Big Mac attack: Super Size Me asks the question: is McDonald's unappealing--or irresistible?

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Critical Essay

During the first lunch of his month-long McDonald's binge, Morgan Spurlock is visibly uncomfortable. Eating in his car after stopping at a drive-through, he has trouble finishing his supersize fries. He complains of "a McBelly ache," "McGas," and "McSweats." Then he leans out the window and vomits on the asphalt.

Since Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me argues that fast food is addictive, perhaps this scene is a sly reference to the nausea people often experience the first time they inject heroin. On the face of it, however, Spurlock's reaction undermines his thesis that fast food is so irresistible that people can't help but gorge themselves on it. Super Size Me (in which I briefly appear) is full of such contradictions, and they're the best thing about the movie.

Spurlock's fast food feat consists of eating some 5,000 calories a day, twice what his doctor says he needs to maintain his starting weight of 185 pounds. He also avoids exercise because, he says, that's what most Americans do. I hope I'm not ruining the movie by revealing the upshot: Spurlock gains weight--nearly 25 pounds over 30 days. His cholesterol goes up, and so does his blood pressure. His doctor describes his liver function test results as "obscene." Spurlock complains of sluggishness, depression, shortness of breath, impotence, chest pressure, and headaches. Again, this experience does not seem so alluring that people would be clamoring to share it.

After nine days, Spurlock announces, "I'm pretty bored with their menu." When it's all over, he says with relief, "I can't believe that today I'm going to get up and not have to eat at McDonald's." Yet Spurlock also claims he was hooked on fast food during his binge, feeling happy only while eating. "I definitely went through serious withdrawal symptoms," including headaches, sweats, and shakes, he reported atthe Washington, D.C., International Film Festival in May.

You could say Spurlock's experience reflects the reality of addiction: It's not something you fall into; you have to work hard at it. As the psychologist Jeffrey Schaler has observed, it takes "an iron will" to be an addict. But this understanding of addiction--as a choice, not a disease--works against Spurlock's attempt to blame fast food chains for making us fat.

Spurlock detracts from his message in other ways as well. Although he generally presents critics of McDonald's as public-spirited activists, he can't resist taking a shot at Samuel Hirsch, the lawyer...