Film maker down-sized but still super-heated

By JULIE MIDDLETON

It's lunchtime and Morgan Spurlock, the maker of the maverick fast-food film Super Size Me, is at the plutey Hilton Hotel restaurant White.

But 34-year-old Spurlock, who arrived in New Zealand yesterday for a six-day promotional tour, won't be eating. It's not to avoid an unflattering mouth-full photo, or that he'd rather have a burger - he's a motormouth, which means any food in front of him gets forgotten.

So just a white coffee, then. The lanky, 1.8m Spurlock vehemently disagrees when you suggest he's made a funny polemic rather than a balanced documentary about the month where he ate every meal at McDonald's.

"It is a documentary," he insists. "I made the poor choices people make. We tried to get McDonald's to give their point of view [the corporation refused] and we talked to plenty of experts [about] the impact of fast foods in our world."

When the genial Spurlock started his February 1-March 2 gorge last year, he was "a massive exerciser" who biked all around New York City. He cut the exercise to a minimum - "I became the average American" - and set rules: eat everything on the menu at least once, and accept size upgrades - the super-sizes of the title - if offered.

After a month he had gained 11kg, was twitchy, depressed and lethargic, and had high cholesterol and a nearly-ruined liver. His vegan chef girlfriend Alexandra Jamieson, who is also in New Zealand, says "he was so depressed. He felt terrible, his energy was off, his mood was bad and our sex life totally fell apart."

Spurlock took 14 months to regain his normal weight, but he claims it was the three days after he stopped the regime that were the worst: the headaches, sweats and body pains were withdrawal symptoms "like an alcoholic would feel or drug addict".

Suggest that most people would never eat like he did, and Spurlock says he knows people whose every meal is takeaway greasies. The point is to graphically illustrate that "we over-eat and we under-exercise. I want people to walk out of the movie and think: wow, I need to take better care of me."

But why pick on McDonald's? Because the giant corporation built on burgers, shakes and fries "feeds 46 million people a day".

Spurlock describes McDonald's sponsorship of Olympian Sarah Ulmer (it also sponsors triathlete Hamish Carter) as "health by association and propaganda".

McDonald's public affairs man Liam Jeory always sounds peeved when talk turns to Spurlock. Publicity to date, he says, has been uncritical.

"Let's make it a bit more real and ask him to explain how, when other people - including Paul Jeffreys here in New Zealand - have copied his experiment, they've actually lost weight."

Adman Jeffreys, who lost 64kg of his 168kg in a year and wrote a book about it, replicated Spurlock's experiment in July. He ate every meal for a month at McDonald's, starting with its Special K cereal in the mornings, ate every menu item at least once, and lost 10.5kg.

"I wanted to prove the opposite of what Morgan Spurlock proved," says Jeffreys, who also kept up his regular exercise regime.

Jeory: "How would Morgan explain that?"

In a word, dismissively - Spurlock says the exercise would have made the difference.

So no hankering for McDonald's? "I'll never say never. In the movie we asked nutritionists how much fast food you should eat, and they said about once a month. Over the course of this movie, I ate enough McDonald's to last me eight years.

"So maybe around 2012 I'll be ready for another Big Mac."