When a person shuffles off their mortal coil, they count themselves lucky to have some quantifiable or tangible expression of their legacy – an accomplishment more expansively influential than raising a single child or creating a body of work. In the case of documentarian Morgan Spurlock, who died this week from cancer-related health complications, it would not be exaggeration to claim that he singlehandedly killed the super-sized meal at McDonald’s.
Cashiers at America’s favorite fast-food chain stopped offering customers mega portions for mini charges six weeks after the Sundance film festival premiere of Spurlock’s 2004 exposé Super Size Me, which added an epilogue title card saying so by the time it went wide to theaters in May. Spurlock’s kamikaze experiment in gustation – to spend 30 days subsisting on nothing but gargantuan quantities of foodstuffs from the house Ronald McDonald built – began to turn the tide of public opinion against the short-order burger shacks theretofore cherished as a key plank of America’s culinary heritage. His argument likened the Big Mac to big tobacco, a vice far too addictive to resist as it wreaked havoc on our health. There’s a view of the 21st century that sees Spurlock’s crack reportage as the point A leading us to our present point B of fresher salads, listed calorie counts and plant-based alternatives to meat.
