to play up the tensions that this created in the relationship. So it's worth noting that this was like an extremely award-winning documentary at the time.

It won Sundance's Documentary Directing Award. It won the WGA Award for Documentary Screenplay. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Feature length documentary. Oh, god. I feel like I've already tipped my hand on this. I'm not a fan of this film. Oh, we've reached the big deal.

To a big surprise, surprise. Like I said, I'm really impressed upon by the number of really good, thoughtful people who were also pretty far to the left and had pretty good analysis of power and privilege and all of that kind of stuff who went so happily into the world of this movie and went so happily along with it and so unquestioningly along with it.

Man, I definitely was one of those people who like unquestioningly accepted it. Yeah, I'm not gonna like try to get myself off the hook by saying that like why didn I read in the New Yorker that there was any debate about this? Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I just don't remember it being the target of any kind of controversy. It was just like really obvious that fast food is bad

and yeah, it's making us fat and sick. Yeah, I think it's really fucking hard to talk about the degree to which particularly like white people on the left are willing to go real fucking hard to talk about the degree to which particularly like white people on the left are willing to go real fucking hard on fast food, but never articulate the class and race politics that go right to that. Right. When you are thinking and talking about who eats at McDonald's, you're talking about poor people, you're probably imagining people of color.

All of that unchecked weird classism and racism and all that kind of stuff rears its head and sort of is like rocket fuel to like, you know, powering these, you know, disdain with McDonald's, which is also a great deal of disdain at like who eats at McDonald's, right? Yeah. It's so annoying because McDonald's really is trash. It's shitty.

It's frustrating. It's a shitty corporation. Google McDonald's labor practices. Like if you want to get really depressed, I am uninterested in defending the corporate practices of the animals. I can't fucking know. But I'm also uninterested in allowing critiques of McDonald's by people who don't eat at McDonald's to power the stigma and judgment of people who do? What I'm taking away from this so far

is that the only entities that you have defended on the show are Angela Lansbury and McDonald's corporations. Yes. You mean... Unproblematic foods. So, should we dig into the five things that I think this gets wrong? Yes, debunk me.

Put me in the debunk bed. Debunk beds. Yeah. So, the first thing that I think is not right is that it misrepresents key facts, and it does so repeatedly. Okay. So the first one, this is like a gimme and maintenance phase world. It uncritically and repeatedly uses the 300,000 deaths each year from obesity number.

Oh, oh, the friend on the show. Mortality estimates are really hard to get to in terms of isolating a single cause for someone's death. And that 300,000 deaths number came from, we assume that every fat person who died died of being fat. Right. So, either Morgan Spurlock and those sort of team that made this film were not looking at the primary sources, or they didn't care to talk about it, or they're just looking

at popular media and reporting out the numbers that are in popular media. And all three of those do not speak highly to the research of the film. Right. I mean, they needed the biggest number to establish the stakes of their documentary. There is another really fucking important key fact that he misrepresents here and that the media widely misrepresented here. He said that the inspiration for making this film

was a 2002 lawsuit filed against McDonald's called Pellman v. McDonald's. Is this the woman who was suing McDonald's because she was fat, basically? Yeah, I mean, you totally nailed, like, that was the thing. Was like, oh my God, can you believe how absurd and how self-important and how uninformed? I'm armed, yeah.

People can be that they would sue McDonald's because they said they were surprised that it made them fat So two things one this wasn't like some lady suing McDonald's these were two black Teenagers from the Bronx and there was a huge fucking pylon from white media Yeah, but also that's not what the fucking lawsuit was it never is So I looked up all the original fucking court filings and a bunch of like legal analysis of this case.

Oh yeah. Like let's roll. So this was designed as the first case in a wave of impact litigation. Right. Impact litigation is lawsuits that are designed to sort of change laws or practices or regulations or jurisprudence, right?

The goal of this suit largely as far as most of the legal analysis that I read found was to engage in discovery and reveal publicly a bunch of internal documents about McDonald's shitty corporate practices. So the grounds for this suit was that McDonald's was engaging in false advertising and that it knew that its product was dangerous and did not disclose that danger to consumers.

So the framework that they're using here is essentially the same kind of framework that gets us surgeon general's warnings on packs of cigarettes. That's the thing that they're aiming at. Not that it makes people fat per se, although that is absolutely part of it and it's garbage rhetoric. But much more that like the issue here is this company is producing a product that they know is dangerous

and they're not warning consumers. And we have a precedent for these companies being expected to warn consumers of the dangers of their products and they're not doing that. That lawsuit was, it dragged on for fucking ever. It was dismissed without prejudice a couple years after it was filed by the judge. And it wasn't until 2010 that it was finally denied class action status. I am going to send you a quote from a really helpful piece of analysis from Bloomberg

Law. It says it will be extraordinarily difficult for any plaintiff, individually or as part of a class, to hold a single food or beverage manufacturer liable for obesity-related injuries. In order to prevail on any theory of liability requiring proof of medical causation, a plaintiff must prove that the manufacturer's product was a substantial cause of her injury, not just one of a number of contributing causes. The problem of obesity in America has no single cause.

