Morgan Spurlock Watch

Suspended Posting

As you may have noticed, updates have been slow on this site.

Morgan Spurlock watch will stay up indefinitely (hopefully to provide an alternative view on his work to anyone doing a Google or MSN search), but I'll probably draw back on the updates if and until Spurlock is in the news again.

In the meantime, check my personal blog, The Agitator, for daily analysis and commentary on obesity, personal freedom, and other Nanny State issues.

My Column on Spurlock

I write a biweekly column for the Fox News website which covers a range of issues related to politics, policy, and culture.

This week, I devoted the column to debunking Morgan Spurlock.

More Anti-Spurlocks

The Associated Press picks up on a number of anti-Spurlocks who did the 30-day experiment and actually lost weight.

Morgan, from Raleigh, thought the documentary had unfairly targeted the world's largest restaurant company, implying that the obese were victims of a careless corporate giant. People are responsible for what they eat, she said, not restaurants. The problem with a McDonald's-only diet isn't what's on the menu, but the choices made from it, she said.

And there's the rub. Spurlock insists he was trying to eat McDonalds the way most people do, not the way responsible people do. But why is it McDonalds' fault that many people consume its product in excess? And if it is McDonalds' fault, what's the solution? The only answer to that question seems to be "take the high-calorie stuff off the menu."

Which sort of proves the point. The aim of public health advocates like Spurlock isn't to encourage people to make better choices. It's to take the bad choices away from everyone.

Whiskey for 30 Days

Here's a parody of Spurlock's Super Size Me that's fairly clever.

The odd thing is, Spurlock has already desended into self-parody, and made a straight-faced TV show based on the same premise. The final episode of 30 Days featured a woman who "binged" on alcohol every day for thirty days. The episode was of course complete with the usual anti-capitalist jabs at the marketing and advertising practices of the liquor industry.

The parody film makes the important point that this of course isn't how manufacturers intend for their product to be used. Just about anything taken in in excess probably isn't going to be great for your health. And even the most aggressive of marketing campaigns don't recommend you consume one company's food or beverage product to the exclusion of everything else.

In any case, marketing and advertising are more about influencing brand loyalty than about influencing behavior. Few people decide to start drinking because of a beer commercial. Lots of people who have already decided to drink will switch brands (or, more likely, move to higher-priced brands) because of a beer or liquor ad.

Attacking the Mac

Spurlock writes:

A Big Mac contains 30 grams of fat. Each gram of fat contains 9 calories. 9 x 30 = 270 calories from fat. Since a Big Mac packs 560 calories total, that means that nearly 50 percent of the calories in it are fat calories. That's 20 percent more than recommended. Some 16 percent come from saturated fat, so that's well over the recommended max, too. (p. 81)

Spurlock preforms this kind of breakdown for a number of fastfood items he considers unhealthy.

This is an odd way of going about the USDA dietary recommendations. Note the preceding phrase: dietary recommendations. No one food item will meet all of the USDA's suggestions. They weren't written to be be applied that way. The only way Spurlock's method of criticism would be applicable is if one were to eat a diet of nothing but Big Macs. Most people know better than that.

Save for wry, documentary filmmakers, I guess.

Comedy Central Signs Spurlock

News from yesterday:

Super Size Me auteur Morgan Spurlock is adding a new cable address to his résumé, taking his documentarian's eye and flair for wry humor to Comedy Central.

As part of a two-project deal between Comedy Central and Sony Pictures Television, Spurlock will develop and star in Public Nuisance, a satirical romp in which the filmmaker and his team of irreverent social critics take on a number of hot-button issues, including sex, the media and religion.

Oops!

Yesterday, the San Francisco Examiner recommended Spurlock Watch to its readers, though not exactly in the way it intended. The paper wrote:

Check out the blog of Morgan Spurlock, better known as the "Super Size Me" guy and star of the new show "30 Days." Log on to http://spurlockwatch.typepad.com/front and see what the guy who ate fast food 24/7 for an entire month really thinks. The site has only been up since June so you have some time to check up and get in on what is fast becoming a popular blog. The site contains a ton of stuff about McDonald's, so if you're a fan of the chain don't go. However, if you are a fan of chatter about popular culture and American corporate governance check it out.

