There’s an awkward scene toward the beginning of Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! — the unheralded sequel to the Oscar-nominated Super Size Me documentary — where Morgan Spurlock calls to inquire about procuring a bank loan to buy his own chicken farm. “Are you a filmmaker?” the bank manager asks, upon learning that the caller’s name is Morgan Spurlock. “Yes, I’m a filmmaker,” Spurlock answers, “and a chicken farmer.” The audience is clued in on the joke; the plot centers around Spurlock raising chickens for his new farm-to-table fast-food restaurant, Holy Chicken. When the manager abruptly terminates the call, we all know why.
By the time he shot the second Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock had become a household name — even to a loan officer in rural Alabama. And in the 15 years between the two films, America’s food consciousness had grown as well, turning Spurlock into an accidental prophet for a new generation of “foodies” to whom fast food — and everything it represented — was the enemy. But after a public scandal over admissions of abuse and sexual harassment during the peak of the #MeToo movement in 2017, his career never recovered. Spurlock had remained largely out of the public eye for years before his death on May 23 in New York of complications from cancer at age 53. His passing came as a shock to many, myself included, who were unaware of his illness. In light of his problematic behavior, eulogies were few and far between.
When I learned of the news, I’d just completed an assignment for Eater that had me thinking a lot about Spurlock and his legacy, in which I reenacted his iconic Super Size Me experiment with Sweetgreen salads as an homage to the film’s 20th anniversary. Eating 30 bowls of Sweetgreen in a row — infinitely gentler to my digestive system than a month’s worth of Big Macs and french fries was to his — wasn’t as easy as I expected. The exercise left me with an even deeper appreciation for his self-sacrifice, all in the name of pushing the American food system outside its comfort zone. If I barely survived two weeks of salad, I doubt I could’ve survived a full month of McDonald’s.
I remember seeing Super Size Me in a crowded theater when it premiered in 2004 at the Angelika Film Center in downtown Manhattan. Americans were beginning to wise up to the dangers of processed food, but we needed a push. Super Size Me felt less like a documentary and more like an act of protest. It was eye-opening, and I never thought about fast food the same way again.
The film was a surprise hit, an unusual feat for a documentary, earning more than $22 million at the box office despite a shoestring budget of only $65,000 — and its impact on food, agriculture, and film is undeniable. “From the beginning, Morgan wanted to challenge what documentary could be in a time when the majority of the industry saw it as a singularly niche genre,” wrote Jeremy Chilnick, his former business partner, in a LinkedIn post commemorating his loss.
Along with other influential contemporary cultural documents, like Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation in 2001 and Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma in 2006, Super Size Me changed the way many Americans think about fast food by exposing the nefarious underworld that sustains it. Its success ran parallel to the ascent of “foodie” culture at a time when televised reality shows like Top Chef (whose inaugural season aired in 2006) transformed cooking into a spectator sport and feature films like Sideways (which came out the same year) depicted characters who cared deeply about food and wine. This very publication launched as a food blog in 2005, further fueling the public’s growing fascination with restaurants and food culture. A new generation of culinary enthusiasts had emerged, a more discerning (and, yes, sometimes haughty) audience whose rejection of fast food and pursuit of the “slower” variety became inextricably linked to its identity.
Having just spent so many hours immersed in the original Super Size Me movie in preparation for my Salad Size Me experiment, I was struck by the prescience of Spurlock’s self-conscious filmmaking style. Though the film preceded the launch of the iPhone by three years, many of the scenes in the movie feel like they could’ve been shot on one. By casting himself as the protagonist of his own misadventures, Spurlock was one of the first filmmakers (along with Michael Moore) to turn the camera on himself, delivering voyeuristic pleasures for audiences in a way that foreshadowed today’s TikTok and Instagram content.
Two decades later, McDonald’s is still raking in over $25 billion in annual revenue, fueled in part by the 115 million Americans who still consume fast food every day. But trends in quick-service restaurants have changed significantly. “Fast-casual” brands like Shake Shack and Sweetgreen have emerged with an eye on higher quality (or “healthier”) food, ethical sourcing, and sustainability. What I learned from replicating Spurlock’s experiment with Sweetgreen is that many of these burgeoning fast-casual concepts have evolved into mission-based lifestyle brands that meet today’s food-savvy consumers where they are. It’s difficult to imagine this seismic shift having happened without Super Size Me.
“Morgan Spurlock achieved what most artists only dream: he actually changed the world with his art,” read a post on X by Brett Morgen, a fellow filmmaker who directed the David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream. Just months before Super Size Me’s official theatrical release in May 2004, McDonald’s retired the super-size option from all its restaurants. Though the company claimed the film had nothing to do with the decision, the buzz around its premiere at Sundance earlier in the year and fear of backlash likely spurred McDonald’s preemptive action.
Spurlock ultimately directed 23 films and produced nearly 70 over the course of his career, including POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold and Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? Following his #MeToo confession, Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2017, was abruptly pulled from Sundance that year and summarily dropped by its distributor, YouTube Red, terminating a $3.5 million deal. It was released two years later with a new distribution partner, but by then, Spurlock had stepped down from his production company, Warrior Poets, and his reputation had been damaged irreparably.
In the aftermath of his death, questions still remain surrounding his most famous film’s authenticity. In his #MeToo confession, Spurlock admitted to struggling with alcoholism for years, including during the production of Super Size Me, casting serious doubts on the film’s revelatory health claims. But despite its unreliable narrator, the film deserves a place in the canon of influential documentaries that scrutinize the American food system, along with Food Inc. (2008) and Forks Over Knives (2011). “Super Size Me is yet one more example of how storytelling — even imperfect storytelling — has the ability to move mountains, at least a little,” wrote Tim Carman of the Washington Post after Spurlock’s death, “Mountains like McDonald’s.”
The chalkboards adorning the walls of every Sweetgreen that tout the company’s farmer partners are a legacy of Super Size Me, direct evidence of the impact of Spurlock’s work on our foodways. He crawled under the fast-food industry’s skin, exposing hard truths and creating the need for greater transparency. Even if there were holes in the story, it was a story we all needed to hear. Eventually, however, the truths he exposed about himself proved to be the most irreconcilable ones.
Sitting in that crowded movie theater 20 years ago, I may not have felt the winds of change blowing. But, when I walked out, I knew I would never look at a Big Mac the same way again. Thousands, if not millions, of people felt the same way.
Adam Reiner is a freelance food writer based in New York City. His first book The New Rules of Dining Out: A Guide To Enjoying Restaurants is due out in fall 2025.