That's what I was gonna say, is like it's really hard to draw a straight line from McDonald's to food-related illness in America. And you can say the fast food industry, maybe, or the food system, maybe, but kind of the problem is that you can't really pull any specific actor out. Yeah, I wanna be clear.

So I have like deeply fucking mixed feelings about this shit. I think corporations should be able to be held accountable and should be able to face litigation and all kinds of stuff, right? Right. But I also think the grounds of this argument being like McDonald's is why people are fat. Like you can't actually fucking prove that. Yeah.

It is almost 20 years later and we still don't know why most people are fat or how they got that way in a scientifically incontrovertible kind of tested narrative, right? So like the idea that 20 years ago with the data we had then, we could say, the reason people are fat as McDonald's, just reeks of we're looking for someone to blame. Yeah. In this film, he talks about this lawsuit

a little tiny bit, and then he interviews the attorney, lead plaintiffs representation in this lawsuit, and he asks him, okay, so why did, so why were you interested in this case? And the guy kind of smiles and he goes, you mean aside from financial incentives? Oh, and that's the only clip he shows of the lawyer. Nice. So he's pretty much just like, oh, this is just a bunch of greedy lawyers doing.

Privilece lawsuits, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he doesn't really get into like, oh, this is just a bunch of greedy lawyers doing frivolous lawsuits, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and he doesn't really get into like actually this lawsuit is trying to prove the same point that you are. I think you're both incorrect or at least not getting the complete picture here. Yeah, it's weird. I don't know, man. The whole thing just skips me out so hard because like I don't think that the grounds for this lawsuit or the argument for this lawsuit is like a good one. But I also don't think that the way that it was portrayed was accurate.

Right. And also, I mean, if they had gotten to the discovery phase, they probably would have gotten some really good stuff. They totally fucking would have. Like I have no fucking doubt that there are like straight up skeletor memos coming out of fucking McDonald's corporate HQ. Yeah.

Okay, thing two, this is where we get into some smoking gun territory. Oh. Super size me with holds important information about its experiment. I have been waiting for this because he must have been twisting these like medical numbers and his routines and everything like on its face that stuff doesn't really hold up. So throughout the film Morgan Spurlock and his nutritionist both say that he was eating about 5,000 calories a day they say it's several times. A number of other filmmakers so there were like rebuttal documentaries to supersize me at the time.

So there were like, rebuttal documentaries to supersize me at the time. Okay. A number of those documentaries, some reporters and other folks like science teachers tried to figure out how to make this happen based on the McDonald's menu at the time. And they could not get to 5,000 calories per day. Wait, but I don't understand how you can't get to 5,000 calories. Can't you just go in there and buy like 12 milkshakes? I mean what they were saying is one breakfast meal, one lunch meal, and dinner meal, and even desserts with lunch and dinner, they were still like, can't get there.

So if you do like a big Mac extra value meal for lunch and dinner, and then they're like breakfast meal for breakfast, that doesn't get you anywhere close to 5,000 calories. And even if you add McFlurry's or whatever, to lunch and dinner, it still didn't get folks to 5,000 calories. He should have done it at the cheesecake factory. That place, you do that in like one dish. Yeah.

Wait, let me click that he click here. I'm actually really curious now. Big McFlurry's. I'm sure it, he click here. I'm actually really curious now. Big Mac calories. I'm sure it's changed since 2004. I'm sure it has to. Yeah, so a Big Mac itself is 563 calories today. Yep, you'd have to eat nine Big Macs in a day to get you to 5,000 calories, which is like a lot.

Totally, you know, again, it feels like just a little nudge in the direction of like it seems like this is being sensationalized. It seems like things are being overstated a little bit. Some folks tried to replicate the health effects of his experiment and no one has been able to. The health stuff. I mean, I'm sure that in 30 days you could affect your health markers. I don't know if you can get them to like near death. Okay. Okay. You're like primed.

