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A supersize survivor

Patti Thorn, Rocky Mountain News Books Editor

Published April 29, 2005 at midnight

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In his new book, Morgan Spurlock recounts the day "the light bulb went on."

He was sitting on his couch watching CNN when a news item came on.

The story was about two adolescent girls who were suing McDonald's for making them obese and unhealthy. Despite the girls' diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol, a McDonald's spokesman claimed the fast-food franchise's products are healthy.

Most of us chuckled at the news item, but Spurlock had a more useful reaction.

He decided to see whether McDonald's food is, in fact, healthy by eating only McDonald's products for a month. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, he'd eat Big Macs, fries, shakes and even the occassional salad, and let his body tell the story.

Was the idea genius? Or insanity?

His friend put it the best way: "Wow," he said. "That's a really great bad idea."

Spurlock's Super Size Me went on to become the third-highest-grossing documentary of all time. On the downside, it documented Spurlock's sudden descent into bad health.

Spurlock's book, Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America (Putnam, $21.95), covers much the same territory as the movie: the high rate of obesity in America, McDonald's unsubstantiated claims that its food is healthy, comments from nutritionists and doctors, and so on.

But there's also much that the movie doesn't include:

The "buzzing pulsations" Spurlock began feeling in his penis while on the McD diet, for example.

And the results of a little experiment Spurlock conducted in which he put a Filet-o-Fish, a Big Mac, fries and other McD's items in lidded glass jars "and watched nature take its course." Everything decayed - except one item.

"Only those McDonald's fries refused to die. Those freaks of nature didn't decompose one bit in 10 weeks. They didn't mold, they didn't break down...After 10 weeks, they still looked brand-new."

Spurlock also updates readers on his personal situation. Two months after quitting the project, his cholesterol, liver function and blood pressure returned to normal. He now watches everything he eats.

"And no," he writes, "I haven't been in a McDonald's since. Not even to pee."