History Film / SupersizeMe

* NonmammalMammaries: One of segments explained that [=McNuggets=] were originally made from chickens with larger-than-normal-breasts. This was demonstrated with an animated chicken with pendulous breasts so big that it had to walk with a cane.

* WouldHurtAChild: {{Parodied|Trope}}: Spurlock mentions that when he has kids and they pass by a [=McDonald's=] while on a car ride, he'll punch them in the face to prevent them from asking to go there.

* FanBoy: Spurlock visits renowned Big Mac fanboy Don Gorske, who achieved notoriety for eating at least one Big Mac a day for well over a decade. Unlike Spurlock during the film, Gorske's health has been unaffected because he only eats the Big Macs; he doesn't eat the french fries or drink the soda (he's since gone on [[https://people.com/food/mcdonalds-big-mac-supersize-me-don-gorske-world-record/ to eat a total of 30,000 Big Macs]]).

* UpToEleven: While it's true that many Americans eat a lot of fast food, Spurlock's diet takes it far beyond what you would expect to see from anyone who's ''not'' trying to prove a point. For example, even people who eat fast food daily are going to choose their meal size based on what they ''want'' rather than feeling compelled to take a super size just because it was offered, are unlikely to force themselves to eat so far past the point of fullness that they get sick, and are probably not literally eating three meals a day of fast food every day and never eating anything that doesn't come from a fast food restaurant (if nothing else, that would get expensive after awhile).

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Ignoring all the issues with the way Morgan did his experiment, the message "too much fast food is bad" is a good one. However, the influence of the film caused McDonald's and other fast food restaurants to alter their menu to include fewer "super-size" options, as well as more healthy ones - which helped them survive the backlash from the film and continue to largely do business as usual, while hiding behind the argument of "we've got healthy stuff, not our fault most people still get the artery-clogging stuff!"

''Super Size Me'' inspired a great deal of criticism from the scientific community, including several counter-documentaries (such as ''Film/FatHead'') which pointed out serious flaws with Spurlock's film (such as the fact that ''he'' was a vegan before the supposed experiment, not just his at-the-time girlfriend that he mentioned).

* LostAesop: The film briefly explores how the junk food peddlers' massive marketing budgets and utilization of popular celebrities as spokespersons allows them to dominate the public conscious in a way the government doesn't have a prayer of countering with healthy eating awareness efforts/[=PSAs=]. Spurlock then goes a step further and suggests that all the ways fast food chains market their products towards kids (ie giving away free toys, having playgrounds in their restaurants, hosting birthday parties) is cynically done with the intent of infecting their childhood memories during a key developmental stage, ensuring lifelong brand loyalty as they consume their product as an adult (and feed it to their own kids) purely for the sake of nostalgia. To that point, Spurlock demonstrates how random children he meets in public can easily identify a picture of Ronald McDonald but struggle to identify pictures of then-President UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush and Jesus Christ. These are incredibly poignant points that deserve further discussion, but are instead completely glossed over as the audience instead focuses on Spurlock and his use of InsaneTrollLogic to drive home his CaptainObviousAesop.

* LostAesop: The film briefly explores how the junk food peddlers' massive marketing budgets and utilization of popular celebrities as spokespersons allows them to dominate the public conscious in a way the government doesn't have a prayer of countering with healthy eating awareness efforts/[=PSAs=]. Spurlock then goes a step further and suggests that all the ways fast food chains market their products towards kids (ie giving away free toys, having playgrounds in their restaurants, hosting birthday parties) is cynically done with the intent of infecting their childhood memories during a key developmental stage, ensuring lifelong brand loyalty as they consume their product as an adult (and feed it to their own kids) purely for the sake of nostalgia. These are incredibly poignant points that deserve further discussion, but are instead completely glossed over as the audience instead focuses on Spurlock and his use of InsaneTrollLogic to drive home his CaptainObviousAesop.

* LostAesop: The film briefly explores how the junk food peddlers' massive marketing budgets and utilization of popular celebrities as spokespersons allows them to dominate the public conscious in a way the government doesn't have a prayer of countering with healthy eating awareness efforts/PSAs. Spurlock then goes a step further and suggests that all the ways fast food chains market their products towards kids (ie giving away free toys, having playgrounds in their restaurants, hosting birthday parties) is cynically done with the intent of infecting their childhood memories during a key developmental stage, ensuring lifelong brand loyalty as they consume their product as an adult (and feed it to their own kids) purely for the sake of nostalgia. These are incredibly poignant points that deserve further discussion, but are instead completely glossed over as the audience instead focuses on Spurlock and his use of InsaneTrollLogic to drive home his CaptainObviousAesop.