I'm so fucking ready. You're coiled up like a little leopard right now. Yes. So I am so deeply ready to fucking pounce. So two things. One, in the trailer, we've got this clip of the doctor being like, you're going to die, you would die. That's in response to a question that's Perlac asks

where he says, if I continued this for months or years, what would happen? Oh, so it's in response to hypothetical. It's not him saying you're going to die. It's not him saying you're going to die in the space of this 30 days, right? Okay. But more than that, one of the biggest sort of smoking gun

things that this film presents is that Spurlock had significant liver damage. Right. From 30 days, just one month of eating this way and he's like, oh my god, look what happened to my liver. So the film doesn't offer us any explanation for that liver damage other than 30 days of big donalds. In 2017, Morgan Spurlock disclosed that he was an alcoholic and said that he had been drinking every week.

He had not been sober for a week since he was 13. Oh. Right, decades and decades of hard drinking. And then at the end of this film, they're like, oh my God, look at the liver damage. You sustain just from one month of McDonald's is sort of what you're meant to conclude from that. Yeah, so they didn't take a baseline?

They, if they did, it is not, they do not specifically talk about the state of his liver at the beginning of that film. So it's like me going into the doctor and they're like, you're five foot six. And I'm like, after 30 days of this diet, I'm five foot six. Yes, yes.

You've been five foot six for a while. Yes. So like, alcoholism is a fucking beast. It's terrible. I have no desire to like, dunk on somebody who's like in the thick of their alcoholism. And at the same time, this is a self-funded movie where he is the director, he is making the decisions about how the film is structured,

and he has decided to make his body the site of an experiment about the health effects of something, and he's withholding a major fucking piece of information, right? It doesn't fucking hold water that you can be like, oh my god, one month of McDonald's and his liver was fried. And it's like, no, fucking 20 years of drinking and his liver was fried. Yeah, I actually, I mean, I remember that being a huge part

of why the movie was so convincing. Yes, this topic is heavily, heavily requested for us. A lot, a lot, a lot of people have asked about SuperSize Me. Most of them have been younger than you and I, and the reason that they have requested it is, and I talked to a friend of mine who said that he watched this film in health class every year. For years.

So this is like a major part to this day of health curricula in schools. Man. Right. Okay, are you ready for thing three? Oh, get anything three. Okay, thing three, that is the trouble was supersized me. It doesn't really identify problems

or propose meaningful solutions. Okay. It sort of points the finger at McDonald's, but it also makes fun of people who eat it McDonald's. He talks in the film about what McDonald's calls its heavy users. Right. Those are people who eat there about three times a week.

That's what McDonald's considers a heavy user. He does a little animation while he's talking about this. And he animates all of these heavy users as people my size or larger. I kept looking for other ways around this. And it was just like, man, this guy really fucking does not like fat people. Yeah. He interviews, he does a bunch of man on the street interviews with people who eat it

McDonald's and you're sort of supposed to laugh at them, you're supposed to judge them. It is as damning of the consumers as it is of the corporation, but it doesn't really give either actual paths to change aside from like, you have a choice of where to eat don't eat here, is sort of as far as he goes. Right. It's really weird to demonize this corporation, but also demonize the people who buy the products from the corporation without really interior gating, well, why do people eat there?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is part of the challenge here is that it doesn't engage at all with anything related to access to health care. It doesn't engage with the built environment. He says a couple of times sort of throughout the film. He's like, you know, it'd be nice if they got rid of super sizes. But he doesn't go, here's what McDonald's actually needs to fucking do. He's just like McDonald's fucking sucks and people who eat their fucking suck. It uses the language of corporate responsibility, but at its core, it's pushing for personal responsibility. It's all clicking into place now

why I liked this in my early 20s. Tell me. This was my entire ideology in my early 20s, was just like this thing sucks. Like this other thing sucks. Right? Without any actual political philosophy or any deeper understanding, it's just like things sucks. Right, without any actual political philosophy or any deeper understanding, it's just like,

yeah, cars suck, but also traffic sucks, and finding a parking spot sucks, climate change sucks. But like, I wasn't putting those together into like any theory of like, how should we address cars under climate change? It was just like, this is the thing that I hate today. The politics of like, boom! Like, then okay, it's just like, this is the thing that I hate today. The politics of like, boo! Like, then okay, it's also not clear to me that fast food is actually uniquely bad for people.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you look up the ingredients of most fast food, they're not that different than the ingredients of like a loaf of bread that you buy at the grocery store. Yeah. To me, it's like, there's this much bigger systemic problem with the way that food is inspected, the way that food is inspected, the way that food is produced. I think that McDonald's is bad, but it's not clear to me that they're worse

than any other restaurant. Again, as you noted, the fucking cheesecake factory, man. Like, dude. Applebee's has a lot to answer for. Sure. Fast casual is if anything worse than fast food, because your guard isn't up. I mean, I think a lot of this media around demonizing fast food, a lot of it really seems

to presume that either no one is consuming that media who eats at that restaurant or there are people eating that food from that restaurant who are consuming this media as well, and they just need to be told the straight shit, which is their dummies for eating this fucking terrible food. And everybody knows it's bad for you, and why would you make such a bad decision? Right. Anyway, we're getting further into not great territory here. I am going to send you a clip that we're gonna watch for our first item in Thing 4,

which is that supersize me proudly and incuriously drives stigma. Oh. So I'm gonna send you a clip from the film. Left unabated obesity would overtake smoking as a leading preventable cause of death in this country. I was at this kneel and it came up that one of the people was a smoker. And somebody else at the table started hectoring about it. What's the matter with you?