If that's what brought you here, welcome! But this site is not Morgan Spurlock's blog. In fact, it's a blog devoted to holding Mr. Spurlock accountable for the inaccuracies and factual distortions in his movie, book, and TV show.

Still, have a look around!

More Scripted "Documentary?"

An interesting discussion has broken out on the F/X message boards for Spurlock's show 30 Days. A woman claiming to be "Jessica," the partying ASU student featured in the 30 Days binge drinking episode is protesting the way the show was scripted. Keep in mind, this is a web-based message board, so it's difficult to know if the people who posted these messages are who they claim to be. But if so, the idea that these programs are scripted with predtermined outcomes would keep with Spurlock's habit of pushing a political posturing as "documentary."

"Jessica" first writes:

I just want everyone to know who watched the binge drinking episode that it was totally fake and scripted. I was "Jessica" the binge drinking college student who was portrayed as the biggest brat ever. Basically I was told how to act and what to say by the producers and was actually shocked to see how they manipulated my words around. I am not a big drinker so when I refused to get drunk in front of the camera they took it upon themselves to make it seem like like I was an out of control college student witha bad attitude. For all of you people out there who have written mean things about me, I don't blame you at all! If I were to watch this and see a teenage girl acting like a total bitch to her mom, I would think the same thing that the majority of people are probably thinking. Just to set the record straight as to who I am.

Right after, comes this message:

I am Jessica's professor at ASU and I just want to say that Jessica is one of the brightest, most talented girls I have ever met. She is a hard worker and will go far in life. This is a reality TV show. If you are honestly making judgments based on a show intended to make people look bad, then you must not be too bright yourself.

Then, this one from "Michiel," the name of Jessica's mom in the show:

Jessica is right. They made me look like an awful parent and Jessica look like a bitch. Jessica has been paying all of our bills an dliving on her own for two years now. I have never had to fork out a dime for her college because she excells in school and has a full-ride scholarship. It is ridiculous that the producers of the show made her look like a fool. The show was supposed to be about the harmful effects that alcohol can do to the body, but they manipulated the whole thing around to show an out of control college student who drinks too much. All of the meaningful areas of the show were edited out so they could make my daughter and I look like idiots. I am very disappointed!

If the posters are who they claim to be (and it's certainly possible that they aren't), this would confirm Debbie Schlussel's charge in the Wall Street Journal that while positioning itself as a "fish out of water" documentary, the show is actually tightly controlled and scripted, with clean lessons drawn from each episode.

If anyone knows how I can get in touch with Jessica or her mother, drop me a line. I'd be interested in speaking with either of them in person.

I Bet You Will

Before Super Size Me, while Spurlock was still an aspiring filmmaker, he started up an Internet video program called "I Bet You Will," which was later bought and aired for a short while on MTV.

The show's premise? Find people on the street -- passers-by, homeless people, store clerks -- and pay them money to do ridiculous things. Usually, these stunts involved eating something disgusting (and, usually, unhealthy). Spurlock paid people to eat dog feces, an entire jar of mayonaise, and to do shots of cod liver oil. He paid one man to eat a clam out of another man's armpit. He paid one woman to shave her head, mix the shaved hair with butter, than eat the entire concoction. If you think it's odd that a guy who got famous scolding McDonalds for profiting from bad nutrition first made a name for himself by videotaping people eating disgusting things -- well, I guess that makes two of us.

Here's one account of the show:

Bystanders are feeling as queasy as the volunteer looks, as she continues with corn oil, pink bismuth, lemon juice, hot sauce and cold chicken broth, and to settle her stomach, finishes up with cod liver oil.

As one disbelieving tourist from Montana says, “They don't do this back home where I’m from."

Well, they might soon, if this guy's idea takes off. Morgan Spurlock is the brains behind a webcast and would-be TV show called "I Bet You Will," which revolves around the idea that “people will do anything for money.”

Spurlock paid our friend $450 for those nine shots, and he has gone as high as $740 for one challenge. But most man-on-the-street stunts cost a lot less. He says, “I thought it was gonna be a little tougher, especially here in New York, to get people to do things. But no, people are cheap and easy."

“Extra” found that out when we went out with Spurlock and his camera crew. It took just $235 to get one guy to wolf down a jumbo-size jar of mustard. Or a mere $100 to empty a jar of molasses down a guy's pants. And just $300 to get a guy to eat an ice-cream cone made of vegetable shortening.

