A super-size portion of half truths
My anti-
Of course, the Burgerdammerung never came to pass. It is true that McDonald's stock hit a five-year low in early 2003, but the company's fortunes have rebounded since then. I quoted an owner of seven McDonald's restaurants to the effect that the company would implement some evolutionary improvements -- such as premium salads, and now the bottled water and apple in the adult, GoActive! happy meal -- and that is exactly what happened.
Why am I telling you this? Because independent filmmaker Morgan Spurlock has invaded the theaters with his widely praised "Super Size Me," a wild, jihadist tilt against the golden arches. On the one hand, the 33-year-old filmmaker's comico-anarchist sensibility is, like the greasy Big Macs he simultaneously loves and hates, irresistible. But the movie's content is completely absurd. By gorging himself on vast quantities of the worst sludge on the McMenu -- guess what? Spurlock gains 25 pounds and feels like a wilted french fry that has spent too many days under the warmer lamp.
(A conservative activist named Soso Whaley spent a month eating a more selective McDonald's diet, and lost 10 pounds and 40 cholesterol points. See www.cei.org for details. The press has more or less ignored her, preferring to serve up a megaphone for Spurlock's simplistic, anticorporate message.)
The truth is that if you were to eat a diet of exclusively foie gras, caviar, and champagne for 30 days you would trash your health just as surely as Spurlock trashed his. But truth -- along with his sex life -- is the first casualty in Spurlock's movie. The biggest lie of all is Spurlock's repeated claim that McDonald's has changed its menu as a result of his crusading expose.
McDonald's changed its menu for two reasons. First, because of "Burgergeddon," its core meat and potatoes business was heading south. Enter the premium salads, one of several innovations championed by the recently deceased chief executive (yes, it's impossible to ignore that he died of a heart attack) Jim Cantalupo. But just as importantly, McDonald's changed the menu because it heard the legal wolves baying at the door.
In a rare moment of candor, "Super Size Me" gets lawyer Samuel Hirsch, whose suit accusing McDonald's of making teenagers fat was thrown out of court, to admit that his motives were purely mercenary. Staring into the camera, Hirsch pauses, and asks, Oh, you want me to say something about the noble cause? Of course, there is no noble cause.
But that's not what you would think listening to the intellectually corrupt mouthpieces of the anti-tobacco-crusade-turned-anti-obesity-warriors, academics like George Washington University's John Banzhaf and Northeastern University's Richard Daynard. You thought the $250 billion shakedown of the tobacco industry was about public health? Here is Dave Barry's too-true explanation of where the extorted tobacco money went: "(1) Legal fees; (2) Money for attorneys; (3) A whole bunch of new programs that have absolutely nothing to do with helping smokers stop smoking; and (4) Payments to law firms. Of course, not all the anti-tobacco settlement is being spent this way. A lot of it also goes to lawyers."
Noble cause, indeed. In case you don't see the connection, here is the money quote from Kelly Brownell, the anti-obesity, motormouth director of Yale's eating disorders center: "To me, there is no difference between Ronald McDonald and Joe Camel."
Spurlock's movie leaves the audience with the impression that Congress has passed the so-called "Cheeseburger bill," intended to insulate fast-food merchants from anti-obesity lawsuits. But in fact the measure never received serious consideration in the Senate, and is unlikely to be enacted.
So, sooner or later the lawyers will try to take a second bite out of the McDonald's apple -- and Spurlock's super-size anti-corporate fairy tale will have helped them soften up potential jurors.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