Don't you know how bad it is for you? It'll do this, that and the other thing to you and you really should stop. And the smoker rather than saying, fuck you, which, you know, is that mind your own business, which I think is the appropriate response, was a bastion and defensive, and like, oh, I tried to quit, and yeah, I'm gonna try again, and you're right, you're right, and so on. At that same table, there was a quite large woman, and I was wondering, what if this guy, instead of confronting the smoker, had said to the large woman, what's the matter with you, fat pig? Don't you know how dangerous it is to be so overweight? Stop eating for God's sake. Don't you dare get dessert, and what's

the matter with you? Right? Same logic. I'd be hard-pressed to find a distinction between those two examples. Okay, so one is now socially acceptable to Hector Smokers, but the other one isn't quite yet. So the question is at what point will it become acceptable to publicly Hector fat people in the way that the smokers are publicly Hectored? I love that we're at the point of the documentary where it's like, let's talk to a random libertarian. Like, the guy that they were just interviewing is like a random writer for Reason Magazine. Yep. Like he's not even like a health beat reporter. It's just like a random libertarian.

Who's not fat? Who's like, why doesn't anybody give fat people shit? And I'm like, you should have asked a fat person about whether or not we're getting shit. And he also, he does the thing where it's like, oh, so it's socially acceptable to yell at a smoker, but it's not socially acceptable to yell at a fat person. And it's like, it's extremely socially acceptable to yell at a fat person. Yes, that's not some like forbidden truth.

That like, that like fat people are like bad bad you can't even say it in America anymore. No, that's the consensus position of Every institution of American life. You are not a bold truth teller. Right. It's not EG to be like, oh fat people suck. That is the fucking status quo any doctor any politician the fact that people suck, that's the fucking status quo. Any doctor, any politician, anyone with any societal power will tell you exactly what you just said. It is the least forbidden edgy thing to be saying in American life. And also like, hey, fucko, we actually know now,

this is a 2022 looking back on 2004 moment, but we like now have quite a bit of data showing that increased stigma and internalization of weight stigma by fat people makes us fucking fat or not thinner. So this is only about making thin people feel better that they are allowed to yell at people who don't look like they look.

It's really clear that this film wants to stigmatize fat people and does not particularly want to give fat people a voice. There are a couple of fat people that it talks to, but it really only talks to fat people who sort of confirm Morgan Spurlock's hypothesis here. One of the people, one of the fat people that it talks to is a type two diabetic who drinks large amounts of soda, and he's interviewed while he is in a hospital bed, He talks to is a type two diabetic who drinks large amounts of soda,

and he's interviewed while he is in a hospital bed getting ready to go in for weight loss surgery. The other currently fat person that it talks to is a fat teen in an extremely painful scene, I would say for me. This teen's mom is talking to a guest speaker who came to her school, who came to talk about like weight loss stuff. And this mom is speaking for her child and is saying things like she's really trying

to lose weight and you're an inspiration to her. And you watch this fat teenager look at the camera while her mom is talking about everything she's doing to manage her way. It's so gross and so uncomfortable. So the film offers up one sort of quote-unquote success story fat person. And that story did not fucking age well. Okay. Would you like to know who the guest speaker was at that fat teen's high school? Early 2000's weight loss icon, Jared Fogel. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, oh. Do you want to give a rundown of who Jared Fogel is? I mean, I think we'll probably end up doing a whole episode at some point, but he was a guy who was in an ad campaign for Subway originally Talking about how he used to weigh some large amount and then he lost half his body weight or something these generic success stories By eating Subway he would have their like veggie sub or something and then he

He kind of became like a cultural figure. He would show up in like various other weight loss media stuff as like a spokesman. And then yeah, he was eventually arrested for, I believe having child pornography on his computer. Yeah, it's worse than that. Oh, is it? Yes, so he was a spokesperson for subway sandwiches. They lifted up his story because he said

that he had lost 250 pounds by getting up every day, walking to subway and having subway sandwiches, basically twice a day, essentially as a meal replacement plan. He was a spokesperson for them for like 15 years, like a really long time. In 2015, Jared Fogel pled guilty in federal court to distribution and possession of child pornography and to traveling to engage in a list that sexual conduct with a minor. God, I remember noping out of that story

like very early. You were correct to do so. I was like, this is super dark. I don't want to know anything else. Jesus Christ. Yeah. So two details. One, his defense team genuinely argued they had a forensic psychologist who said that the reason for the sexual abuse was the weight loss. Oh, what? So they argued that he replaced compulsive eating with what they call the hypersexuality in the form of child porn and child sex abuse. Oh, which I say fucking nope, get the fuck out of here.