Here's another:

In past episodes, a Wall Street man stripped to his underwear and shoes for $700 dollars; a woman danced in public wearing only the "I Bet You Will" thong and her bra for $150 dollars, and one guy chewed a chunk of dog poop for $400 bucks. The frat house humor is packaged into five-minute, weekly episodes. The site had a million hits within its first five days online last June, and creator Morgan Spurlock says four television networks have expressed interest.

Morgan: People love to watch this. It's the public forum, it's the idea of seeing something new and original and out there. And to see a regular person who's coming up and getting the chance to win $300 if he eats an entire jar of pig's feet and wash it down with a pint glass of corn oil, you know… it's…not something you might do, but it's something that somebody else might do, and something, you know what? I'd wanna watch that, too! I'd wanna watch that happen!

[...]

Morgan: She's already had…a 12 oz. can of condensed milk….a 16 oz can of chicken broth. And now it is her fourth shot of cod liver oil. // Here she goes…(makes a drumroll sound.)

For $160 bucks, she thinks it's worth it. For "I Bet You Will's" producers, she's living proof of their slogan, "Stupidity Pays."

Morgan: "YEAH!!! Four shots of cod liver oil. Want another one?"

Here's another:

First victim: a skinny-looking kid named Brian coming out of the Hibbs Building. "Hey, you want to make some money?" Spurlock asked.

In five minutes, Brian was ready to eat a worm burrito for $200. Spurlock called the bet "Bookworm."

[...]

"Okay. Here's how it works. You've got to eat the whole thing. You can't throw up or you won't get the money," Spurlock said.

"Does anybody have any ketchup?" Brian asked.

Then he started chomping happily on the burrito, worms dangling. As soon as Brian swallowed, his eyes bulged. He starting spewing worms everywhere.

The crowd howled in disappointment.

[...]

But Spurlock wasn't finished with his charge. "See those worms still wriggling around? I'll bet you $10 a worm if you eat them," Spurlock said.

And then, unbelievably, even though he'd just barfed worms on camera, Brian started popping worms in his mouth. He chewed and finished 13 worms in a minute.

Then there's this gem, from yet another press account of the show:

Ask Spurlock if he ever feels guilty for getting people to embarrass themselves in public and he says: "No way. Everybody knows what they're getting into. Everybody has a good time. If somebody walks by and doesn't enjoy it, hey, it's a free country. Just keep on walking, man."

That sounds like a good case for personal responsibility, doesn't it? Don't like the Hardee's Monster Thickburger? Just keep on walking. It's a free country.

Oddly enough, "I Bet You Will" website has disappeared from the Internet, including the Internet Archive.

PCRM

One of Spurlock's favorite sources in his book is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. After the Center for Science in the Public Interest, PCRM ranks second on his "Acknowledgements" page, and he uses them in both the text and the end notes. He runs an exerpt from a book written by Neal Barnard, the group's founder (p. 93). Barnard also gets a brief appearance in Super Size Me. It's probably safe to say that the group helped out with a good deal of the book's content. See Spurlock's blog here, where he mentions his attendance at PCRM's swanky black-tie fundraising gala.

So what exactly is the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine? They aren't physicans. Less than 5% of the group's membership are actual physicians.

In fact, PCRM is a rather militant animal rights group. Its aim? To end medical research on animals, and to foster public fear of eating cheese and meat with scare campaigns. Through lawsuits, intimidation, and stealth media placement, they're trying to push the vegan lifestyle.

PETA has directed more than $1 million to PCRM over the years. The group has been repeatedly and publicly reprimanded by the American Medical Association for spreading misinformation on the use of animals to test new AIDS treatments. The AMA's president said of PCRM in 1991, "They are neither responsible, nor are they physicians." PCRM has also called for an end to donations to groups like the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association because those groups support testing on animals.

Barnard is a psychiatrist. He has no training in nutrition, diet, or internal medicine. Yet for some reason, Spurlock and others take him seriously when he talks about the health effects of meat and cheese consumption. Barnard has lobbied government agencies to put a "biohazzard" warning label on meat and dairy, and once called cheese "morphine on a cracker." He has said, "there is no room for chicken in a healthy diet." And he's an inductee in the "Animal Rights Hall of Fame."

