January 24, 2004

An article I found pretty amusing.  Some guy eats only McDonald's food for a month, and damn near dies from it.

LAST February, Morgan Spurlock decided to become a gastronomical guinea pig. His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald's and document the impact on his health. Scores of cheeseburgers, hundreds of fries and dozens of chocolate shakes later, the formerly strapping 6-foot-2 New Yorker - who started out at a healthy 185 pounds - had packed on 25 pounds. But his supersized shape was the least of his problems.

Within a few days of beginning his drive-through diet, Spurlock, 33, was vomiting out the window of his car, and doctors who examined him were shocked at how rapidly Spurlock's entire body deteriorated.

"It was really crazy - my body basically fell apart over the course of 30 days," Spurlock told The Post. His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression.

The guy did it as a research project, and also filmed himself during the process, all to edit it into a documentary that he's shopping around to try and get a movie deal.  I'm not exactly going to be first in line to see the film, but it's an interesting premise.

A spokeswoman for McDonald's told The Post yesterday that no representatives from the corporation had seen "Super Size Me."

"Consumers can achieve balance in their daily dining decisions by choosing from our array of quality offerings and range of portion sizes to meet their taste and nutrition goals," McDonald's said in a statement.

Over the course of the film, Spurlock is regularly examined by a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist and SoHo-based general practitioner Dr. Daryl Isaacs.

"He was an extremely healthy person who got very sick eating this McDonald's diet," Dr. Isaacs told The Post.

"None of us imagined he could deteriorate this badly - he looked terrible. The liver test was the most shocking thing - it became very, very abnormal."

Spurlock has since returned to normal health. "The treatment was to just stop doing what he was doing," Dr. Isaacs says.

The only thing I was really surprised by about this one was that the NY Post (tabloid) would print it, with the name of the restaurant attached.  McD's newspaper ad budget must have severely dried up in recent years.

And speaking of newspaper ads and media coverage, Wal-Mart famously boycotts all newspaper advertising (they use TV commercials to flood a new market).  The effect of this in small towns is often to drive the local paper out of business, since Wal-Mart kills off all the local hardware stores, garden stores, video rental stores, grocery stores, drug stores, etc.  All businesses who used to advertise in the paper, and it's compounded by Wal-Mart never advertising there themselves.

Anyway, my point is that that's probably a major reason that so many newspapers are willing to run so many nasty (but true) articles about Wal-Mart.  They ain't got no ad money to lose by doing it, and they're taking on a sworn enemy.

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