That's fucked up. I'm speechless. I don't know if I've been speechless on the show before. I just like, oh, that's bleak. It's so bleak. It's so bleak. So even in the context of the film, he's not fucking helping. Well, like, what is, why is he even there?

He lost a bunch of weight, but he doesn't have anything to do with McDonald's. Well, this is sort of the thing about this film is that there's sort of a narrative, but it's sort of a collage of moments and attitudes toward fatness and fat people and McDonald's and fast food and all of this sort of stuff. And it just throws shit in like the guy being like,

when do we get to start hectoring fat people in public? And then it doesn't fucking say anything about it. And it does the same thing with Jared. They show a shot of him standing on stage at a fucking high school holding up his old pants that he wore when he was at his fattest. And I'm like, I was just watching it being like, why is he here? What is this about? I would like to show you a little clip of, we're not going to watch Jared. We don't need that in our lives. But we are going to watch that same fat teen then speaks directly

to the camera. Here is what that fat teen has to say about what Jared had to say to her. I guess it's kind of cool to know somebody or be able to listen to somebody talk about actually being where I am right now. And it's kind of hard because I can't afford to like go there every single day and buy sandwich like two times a day.

And that's what he's talking about. That's the only solution. That's what he said that works the best, but I can do that. And I've had other ways. And it kind of hurt my body from doing other ways that I've tried to do. And it's kind of hard like look at someone who said,

hey, I've done it so you can do it, but it's not that easy. Tell me your thoughts. I mean, that's more bleak than the Jared Vogel stuff. Oh no, I'm so sorry. I was like, this will be the lighter part. I mean, that's, I'm being slightly hyperbolic, but like, she's basically, I mean, she's near to tears and she's saying like,

yeah, I've tried this. And I've hurt my body. Yeah, it's hurt my body and I can't afford this. So basically, like what you're offering me is garbage. This is not remotely workable for me. This isn't a thing that functions for me, yeah. Right, this is totally irrelevant to me. And like, yeah, I, this is totally irrelevant to me. And like, yeah, I wish, I wish you would like,

listen to me when I say, like that doesn't work for me. Yeah. Like I wish someone would kind of take that seriously. I'm like telling you in very clear terms, but oh, guess you're just gonna tell me the same thing that you tell everybody and just keep telling me I gotta do it again. Great, thank you.

Right, it doesn't offer anything on that front. It just sort of drops that in and then is like, anyway, I'm moving on. Right. And then their next fucking story is about this due to work for Baskin Robbins and got real sick. Okay. So it just goes right back to like stigmatizing shit.

Right. This fat teenager who is ostensibly who you are talking about in this film is like I'm telling you that your approach doesn't work for me and it's like anyway on to the next here's another yeah Anyway fat person who died because they were too dumb to stop eating right like is sort of the vibe and it's just like Yeah, this is unhelpful if only she had listened to the infamous pedophile She'd be doing crazy Can I tell you what the so so at the end of the film,

it does a whole thing that's like, oh, like where are they now? Oh, no. Where are all these people? And the closing title card says, Jared Fogel continues to inspire millions with his willpower and giant pants. Ah!

That's so dark. It's not funny, but like this is my emotional reaction. It's well, laughter is a way of discharging discomfort, right? Like that's a way of like getting it out of here. I get you. That's also one of my primary responses. Yeah. I don't want to do too much of the 2022 looking back on 2004,

but like, boy, oh boy, that is some real fucking damning. It's hard. It's hard to watch. That is rough in retrospect to be like, he's inspiring millions and I'm like, GOOOO! Again, this documentary is still being shown in schools. Yes! What does they do when the kids are like, who's that guy?

It's so well fucked. Let me tell you a story about this particular guest star. I told you before this episode, I was like, I'm gonna be a little less swearsy this time, I think. But maybe not, and this is the shit where I'm like, I can't. Yeah. I can't not swear about Jared Fogle.

So, okay, can we move on to the fifth thing? Fifth thing. Okay, the fifth thing is, when people talk about super size me, they talk about like like it actually created a bunch of good Change in the world and my fifth thing is the change that it created wasn't good and in many cases it wasn't change Right, well, I mean they got rid of the supersizes, I guess that was the big headline Yeah, so McDonald's proudly announced that they stopped supersizing portions you can't get supersized fries anymore at McDonald's.