More disturbing, however, are PCRM's ties to animal rights terrorism. Barnard has engaged in several letter-writing campaigns with a guy named Kevin Kjonaas, who has ties to two animal rights terrorist groups, including the Animal Liberation Front. Kjonaas is now on trial on domestic terrorism charges.

Then there's Jerry Vlasak. Vlasak is a former spokesman for PCRM, and author of several of the group's publications.

Vlasak advocates murdering scientists who use animals for healthcare research. That's not an exaggeration of his position. From the Guardian:

A top adviser to Britain's two most powerful animal rights protest groups caused outrage last night by claiming that the assassination of scientists working in biomedical research would save millions of animals' lives.

To the fury of groups working with animals, Jerry Vlasak, a trauma surgeon and prominent figure in the anti-vivisection movement, told The Observer: 'I think violence is part of the struggle against oppression. If something bad happens to these people [animal researchers], it will discourage others. It is inevitable that violence will be used in the struggle and that it will be effective.'

Vlasak, who likens animal experimentation to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews, said he stood by his claim that: 'I don't think you'd have to kill too many [researchers]. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives. . .

Blogger Brian O'Connor has assembled a few other choice Vlasak quotes:

You can justify, from a political standpoint, any type of violence you want to use." — "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (Showtime cable network) 4/1/04

"I think that violence and nonviolence are not moral principles, they’re tactics." — "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (Showtime cable network) 4/1/04

"If someone is killing, on a regular basis, thousands of animals, and if that person can only be stopped in one way by the use of violence, then it is certainly a morally justifiable solution." — "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (Showtime cable network) 4/1/04

"I think we do need to embrace direct action and violent tactics as part of our movement … I don’t think we ought to be criticizing someone, whether we’re criticizing [them] because they’re writing letters, or whether we criticize them because they’re burning down fur stores or vivisection labs. I think we need to include everybody in that circle." — Animal Rights 2002 convention 6/27/02

"[The police] are protecting the circus, they are protecting the meat and dairy industry, they are protecting the vivisection industry and I equate them in my own mind on a moral and ethical level with the -- no different than say guards in a Nazi concentration camp." — at a panel called "Coping with Law Enforcement" at the Animal Rights 2003 LA convention 8/2/03

"I don’t have any doubt in my mind that there will come a time when we will see violence against animal rights abusers." — "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (Showtime cable network) 4/1/04.

You can listen to audio of Vlasak here. He rather causually (and chillingly) notes that extremist pro-lifers who assassinate abortion doctors "have a good thing going."

I think this bears repeating: this group is second on the list of acknowledgements in Spurlock's book, people without whom, he writes, "this book would not have been possible."

(PCRM info collected from National Council Against Health Fraud, Activist Cash, and Brian O'Connor.)

Pressing the Meat

Spurlock writes the following of a McDonalds hamburger:

"It tastes kinda like meat, but more like an industrialized meat-flavored substitute."

He then spends a paragraph detailing what he feels are the more unappetizing features of a McDonalds hamburger patty.

In truth, McDonalds' hamburgers are made with 100% beef (scroll down to the "beef patty" ingredients). It is USDA inspected. The restaurant adds salt and pepper after cooking. That's it. No additives or preservatives. No filler. No beef flavor enhancers.

However in this writer's opinion, it's true, McDonalds hamburgers don't taste nearly as good as they once did. But that isn't because the company uses anything other than beef. It's because the beef they are using is leaner than it once was. Several years ago, the chain capitulated to nutrition activists, and began to use leaner ground beef in its hamburgers. The result? A less juicy, less savory, slightly more rubbery beef patty. That's why your local, independent burger joint probably tastes better (that, and the fact that McDonalds has no choice but to freeze its beef -- many smaller operators use never-frozen beef).

The funny thing is, the decision to put a healthier product on the market once again put McDonalds on the business end of an Internet rumor campaign. Outside the U.S., the company tends to use leaner, grass-fed beef in its stores. Here in the U.S., McDonalds buys almost all of its beef domestically. Problem is, the U.S. doesn't produce nearly enough grass-fed beef. And even the supply of grain-fed beef has dwindled of late. So several years ago, McDonalds started a limited pilot program looking at buying leaner, slightly cheaper foreign beef to supplement its domestic supply. This put some U.S. cattle ranchers in a tizzy, and touched off an Internet rumor campaign that vastly exaggerated just how much the beef the company planned to buy overseas (all of which, by the way, is USDA inspected).

