Heartland

Washington - An American filmmaker was so intrigued by McDonald's claim its food was nutritious that he ate all his meals at the fast-food giant for a month.

The result? Twelve kilograms extra, higher cholesterol and an award-winning documentary of his fast-food journey, Super Size Me: A Film Of Epic Portions.

Morgan Spurlock hit the morning TV shows on Thursday to promote his film on surviving on a McDonald's diet, little more than a day after the company said it would end oversized portions by the end of the year.

His tongue-in-cheek look at America's obesity crisis illustrates the effects of gorging on fast-food fare for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

"I felt terrible. You eat this food and you feel great immediately, but right after you get the McStomach aches, the McHeadaches - you get depressed," the New York director said.

Spurlock, 33, said he first got the idea after stuffing himself with Thanksgiving dinner in 2002. He was lounging on the couch at his childhood home in West Virginia when he saw a story about a lawsuit filed on behalf of two girls who claimed McDonald's caused their obesity. The suit was dismissed.

When McDonald's defended itself by saying its food was nutritious, Spurlock decided to test that claim.

"I thought if it's that good for me I should eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner," he said.

When he began his McDonald's binge, he weighed 84kg. He ballooned to 95kg by the end. His cholesterol rose by 60 points.

McDonald's Super Size option, which includes a seven ounce carton of chips and a 42-ounce cooldrink, has been targeted by critics as contributing to America's obesity crisis.

McDonald's, the world's biggest fast-food outlet, has given a cool reception to the documentary, which won an award at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is to be distributed across America later this year.

Spurlock said he had not intentionally picked on McDonald's but used it as a symbol for bad eating habits.

As part of his experiment, Spurlock accepted any offer made by servers of a mega-size portion.

"That thing is like four feet tall," jokes Spurlock in the documentary, referring to an outsize portion of chips, which the company says contains 610 calories.

Asked whether he gained weight because he purposefully ate only high-calorie items, Spurlock said he went through the menu several times over and ate a salad about every 10th meal.

McDonald's says its menu has enough variety and range to fall within recommended guidelines for calories, fat and nutrients.

"But people don't go to these fast food restaurants for salads. They go for things that taste good - the burgers, the fries, the sugary shakes, the giant sodas," Spurlock told NBC.

McDonald's said menu changes were not in any way linked to the movie but were rather to "support a balanced lifestyle."

Spurlock disagreed.

"This film had a tremendous impact on their decision to eliminate super-size portions and it is really going to have an impact on people who see the movie on how they see their own diet," he said.

Since going off McDonald's, Spurlock has lost about nine kilograms but says the last few are proving hard to shed.

zigeunerweisen wrote:Americans and their "it's not my fault i'm this way, it's someone else's fault" mentality.

zigeunerweisen wrote:
Americans and their "it's not my fault i'm this way, it's someone else's fault" mentality.

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:I read a bit in the paper about the amount of calories that fast food can contain. I always thought that pizza was the more "healthy" option as far as fast food is concerned but a pizza from Dominoes can contain nearly 3000 calories!!! The most "healthy" was good ole fish n' chips which had "only" 1000 calories! I try not to eat fast food as I always feel sh*tty afterwards