By now, you've surely heard of first-time filmmaker Morgan Spurlock and his debut documentary film, Super Size Me, decrying the evils of McDonald's (NYSE: MCD), which opens in select theaters this week. This project has gotten more press than any independent film in recent memory -- in fact, I haven't talked to anyone who doesn't know about it.
Kudos to Spurlock (great name, by the way -- and that's a real compliment coming from a guy named Bob Bobala) for pushing all kinds of buttons as our society wrestles with our growing fatness and paradoxical obsessions with both fitness and tasty treats. But Morgan, start a late-night infomercial about weight-loss. Get out of my daily newspaper. I am tired of seeing your face stuffed with french fries, and reading about your travails of eating Big Macs every day.
I haven't seen the movie, and I bet it really is a good piece of theater. But if the point is to prove how bad fast food is for us, you're too late, Morgan. We know. We know, and we probably don't much care. As a people, we are not always the smartest. If we were, the nation would have stopped smoking decades ago and R. J. Reynolds (NYSE: RJR) and Altria's (NYSE: MO) Philip Morris would long be out of business.
To my office colleagues, this will sound pretty weird, as I've been on a bit of a health kick the past couple of months and haven't set foot in McDonald's for a long while. But shoot, you can't blame McDonald's -- or for that matter, Wendy's (NYSE: WEN) or Yum! Brands' (NYSE: YUM) Pizza Hut, KFC, or Taco Bell, or even Papa John's (Nasdaq: PZZA), which the guys over at Hidden Gems have kept their eye on -- for poisoning us. I've never invested in McDonald's, and I've never read its annual reports. If you know of any place in the company's literature where it advocates that eating exclusively at Mickey D's is a good idea for health and wellness, email me right now.
Spurlock goes berserk, eating nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days straight, and apparently he paid the price, putting on 25 pounds and generally doing some bad things to his body. That sounds plausible, but who in their right mind would eat cheeseburgers every day for a month? We have to take a little personal responsibility for our actions. If we don't, there's a price to pay for living high off the Quarter-Pounder. We put on weight, our arteries harden, we develop heart disease.
Give McDonald's a break. Its biggest crime is giving the people what they want. This is a democratic society. Besides, with the company's salads and healthier line, I bet I could lose weight eating nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days (that's a challenge to you, Morgan -- come down to Old Town, Alexandria, Va., and film me).
But that's not why I go to McDonald's. I don't go there for a healthy lunch. I go for hot, tasty food, delivered fast and cheap. Yes, and Super Size me -- oh wait, apparently the company is doing away with its Super-Sizing options. If that is a result of this film, that's a travesty. That Super-Sizing must have padded McD's margins nicely. How much could an extra 10 ounces of Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) cost the company?
Worst of all, though, is that once I'm off my current health kick and have dropped the weight I want to lose, I would have celebrated with a nice Super-Sized Double-Cheeseburger meal. Now what am I supposed to do? Have a salad? No thanks. Been there, done that. Thanks a lot, Morgan.
Bob Bobala owns no companies mentioned in this article. He dips his fries in ketchup -- always ketchup, not catsup.
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