This is all a fine example of the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-do don't public relations conundrums that face U.S. businesses. McDonalds got attacked for serving fatty, greasy (but delicious!) burgers. In response, the company made the effort to buy leaner beef, which put a dent in its sales. In response, McDonalds caught heat not only from domestic beef producers, but from people like Spurlock, who not only ridicule the leaner beef patty, but imply that it's not really meat at all.

Spurlock's Right!

Spurlock writes:

In the late 1980s, McDonald's took tremendous flak from vegetarians in the United States when it revealed taht the company was cooking its fries in beef tallow (lard). In 1990, it switched to vegetable oil. But the fries didn't taste as good as before, so the company quietly put a tiny amount of beef flavoring back into them. After reading about this in Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation, Indians in the United States, who were of the Hindu and Jainist faiths, freaked out. Hindus revere cows as sacred and would never let beef touch their lips. Jains do not eat or wear in animal products. Here they'd been eating McDonalds fries all these years, thinking it was all right, and now they were pissed!

A Hindu in Seattle brought a class-action lawsuit against the company for having lied to its customers. McDonalds evetually settled for $12.5 million, most of which went to charities, and posted an apology on its website. (p. 72)

This website is about holding Morgan Spurlock accountable for the factual distortions in his book, TV show, and public appearances. It isn't meant to be a defense of McDonalds, or any other food corporation. Like any corporation, McDonalds makes decisions based upon what it perceives to be in its interests. And like any corporation (or individual, for that matter), there will always be the temptation to cheat.

Frankly, I don't think McDonalds ever should have stopped adding beef tallow to its fries. They don't taste nearly as good without it. The company should have made it known that there was a trace of beef in the fries, but continued to cook them the manner that made them so popular. Vegetarians could eat elsewhere, or choose something else off them menu.

Nevertheless, the company capitulated. When it then willfully lied to the public, McDonalds committed a form of fraud. I think the settlement figure was actually a little low.

Here, Spurlock's right. McDonalds misled the public, and the company was rightly held accountable.

History Lesson

Spurlock writes:

Everybody in the world, in every culture, has known that overeating was bad for you. From the ancient Greeks to the modern age, we have been told to be moderate in our eating. In the Judeo-Christian tradition of which our society was supposedly founded and to which we Americans give so much lip service (pardon the pun), overeating wasn't just bad for you, it was bad, period. As in morally wrong.

[...]

In just the last thirty years, we've trashed those thousands of years of civilized tradition. In our new consume-consume-consume-and-consume-some-more culture, gluttony isn't a sin, it's a virtue. We're encouraged to eat, and eat more, and eat a big dessert on top of that. (p. 17)

This is so sweeping and misguided, it's difficult to know where to start.

First, the idea that "everybody in the world, in every culture" has "known that overating was bad for you" is simply a narrow, myopic, woefully simplistic view of history. It's also largely incorrect. If we were to make the kind of crude generalizations about historical conceptions of gluttony Spurlock makes, history would indicate Spurlock has it backwards.

To the extent that restraint was encouraged, it was due more to the scarcity of food than to health concerns. For a long time, gorging on your food supply simply wasn't prudent, given that it meant you likely wouldn't have anything to eat when winter came. If you were part of a community, gorging meant you were taking more than your share.

But among and within societies where food abounded, indulgence was well-practiced, and well-celebrated. The Romans loved their women curvy, and were famous gluttons. Vasts swaths of Western culture have found girth a sign of wealth and vigor, not sin and illness. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, plump women with wide hips and a generous bosom were the epitome of beauty -- Rubens' nudes would have today's BMI-fascists apoplectic. Even as late as the 1800s, artisitc depictions of female beauty were generously proportioned.

Even throughout the first half of the 20th century, the picture of female beauty was round, curvy, and voluptuous -- what we today would probably straddle the overweight-obese threshhold on the BMI. Think Betty Grable, Mae West, or Clara Bow.

