our next guest is the director and the star of a new highly acclaimed documentary entitled super
siiz me it opens tomorrow in selected cities please say hello to Morgan Spurlock now before
we talk about the film I want to mention that you recently received the award as best director from
the Sundance Film Festival for this effort nice going congratulations thank you very much this is
a um the documentary yeah and it's it's one of those ideas when you hear it you think oh yeah
that's the perfect idea to pursue tell tell people uh the Genesis of this idea yeah well
it was kind of uh it was spurned by uh the girls who sued McDonald's you know cuz a couple years
ago you couldn't open a newspaper read a magazine without people you know talking about the Obesity
epidemic in America and everybody always talked about fast food and blaming fast food and I said
wow we're going to blame companies now for selling us food that we buy that we eat but then I heard a
spokesman from McDonald's I was sitting on my mom's couch in Beckley West Virginia you know
Thanksgiving Day 2002 the best day to get an idea like this when uh when you know spokesman from
McDonald's came on TV and started talking about the lawsuits and he said you can't link our food
to these girls being sick you can't link our food to these girls being obese our food is healthy
it's nutritious it's good for you and so yeah so so so the light went on and I said well if it's
that good for me I should be able to eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner for 30 days straight
with no side effects right now the in in the suit though uh the the girls suing did not win the suit
they did not and and wasn't it stated somewhere in in the documentation that McDonald's nose or
suggested or advertised that the food was handled in such a way to make it less than yeah in in the
court documents one of the things they said and this is in the movie that any processing their
Foods undergo serves to make them more harmful than unprocessed Foods yeah so they actually sort
of admitted to that yeah uh now now to me when you you had all three meals at McDonald's everything
to eat and drink including water including water and you had to have at least uh each item from
the menu couple times yeah usually at least once yeah yeah and uh no exercise to speak of yeah well
I I would I was wasn't exercising more than the average American like the 60% of Americans don't
exercise at all so I wasn't exing but I was still walking and so the average American walks you know
less than 2 miles a day yeah now uh to to me as I'm watching the movie I'm thinking I know how
this is going to end I mean it it comes as no yeah it it it comes as no surprise to me that
you gained like 25 pounds and your cholesterol went up I mean what have we learned here other
than the the the obvious but I think I think the it's the it's the other impact that I had
on my body apart from my cholesterol going up you know my liver just completely filled with
fat over the course of this yeah which which was which was was really scary you know and uh
so like it was filled with fat the doctor said I was in route to giving myself non-alcoholic stata
hepatitis which could lead to like you know a fatty liver a hardened liver or therosis you
know much like an alcoholic would get wow yeah so by day 21 they were all saying listen stop
you know we don't know what's going to happen to you yeah yeah and did you consider giving
it up I did you know like they told me to stop I called you know my mom my dad friends friends of
friends other doctor friends and they all said to stop and then you know my old I called my oldest
brother Craig who still lives in Beckley the beacon of wisdom that he's always been in my
life you know both good and bad you know the kind of kind of brother who's like no no go ahead jump
off the roof it'll be funny you know so I called him up and I told him what the doctor said and
he said to me you know in his great accent he goes Morgan people eat this crap their whole
lives hold on hold on hold
on you really think it's going to kill you in nine more days and I said that's the most logical thing
I've heard yet no I'm going to keep going and you in in the beginning you you uh felt bad early on
and then you got to a point where you didn't feel quite so bad and and was that your body
just adjusting to this yeah I think my body was just really starting to adapt you know to all the
fat the sugar the caffeine you know cuz I would get crazy headaches like massive headaches you
know that the minute I would start eating they go away right which yeah yeah it's and and in
the uh in the film we actually we meet a guy who has eaten close to 20,000 Big Macs in his
life doni and he's rail thin and seems to be just fine yeah so how do you explain what it
did to you how do you explain what it didn't do to him well Don gorsky he only eat that's all he
eats like 90% of his solid food diet since 1972 has been Big Macs yeah so so he so he'll eat like
two Big Macs a day that's like 1,200 calories and he'll have like a couple Cokes so he's not he's
not even taking in like 16,00 calories a day and he's taller than me and the guy's a prison guard
so he's he's burning calories all day long yeah so what what can we learn by the two comparative
studies here yeah I think that uh you should probably watch how many Big Macs you eat would
be my my my first suggestion yeah but he seems to be doing just fine maybe he should go somewhere
in the middle maybe like 10,000 Big Macs would be all right you know I don't know and uh during the
whole thing did you have a relationship with McDonald's did they know what you were doing
yeah McDonald's didn't really want to talk to me yeah yeah yeah but people actually do live
kind of like this don't they they do yeah a lot of people a lot of Americans one out of every four
Americans eats fast food every day but like you say it's not strictly speaking about McDonald's
I mean if you had just decided that I'm going to have three meals a day for one month of nothing
but pudding likely the same results would have happened you know I don't go I don't go into
into into pudding land and there's not a sign that says you know get the pudding value meal you know
so it's like there's a difference you feel that you're being coerced when you get in there and
and you would would only accept the super sizing or ask for superzing if it was offered is that Cor
yeah and and what exactly is the supera what does that mean that's like this fantastic like barrel
of soda that they have there it's like a super sized Coke is 42 ounces of soda you know that's
three and a half cans of soda nobody needs to be drinking three and a half cans of soda there
nobody you know uh so when you started you weighed was it 186 I weighed 185 and a 12 PBS and at the
end of the 30-day period you weighed 210 210 yeah and and I was right about the cholesterol it went
from somewhere like 160s it went from 165 to 230 230 wow 65 points and if you had continued on this
do you how much longer do you think you could have lived with that that's a that's a good question
yeah I don't know not much longer I don't think there there's also an interesting scene early on
where you're still kind of acclimating to your your new diet and you're eating in your car yeah
and and it starts you start sweating and the next thing you know you get your head out the window
and you're you're even your guts up yeah uh what what was that all about was it yeah that's you
know your your body you got to listen to your body my body with early on was saying don't do it man
don't do it like know and H you look great now yeah how did you how did you get the weight off
was it as easy as putting it on um no it was a lot harder taking it took me about 14 months to
take it off really yeah and my girlfriend who's in the film she's a she's a vegan Chef you know
so yeah yeah so uh right after I got off the diet she put me on like a detox diet to kind of clean
me out and took about eight weeks for all my body functions to come back to normal but 14 months
to lose all the weight did did you find that you were missing the McDonald's diet oh my gosh even
to this day if I smell a Big Mac my mouth starts watering I'm just like I'm just like oh it's ter
I'm just like well maybe just one bite you know let's uh look at a scene here from suiz man it
opens uh in selected cities tomorrow right correct you know what we're going to look at Morgan yeah
this is uh this is my first weigh in and uh this is like after 5 days in and I you know
and the fun is just beginning there well it's a wonderful idea and a and a fascinating film
did did you read the book Fast Food Nation it's a great book yeah it's it's sort of like a nice
companion piece to that it is yeah it's a nice little tag good luck to you and pleasure having
you here Morgan Spurlock ladies and gentlemen the director superzing we'll be right back everybody