Morgan Spurlock is not the only one to have eaten nothing but McDonald's and the results have not always been the same. Haydn Shaughnessy reports
In the documentary Super Size Me, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock feasts for a month on a diet of McDonald's products and becomes extremely ill. He gains about 25lbs in a month but worse, his liver function deteriorates, he develops insomnia, his cholesterol level shoots up and he loses libido.
In a separate experiment, Soso Whaley a woman from Maryland, US, and Chaz Weaver, from Orange County, California, both went on a 30-day MacDonald's diet and claimed they lost weight. Neither seems to have had a particularly bad nutritional profile afterwards.
Whaley and Weaver, like Spurlock, set a rule that they had to eat every item on the menu at least once. A typical day might include: hotcakes and sausage at breakfast, double cheeseburger and Chicken McNuggets at midday, Chicken McNuggets, caesar salad with grilled chicken and two baked apple pies in the late afternoon, and double cheeseburger and caesar salad with grilled chicken for the evening meal. Weaver, it should be noted, works out regularly in the gym.
Spurlock's film won best director at the 2004 independent film festival at Sundance, and the film-maker is now a regular speaker at campuses across the US. He is nominated for an Oscar and Super Size Me has become the fourth largest grossing documentary of all time.
Though most laughed at Spurlock, a small group of Americans found the film offensive. A website, www.techcentralstation began campaigning against it when out of the woodwork came Whaley and Weaver who decided the McDiet was for them.
Techcentralstation contacted Ruth Kava, director of nutrition at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and asked her to validate the results of Whaley and Weavers' McDiets.
The ACSH describes itself as an independent research body. Its associates include leading names in American nutrition and medicine. It receives funding from industry and foundations and seems primarily to have a role in analysing and commenting on research results.
According to Sourcewatch, a website that tracks the funding of research and campaigning news organisations, the list of funders at ACSH includes Burger King but not MacDonald's.
Kava found that on the McDiet 39 per cent of Whaley's calories came from fat whereas the official recommended range is 20 to 35 per cent. The Mediterranean diet can reach up to 45 per cent. Her saturated fat intake was 13 per cent rather than the recommended 10 per cent. She consumed about 46 per cent of her calories from carbohydrates - the lower edge of what the guidelines suggest. Her protein intake was about 16 per cent of calories, which is within the suggested range for adults. The average cholesterol intake was over the upper limit - 338mg instead of 300 or less. Her consumption of dietary fibre was low, only about 8g per day which is less than one-third of that recommended in the US. Her intake of vitamins A, B6, B12, C, niacin, and riboflavin all exceeded 100 per cent of daily recommended minima. Thiamine intake was 87 per cent of recommended levels and she only got about half the recommended folic acid.
Weaver's nutritional profile was similar in many ways but off the scale in terms of cholesterol - he consumed four times the average daily recommended level - and yet his blood cholesterol profile improved. Kava puts this down to exercise.
The McDiet has yet to cause the kind of controversy it should. The fact that people are using it and improving their nutritional intake must tell us something about the quality of food in the average diet in the US and perhaps, alert us to the possible nutritional problems in our own diets.
How far has McDonald's been involved in the McDiet, though?
Kava says: "I contacted McDonald's to ask for nutritional information about some items on their menu but they referred me to third-party analysts. So the answer is not much."
McDonald's on the other hand is a sponsor of techcentralstation which is owned by a Washington lobby firm, DCI. Techcentralstation runs a campaign called Supersize.con, in opposition to Spurlock.
Is the campaign McDonald's way of countering Spurlock's influence? Undoubtedly but it is a low-key campaign for such a large and influential organisation.
Does that suggest Whaley, Weaver, and Kava are unreliable witnesses?
The evidence they present is a balanced view of what eating at one restaurant for one month can do to our bodies. This puts Spurlock's film in context and draws attention to the easy way that people are drawn to a sensationalised argument about food when the truth is complex. Whaley and Weaver are not the only people to have done the 30 days diet after Spurlock and the results have often been the same - weight loss with no nutritional loss from the average diet.