But when you start to look at what was a supersize and sort of some of the reporting at the time, it gets a little murkier. A supersized drink was 42 ounces. That is a lot of fucking soda. The largest size now is 32 ounces. So significantly less, right? About a quarter less.

Except a couple of reporters at the time when this announcement came out that they were not gonna supersize anymore, they were like, well, let's see what the difference is. So there was this fucking reporter and I was like, God bless this person for being like, what am I gonna do with my day today? I'm gonna do this.

I'm gonna get a supers size coke and a large coke, and I'm gonna strain out the ice and measure how much soda it is in each one. The gorilla journalism we need. And it was the same amount of soda. Nice. They were putting more ice in the super size ones, and they checked from like a couple of different places

in blah, blah, blah. A super size fry was seven ounces. Now they only have a large, and a large is 6.2 ounces. So basically the same. Basically the super size fry had two more fries than a large fry. And like at the same time, like they've taken these, the names of super size stuff off of the menu, but they've also added all of their mick cafe coffees,

which are like, you know, if you get, I did look up a plain iced coffee, and it has 42 grams of sugar for a plain iced coffee. What? Really? Yeah. Ooh, four grams is a teaspoon of sugar. So that's 10 teaspoons of sugar. Right, so there's this belief that it like pushed McDonald's in the right direction, but it's not as if McDonald's food is less caloric

or healthier or any of that kind of stuff as a result. It just means they change the names of their sizes, right? And they offer slightly less product and maybe less product. It's hard to read that as anything other than a PR move. Well, yeah, I mean, the parallel with subway is instructive because subway was not a weight loss healthy food restaurant. They did this as a PR move to cast themselves as a weight loss company because Americans

were interested in weight loss. Nobody wanted to glorify large sizes at that time. They wanted to glorify health. Yes. So, I mean, this was the same time when KFC was changing its name because they didn't want the word fried on the signs. So, part of me feels like just like you don't want to be marketing something that's like bragging about how large it is.

Yes. So, like, shortly after this happens, sort of Wendy's and other chains follow suit. Wendy's announces that it's eliminating its biggie size. Do you remember biggie size at Wendy's? No, we didn't have any Wendy's in your my house. I was a Taco Bell kid. I'll talk about all the time. Did they remove their eighth layer of the

Puerto Rico at Taco Bell? So Wendy says they're eliminating their biggie size. What they don't say is that they're changing the name of the biggie size to a large. They're changing the name of a large to a medium and they're changing the name of a medium to a small. Right. It's just fucking optics, right? This is also around the same time that candy companies phased out king size. Like we don't have king size candy bars anymore.

Quote on Quote. Yeah. So they were like, we're doing away with king size. We've heard you the health concerns are real. And then like a few months later, things start showing up on shelves that are king size, but they're labeled sharing size. Nice. Like, go share it with other people. You can't think we didn't tell you to share it. It's so cynical. It's so obvious and so cynical. It's so cynical. Wait, can I tell you there were a number of rebuttal projects to supersize me and they were also fucking unhelpful.

Even those rebuttal projects were about going to McDonald's and the focus of most of them was, I'm gonna go to McDonald's and I'm gonna lose weight. Are you ready to have your mind blown? Yeah, I remember these. There was like, there was a guy that was, yeah, tried to eat healthy at McDonald's and there was some professor who went on like the twinkie diet to show that you could eat nothing but junk food and still lose weight, calories in, calories out.

So I watched a couple of those rebuttal documentaries and they were basically like going even harder on personal responsibility because they're like, you can go to McDonald's and you can order better things and then you'll lose weight, right? I love it. People saw this and were like, this isn't libertarian enough. I love it. I can't even more pen and teller ass version of the same movie.

I think it's worth noting that like all of these fucking rebuttal projects didn't do anything to challenge any of the bias that existed in SuperSize me. It was all white middle class people replicating the experiment but also the biases of another white middle class and now just straight up wealthy white person. I feel like it's very you that you're livid about the movie that's like McDonald's is terrible, but you're also livid about the movies that are like McDonald's isn't that bad. You're like actually, you're both trash. Well, so here's an example of this, right? There is quite a bit of media about a science teacher who did a six-month McDonald's experiment. He says he lost 60 pounds and he says this at the time in the media.

I'm going to send you a quote from this science teacher. He says, I thought my biggest adversaries were going to be nutritionists, dieticians, and doctors. But those ended up being my biggest backers because they realized this guy is right. I'm not pushing McDonald's. I'm not pushing fast food. I'm pushing taking accountability and making the right choice for you individually. We're back in Libertarianville.

