Morgan Spurlock’s ‘Super Size Me’ documentary earned him millions – then he confessed his off-camera lies and a dark past of sexual perversion, addiction… and never worked a day again

It was an experiment that many documentary makers would have preferred to pass up, but which a self-proclaimed attention seeker like Morgan Spurlock was happy to work on.

“What would happen if I only ate McDonalds for thirty days?” he asked the camera. ‘Would I suddenly be on track to becoming an obese American? Would it be unreasonably dangerous? Let’s see – I’m ready.’

What did What happened was “Super Size Me,” an Oscar-nominated 2004 documentary hit that made an unlikely star out of Spurlock, then 33, and sparked an international debate about the ill effects of a fixation on fast food.

Spurlock ate at McDonald’s restaurants three times a day, consuming every item they sold at least once, and did not eat or drink anything that was not on the menu – or so he claimed.

When the staff offered to “supersize” his portion, as they often did, he took it. He also exercised less — walking a maximum of a mile a day — to match the average American’s limited physical activity.

By the end of the experiment, Spurlock had gained nearly 25 pounds and was suffering from elevated cholesterol, depression, sexual dysfunction, fatigue, tremors, and fatty deposits in his liver.

Last week, news broke that Spurlock had died of cancer at the age of 53. But unfortunately, his complicated and troubled past now threatens to overshadow his achievement in exposing the harmfulness of junk food.

“Super Size Me” certainly captured the public mood in America – a country where, at the time, nearly 100 million people (about 60 percent of adults) were overweight or obese.

Made on a budget of just $65,000, the film went on to gross over $22 million, prompted McDonald’s to quietly discontinue the “supersize” option on meals, and made Spurlock a household name.

Last week, news broke that Spurlock had died of cancer at just 53 years old, twenty years after the release of his film. But unfortunately, his complicated and – by his own admission – troubled past now threatens to overshadow his achievement in exposing the harmfulness of junk. food. A revelation he later revealed wasn’t nearly as obvious as we thought.

Spurlock’s short life was dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, as well as personal struggles with alcoholism, depression and infidelity. Some of these allowed fast-food industry allies to question his dire warnings about unhealthy diets.

Indeed, shortly after the film’s release, questions arose as to whether Spurlock had played completely fair.

Critics noted that he had repeatedly ignored his nutritionist’s advice that his fast-food diet was giving him 5,000 calories a day when he needed only half of that.

Spurlock was accused of stuffing himself to do so – so much so that McDonald’s responded that such overconsumption of any food would have had the same consequences no matter where someone ate.

Then came the 2009 response documentary “Fat Head,” in which health writer and comedian Tom Naughton questioned the accuracy of Spurlock’s calorie and fat stats, noting that he refused to publish the food log he kept while making “Super Size Me ‘.

In another anti-Spurlock documentary, “Me & Mickey D,” filmmaker Soso Whaley claimed that she was indeed lost weight and lowered her cholesterol while following Spurlock’s McDonald’s diet — except she exercised regularly and didn’t consume more than she normally wanted.

And then there was the matter of Spurlock’s weakened liver.

One of the most poignant and memorable moments from ‘Super Size Me’ came when the doctors monitoring him warned him to stop his experiment after blood tests showed that his liver had quickly become so severely damaged that it looked the same as if he were it was ‘pickling’. it with heavy drinking.

His liver looked like that of an alcoholic after a binge, a doctor said.

Shortly after the film’s release, questions arose as to whether Spurlock had played completely fair.

However, in 2006, a Swedish university made headlines after repeating Spurlock’s experiment under laboratory conditions and finding that changes in the liver were “never even close to dangerous.”

It wasn’t until 2017 that we learned the truth, when the documentary doctors’ comparisons to the effects of heavy drinking proved all too accurate: Spurlock finally admitted that he may not have been religiously adhering to the McDonald’s menu during filming after all, and that he had been drinking alcohol – heavily.

The admission came in December that year and saw Spurlock resign from his production company after publishing an astonishingly candid #MeToo mea-culpa blog post – titled ‘I Am Part of the Problem’ – in which he revealed his own past sexual misconduct, as well as his alcoholism.

He said he had been accused of rape in college – which he denied, although he admitted both parties were drunk – and had dealt with a sexual harassment allegation made from his own production company eight years earlier.

“I used to call my assistant ‘hot pants’ or ‘sex pants’ when I yelled at her from across the office,” he said. “Something I thought was funny at the time, but then I realized I had completely humiliated and belittled her to a place of non-existence.”

Spurlock, who had been married three times and had two sons by separate women by 2017, was clearly in a confessional mood as he also admitted his serial ‘infidelity’.

He said he had been unfaithful to ‘every wife and girlfriend I’ve ever had’, adding: ‘Over the years I looked them all in the eye, declared my love and then had sex with other people behind their backs.”

He was “someone who continually hurts those close to me,” including family, friends and colleagues, he said.

Searching for answers to why he was this way, he revealed that he had been sexually abused as a child and in his teens – abuse that he only told his first wife “for fear of being seen as weak.” He also blamed his father for leaving his mother when he was a young child.

Spurlock eventually admitted in 2017 that he may not have been religiously adhering to the McDonald’s menu during filming and that he had been drinking alcohol – heavily.

The admission prompted Spurlock to quit his production company after publishing a stunningly candid #MeToo mea-culpa blog post in which he revealed his own past sexual misconduct and alcoholism. (Pictured with his second wife, Alex, in 2008).

He said he had been accused of rape in college – which he denied – and had dealt with a sexual harassment allegation made within his own production company. He also admitted to his serial ‘infidelity’.

“Or is it because I’ve been drinking consistently since I was thirteen?” he wondered. “I haven’t been sober in more than a week in thirty years, something our society does not shy away from or condemn, but which only served to fill the emotional hole inside me and the daily depression I faced.”

The post ended his career overnight — within days, YouTube reneged on a distribution deal to release “Super Size Me 2,” and all his other film and TV projects dried up.

But it was the alcohol revelations that angered fans the most.

Spurlock – who went to rehab because his business imploded – had admitted to being drunk almost the entire time he was making ‘Super Size Me’. It was a fact that could very well explain the fatty deposits in the liver, not to mention the shocks he reported.

His confessional post also made it clear that his “depression” predated the filming.

And yet, despite all this, he had expressly told a doctor on camera that he was not drinking alcohol at the time.

Spurlock declined to comment further on the matter, leading some to wonder how much else he might have lied.

His film survives him and is still often used as a teaching assistant in health classes at secondary schools. But maybe, like the 590-calorie Big Mac, it should come with a warning.