** Some of Spurlock's rules seem designed to create a worse outcome. Ostensibly, he intends to emulate what the "average American" would have happen to them if they ate nothing but [=McDonalds=], which explains why he tries to limit the amount of walking he does daily as it counts towards exercise, but always accepting the Super Size option and ForceFeeding himself even though he isn't hungry anymore isn't what an average consumer would do in that situation. Spurlock's experiment commonly violates what those in the legal profession call the "reasonable person standard": A reasonable person wouldn't consistently order extra food they didn't want and force themselves to eat it when they're not hungry; a reasonable person wouldn't eat fast food everyday for all three meals for an extended period of time, for reasons as simple as it'd get too expensive and they'd get tired of always eating the same thing; a reasonable person wouldn't make such an extreme alteration to their diet and exercise routine completely off the cuff and even if they tried, they'd reverse course relatively quickly if their body responded to it as negatively as Spurlock's did.

** Some of Spurlock's rules seem designed to create a worse outcome. Ostensibly, he intends to emulate what the "average American" would have happen to them if they ate nothing but [=McDonalds=], which explains why he tries to limit the amount of walking he does daily as it counts towards exercise, but always accepting the Super Size option and ForceFeeding himself even though he isn't hungry anymore isn't what an average consumer would do in that situation.

* UpToEleven: While it's true that many Americans eat a lot of fast food, Spurlock's diet takes it far beyond what you would expect to see from anyone who's ''not'' trying to prove a point. For example, even people who eat fast food daily are going to choose their meal size based on what they ''want'' rather than feeling compelled to take a super size just because it was offered, are unlikely to force themselves to eat so far past the point of fullness that they get sick, and are probably not literally eating three meals a day of fast food every day and never eating anything that doesn't come from a fast food restaurant.

* ForceFeeding: Spurlock does this to ''himself'', since one of the rules of the experiments is that he has to finish his meal, even if it's an absurdly large Super Size option. At one point he keeps stuffing himself until he throws up.

The film was generally well-received, and earned over $11 million dollars (against a $65,000 budget) at the box office. Soon after this documentary was released, [=McDonald's=] stopped offering the super-size option for their meals and introduced a 'Go Fit!' meal. Contrary to the popular belief that [=McDonald's=] instituted these changes to save face after the movie came out, they actually started phasing out the super-size in early 2004 (the film was released in May of that year) and had already been market-testing healthy alternatives. Unless [[UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories McDonald's was spying on Spurlock]] while he was filming the documentary, the release of this film was entirely coincidental.

* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: The DVD tacked a section onto the end credits detailing what has happened to several of the interview subjects and Morgan himself since the theatrical release.

** Three weeks into the experiment Spurlock's GP is shocked by how swiftly his new high-fat diet is destroying his liver, comparing it to ''Film/LeavingLasVegas'' where the same thing was accomplished with an alcohol binge.

** Three weeks into the experiment Spurlock's GMP is shocked by how swiftly his new high-fat diet is destroying his liver, comparing it to ''Film/LeavingLasVegas'' where the same thing was accomplished with an alcohol binge.

* ShoutOut: Several cartoon characters, such as [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Bugs Bunny and Sylvester]], [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Krusty the Clown]], and [[WesternAnimation/SouthPark Kyle Broflovski]] make cameos in the parody art of "The Last Supper".

* IndestructibleEdible: One of the DVD extras had him put [=McDonald=]'s food products in jars and see how long it took them to go bad. The fish sandwich was the first to go, lasting only a couple of days, the various burgers lasted about two weeks before becoming moldy. The french fries on the other hand were completely unchanged (at least visibly) after ''ten weeks'', at which point they were accidentally thrown out by an intern.[[note]]It should be noted that this could be explained not because or preservatives or anything scary, but because french fries are thin enough to not retain any water, and bacteria, mold, and mildew can't grow without water; similar to how a slice of bread in a plastic bag will grow mold but one left sitting on the counter will merely dry out and get stale.[[/note]]

* WouldHurtAChild: {{Parodied|Trope}}: Surplock mentions that when he has kids and they pass by a [=McDonald's=] while on a car ride, he'll punch them in the face to prevent them from asking to go there.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: The film has received controversy over the way it depicts Spurlock's experiment. Several details were left out of the documentary, presumably to better support its point.
** The fact that Spurlock was a vegan prior to beginning the experiment is not addressed, which makes his body's extreme reaction to the new diet (such as vomiting after his first meal) more understandable.
** Spurlock later admitted to struggling with alcoholism for 30 years, including the duration of filming the movie. While his doctor gives him a clean bill of health at the beginning of the film, Spurlock's drinking habits likely had some effect on his health during the experiment, either due to drinking on top of his already unhealthy diet or going through withdrawals.
* BigEater: Just ''how'' many people eat nothing but fast food for an entire month?

* {{Manchild}}: Morgan takes pride in playing in the McDonald's playpen with the kiddies, and sitting on the birthday boy chair.

* GranolaGirl: Spurlock's girlfriend.

* ShoutOut: [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Bugs Bunny and Sylvester]] make cameos in the parody art of "The Last Supper".

Years later, Spurlock would produce a sequel, ''[[SuperSizeMe2HolyChicken Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!]]'', where he decided to open his own chicken restaurant to uncover how fast-food tries to pass itself as "healthy".

Years later, Spurlock would produce a sequel, ''Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!'', where he decided to open his own chicken restaurant to uncover how fast-food tries to pass itself as "healthy".