And then McDonald signed him on to be a corporate ambassador. Oh, really? That was his tryout. I'm not pushing fast food. I'm fully working for McDonald's. Fuck, man. I mean, it's kind of a shallow point, but any weird regimen of restriction, you're probably going to lose weight in the short term. And so eating only at McDonald's is a regimen of restriction.

Totally. And then you can't stick with it because it's really, really boring. And it's probably very inconvenient as well because there's not like that many McDonald's is in the world and you wanna go to friends houses for dinner. So you can't maintain it and then you gain all the weight back. Yes, totally.

Here's the last thing that I would say in terms of the change that supersized me created and helped to sort of power, is that it contributes to the passage of tons and tons of what are called cheeseburger bills. Okay. According to the Lancet, here is what those cheeseburger bills did. It says the US House of Representatives voted 276 to 139 in favor of a bill that would prohibit lawsuits filed by obese Americans seeking to blame the food industry for their weight problems.

Cheeseburger bills or Common Sense Consumption Acts were spearheaded by the National Restaurant Association as well as the American Legislative Exchange Council or Alec and have been enacted in 26 states. These are Alec bills. So like for folks who are unfamiliar, Alec is this like evil empire of like far right policy priorities

that will like they advocate for things like privatizing prisons. Yeah. But these were bills that passed in plenty of solidly blue states, states that are known to be sort of left of center. Like Oregon has a fucking cheeseburger bill. Oh, yeah. But so does Arizona.

So does Maine, so does Michigan, so does North Dakota, so does Wisconsin, so does Illinois. 26 states passed these with support from Democrats and Republicans. It was sort of this like battle royale between the moral panics, the dual moral panics about frivolous litigation and the obesity epidemic. And ultimately, while this film wants you to think that it is holding McDonald's accountable,

part of the change that it gave way to, like following this film is when a fuck ton of these past, and a fuck ton of them cited supersize me in their actual arguments in favor of these bills, right? Ultimately, what it did is just shield fast food restaurants from any kind of fucking accountability. I mean, it's really telling that that's what people took away from it, or that's what the effect of it was,

because if you believe the ostensible premise of the movie, you should want people to sue McDonald's because McDonald's is poisoning people. Right. If your belief is this is really fucking terrible for people, and if they eat it, they're gonna die. Absolutely, you should want more accountability for McDonald's. But again, that's not actually what the film is doing. Right. That's not what the project was, even though it looked like corporate accountability at the time, it actually ended up entrenching this narrative of like, it's too easy to sue corporations in America, which is still hilarious.

Anyone, I mean, aside from these anecdotes, it's just a laughable idea. Yeah, so that's super size me. It is difficult to talk about this film or any of Morgan Spurlock's work at this point without talking about his sort of 2017 revelations about sexual assault and harassment. This was during the big wave of sort of Me Too stuff, right?

The thing that makes Morgan Spurlock's different, I can't fucking believe that you, this did not cross your path. He publicly admitted to it without any prompting. Oh, was this the one word, like, Me Too was happening and he just like put it out there, like this is gonna come out about me. Yep. On December 13th, 2017, Morgan Spurlock issued a me to statement on Twitter called I am part of the problem. He discloses in this statement that he had quote been unfaithful to every

wife and girlfriend I have ever had. Okay. He says that he was sexually abused in his childhood in teen years. He discloses that his father left when he was young, that he, this is where he said he'd been consistently drinking since the age of 13. And it seems pretty clear in the reading of this statement that he really thinks he's like doing a good thing. Okay.

So we're gonna read a couple of excerpts from his statement. Mm-hmm, so here's quote number one. So he says, I'm part of the problem. Over my life, there have been many instances that parallel what we see every day in the news. When I was in college, a girl who I hooked up with on a one night stand accused me of rape.

Not outright, there were no charges or investigations, but she wrote about the instance in a short story writing class and called me by name. A female friend who was in the class told me about it afterwards. I was floored. That's not what happened, I told her. This wasn't how I remembered it at all. In my mind, we'd been drinking all night and went back to my room.

We began fooling around, she pushed me off, then we laid in the bed and talked and laughed some more, then began fooling around again. We took off our clothes. She said she didn't want to have sex, so we laid together and talked and kissed and laughed, and then we started having sex. And then she started to cry. I didn't know what to do. We stopped having sex and I rolled beside her. I tried to comfort her to make her feel better. I thought I was doing okay. I believe she was feeling better. she believed she was raped. So, okay, this is my like little radar is going off because this is a man saying that he was accused of sexual assault when actually

it was just an honest misunderstanding. It's not every one of these cases, but in a lot of these cases, when you hear from the dude and he describes it as a harmless misunderstanding, honest mistake thing, you need to also hear from the woman. Yep. And I will say I didn't find anything where we hear from this particular woman. In the interview, he said he, quote unquote, hadn't heard from her. Okay. He describes this thing and he goes, I was trying to make her feel better.

