* {{Anvilicious}}: Even if you like the film, it's hard to argue against it being a little heavy-handed about how bad fast food can be.
* CaptainObviousAesop: Fast food is bad for your health. The film admits that everyone already knows that, but attempts to show that it's worse than you might think. The doctor at the beginning says that he expects Spurlock to gain some weight, but after a few weeks is begging him to stop the experiment for his own safety [[note]] However the documentary fails to mention the massive alcohol intake he partook in off camera or address the sudden shift from veganism as potential causes for such an extreme decline in his health. [[/note]]. The experiment as a whole just glues together a larger message about making smart food choices.
* CondemnedByHistory: When the movie was originally released in 2004, it was a massive hit and was widely praised for illustrating issues with the fast food industry and its connection to the obesity epidemic by showing the ill effects of Morgan Spurlock eating nothing but UsefulNotes/McDonalds for a month. Its publicity led to [=McDonald's=] removing the "Super Size" option from its menu and made it a staple of health classes in American schools. However, by the end of the decade, it began attracting increasingly vocal criticism for the veracity of its experiment, with people highlighting confounds like Spurlock both having a history of alcoholism and having been a vegan prior to filming. By the second half of TheNewTens, ''Super Size Me'' became better known for its methodological flaws, and the withdrawal of its [[Film/SuperSizeMe2HolyChicken sequel]] from the Sundance Film Festival and [=YouTube=] Red in the wake of Spurlock's admissions to sexual misconduct only drove more nails into the coffin. Nowadays, ''Super Size Me'' is typically mocked for both its CaptainObviousAesop and its veracity issues when it isn't [[OvershadowedByControversy overshadowed by Spurlock's scandal]].
* DoNotDoThisCoolThing: Watching this film can give some viewers a serious craving for your favorite [=McDonald's=] menu item, though other parts of the film, such as Spurlock vomiting a Super-Sized meal out of his car door, might spoil your appetite whoever you are.
* DontShootTheMessage: The general message about how major fast food companies do not have the best interest of customers at heart and target young kids as customers is not a bad one but it gets lost amid Spurlock's questionable tactics for proving his point, Spurlock omitting key information [[note]]Such as Spurlock being a vegan prior to the experiment or his history of alcoholism.[[/note]] that would impact the results of the experiment, and the fact that many of the interesting elements are ignored to focus more on the shock value of the experiment.
* HarsherInHindsight:
** The segment with Jared Fogle speaking to a crowd of families about weight loss, and one particular mother and daughter praising him for being such an inspiration, is especially hard to take today considering his subsequent arrest and incarceration for possessing child pornography and having sexual relations with minors. The sequel gives a quick "Well, you know?" mention showing a footage of him that good restaurants need a story.
** While the film has been praised for tarnishing the public image of fast food chains, many have pointed how the backlash affects people working in the fast food industry, who are disproportionately minorities and/or from lower-income classes. Additionally, the film is very limited in its scope, focusing only on individual decision-making, and consequently doesn't even acknowledge the systemic issues that contribute to the rise of unhealthy diets -- such as the fact that eating healthy is often more expensive, the lack of time and/or proper kitchen facilities to prepare healthy meals, and the problem of "food deserts" that means that many people lack access to healthy food entirely -- let alone offer any sort of possible solution.
* HilariousInHindsight:
** One of the Happy Meal toys shown in the beginning is from ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible''. One of the episodes of the final season is "Grande Size Me", a parody of this film dealing with Ron vowing to eat nothing but junk food to disprove the guidelines set by his health class. At first he gains weight with no drawbacks, but this is due to accidental exposure to a mutagenic substance. After he is cured, he gives a parody Aesop of steering clear and being responsible around vats of mutagen.
** The whole discussion of how fast food restaurants use their mascots and toys to ingrain themselves in the mind of kids became this when the majority of franchises would actually wind up mostly retiring their mascots by the early 2020s, Ronald [=McDonald=] in particular. Nowadays, most children actually ''wouldn't'' know about characters like Ronald off the top of their heads due to the fact they've been more or less erased from their respective franchises.
* NauseaFuel: It's a documentary in which a man eats nothing but fast food for a whole month, so this is to be expected. Especially when Spurlock vomited his first Super-sized meal.
* OvershadowedByControversy:
** Discussion of the film will often feature debates over the veracity of the experiment, with factors such as Spurlock being vegan prior to the film's beginning making the results worse than they'd be for a normal fast food eater, or whether his decades-long struggle with alcoholism had anything to do with the liver problems, mood swings, and low sex drive he alleges the diet caused him. Not to mention that no one has been able to duplicate the results of Spurlock's experiment, perhaps the most popular example being Tom Naughton, who produced the documentary ''Film/FatHead''. In the film, Naughton follows the same rules of the experiment laid out in the film (and tries unsuccessfully to obtain a copy of Spurlock's food log so that he will literally be eating the same things), but combines it with not dropping his daily activity, the results being vastly different than Spurlock's.
** The film got this around the time the Weinstein Effect emerged in 2017 due to Morgan Spurlock confessing to sexual misconduct, which put it in the spotlight again for completely different reasons. This also resulted in a sequel to the film being dropped from its original distributor ([=YouTube=] Red, though in the end one of the original films distributors, Samuel Goldwyn Films, ended up picking it up instead.)
* {{Squick}}: Numerous examples.
** Morgan showing his rectal exam.
** Explicit footage of gastric bypass surgery... [[SoundtrackDissonance set to the tune of the "Blue Danube Waltz".]]
** When Morgan ate his first Super Sized [=McDonald=]'s combo and promptly vomited.
** The huge hair he found in the parfait.
** The closeup of the inside of the Filet-o-Fish sandwich.
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
** In real life, scientists and dieticians' main problem with junk and fast food are that it has no nutritional value and full of "empty" calories. The movie focuses on the health problems associated with the massive caloric intake of eating fat, sugar and carbohydrates. Had they done the real concerns, it would have likely made the message of the film work better.
** 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 (i.e. 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.
* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: In a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, [=McDonald's=] and its competitors discontinued their "Super Size" options, diversified their menus with "healthier" and more artisan options and changed their general marketing approach in response to the film. As a result, ''Super Size Me'' dates itself by showcasing [=McDonald's=] before they implemented these permanent reforms to their business model.
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