I was trying to comfort her. But he's also describing a woman who is crying and telling him she does not want to have sex. And then he's like, and then we started having sex. He's describing this as if he is being a good guy. And there's also a reading of what he reports on here that is extremely not him being a good guy. Yeah. So here is the other instance that he describes where again, this feels like very unreliable narrator territory to me. Yeah.

He says, then there was a time I settled a sexual harassment allegation in my office. This was around eight years ago and it wasn't a grope-feely harassment. It was verbal and it was just as bad. I would call my female assistant Hot Pants or Sex Pants when I was yelling to her from the other side of the office. Something I thought was funny at the time, but then realized I had completely demeaned and belittled her to a place of non-existence.

So when she decided to quit, she came to me and said, if I didn't pay her a settlement, she would tell everyone. Being who I was, it was the last thing I wanted, so of course I paid. I paid for peace of mind. I paid for her silence and cooperation. Most of all, I paid so I could remain who I was. I am part of the problem. Yeah, this also, this also feels like getting ahead of somebody saying like, oh, he's he's paid out a settlement,

which probably has an NDA attached. So it's like him getting ahead of it., like, oh, he's paid out a settlement, which probably has an NDA attached. So it's like him getting ahead of it. So like, before you learn that piece of information, you learn this thing. Yeah, it's impossible to read these stories of things that could be some sort of honest misunderstanding without reading them in the context of like every fucking guy who's accused of sexual harassment.

And he was like, there was an honest misunderstanding, it always turns out to be a lie. Yes, this is literally the least objectionable reason you would have paid out a sexual harassment lawsuit. Yes, if you were designing in a lab, yes, there's a sexual harassment lawsuit against me, but, and then you have some like nice explanation, this is exactly the explanation that you'd come up with.

Well, and even still, he's painting this as essentially she was blackmailing him. She said, if I didn't pay her off, she'd tell everybody. And I, being the good guy that I am, that wasn't being who I was, it was the last thing I wanted. So of course I paid, right? Like, he's casting aspersions on the person. He says he's owning upersions on the person he says

he's owning up to treating poorly. So on the heels of his statement and his sort of couple of confessions that are from an unreliable narrator, Jezebel does some in-depth reporting about the experiences of women who worked for his production company. The title of this story is former employees say Morgan Spurlux, production company was, quote, fratty boys club. Yeah, surprise. Twist. Multiple employees talked to them about how, quote,

the Scotch came out at 4 p.m. in the office. When he and his partner had meetings with women that they found attractive, they would say, oh, she gave good meetings. If they didn't find those, like women that they met with attractive, according to Jezebel, one of the former employees said that they would just outright say, I wish he was more attractive. You mentioned it seems like he's trying to get out ahead of something. He releases the statement on December 13th, 2017. The Jezebel Peace comes out on December 19th, 2017. Oh, okay.

I feel like there's like a very real possibility that he caught wind of the story, or that someone tipped him off, or that Jezebel called him for comment, or whatever. And then he issues the statement to be like, here's what I did. Yeah. So the follow-up for him was within a matter of days, he goes into rehab for alcoholism. He loses his distribution deal with Super Size Me 2.

Oh, wow. He's dropped from a bunch of projects. He's got a TNT series that he was creating with Sarah Jessica Parker about women's issues. He says later in the media that he lost his staff of 65 people working for him. I don't know if we've had another self-cancelation like this. Yeah, because it's actually capacity. We haven't heard from the women at all. There's no there's no specific victim. Yes, they are absent from this public conversation, which is they're right if it's their choice. I don't know if it's their choice. I don't know like I'm guessing

as you said that there's an NDA, but the anchor point for these conversations about sexual assault and harassment have to be the survivors of that sexual assault and harassment. And I think that's also frankly part of the problem with super size me. It is like the urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Hectering fat people. Right? Like, it essentially only engages with fat people who prove his point. And we talk about this fucking fat high schooler who's like, Jared Fogel's advice was not helpful to me. Which I'm like, yeah. So it sort of introduces all of this logic that is extremely reductive, right? It reduces fat people to fast food eaters.

It reduces regular fast food eaters to every day, every meal, fast food eaters. It reduces those meals of fast food that people eat to perceived poor decision making. And it's sort of hiding the ball on a bunch of the sort of splashiest conclusions, right? Hiding the balls. Oh, God damn it, Michael!

No! No, Michael! You're fired! I hate this! I quit! Thank you. you