Spurlock not only botched his history, he botched the present, too. Contrary to his claim that social perssures today encourage obesity, it's only been in the last 40 years or so that Kate Moss, Twiggy, and Paulina Porzikova became standards of feminine beauty. It's also only in the last 40 years that bulimia and anorexia have become epidemic among teen and adolescent girls and, increasingly, among boys as well. Purging, starving, and scarfing down suppositories aren't exactly sympomatic of teens striving to fit in with a society that encourages gluttony.

Yes, we have more food choices as consumers than we ever have. But the idea that that is somehow indiciative of a licenscious attitude toward gluttony is preposterous. It's the result of our prosperity, and of social changes (more women in the workforce, for example) that call for cheap food quickly prepared.

Fat isn't encouraged today, it's loathed. If fat were chic, diet books wouldn't dominate the bestseller lists. Obesity wouldn't pervade the headlines. And each time I write about obesity, I wouldn't get email from people who tell how they're fine with government intervention into the refrigerator, because they find fat people repulsive, and they're tired of looking at them. L.A. Times reporter David Shaw writes in his book The Pleasure Police:

In recent years, the peasure police, as the pleasure police have gained ascendancy, that message has been no-so-subtly transmogrified from "You can" to "You should" -- or even "You must." More than ever, fat people are shunned and ridiculed, and anyone seen eating a large meal--or just, God forbid, a steak -- is made to feel stupid, if not downright suicidal. If you don't exercise enthusiastically and more or less constantly--if you don't think fitness is next to godliness--you're made to feel like a moral imbecile.

Spurlock seems to confuse the availability and abundance of food with the moral "okay" from society to scarf down as much of it as we can as quickly as we can. That's just not true. Prosperity gives us lots of choices. It doesn't tell us to choose them all. Or only the worst ones.

Today's society treats fat people with contempt. That's why so many of them want to get thin. Atain, it's why diet books do so well (Spurlock's fiancee just released her own vegan diet book on the heels of the popularity of Super Size Me). Of course, diets almost always fail (at a 90-95% clip, by most accounts). And repeatedly trying and failing to diet does much worse things to your health than remaining at a steady weight, even a heavy one. There's some evidence that it isn't being heavy that's unhealthy, it's the constant yo-yo dieting heavy people undertake in response to social pressures to get thin. You could make a good case that all this encouragement aimed at getting fat people thin not only isn't good for them, it may well be killing them.

The one period in history that did embrace the anti-gluttony attitude Spurlock finds "civilized" is Victorian-era England. Robert Clark writes of Victorian prudishness in his biography of James Beard:

"Stoutness, once symbolic of plenty and success, was increasingly viewed as a sign of excess, ill health, sloth, and a lack of self-control. Regulation of the body--through Houdini-like stunts, marathon fasts, and bizarre dietary cults--was a running theme of late Victorian and early-twentieth-century life."

Sound familiar? David Shaw adds:

It is no coincidence that repression of the appetite for food occured at a time when social forces also conspired in the repression of other appetites. In this, Victorians emulated the original Puritans, who insisted that man's appetite--any appetite--was his enemy, an ungodly force to be restrained, controlled and denied; bodily pleasure, whether taken between the lips or between the legs, was to be avoided at all costs.

Shaw also quotes social historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg, who writes in her book Fasting Girls:

Over and over again, in all the popular literature of the Victorian period, good women distances themselves from the act of eating.

[...]

To be hungry, in an sense, was a social faux pas. Denial became a form of moral certitude, and refusal of attractive foods a means of advancing in the moral hierarchy.

Is this really the "civilized" society Spurlock laments has passed us by? Frankly, I'm kinda' glad it's gone.

But I fear it's coming back, thanks to people like Spurlock, and in particular the nutrition activists he relies upon in the endnotes of his book. There's more than a nugget of Victorianism in today's busybodies who work to patrol our personal lives for bad habits. I think we're entering a kind of neo-Victorian age. This new brand of self-righteous piety crosses ideological lines. The left, generally under public health auspices, gets its dander up over issues like obesity and tobacco -- bad habits we typically associated with red-staters. The right, moved by moral outrage, wants to crack down on sexual licentiousness and recreational drug use, stereoytypically more common in blue states and urban areas. Both emphasis piety and restraint or pleasure and satiety. Both want to protect us from ourselves, from what they perceive to be the negative excesses of the pursuit of pleasure.

In fact, you might even say that today's prigs are worse than the Victorians. Today, they're ready to (or already have) used the state to suppress habits they find repugnant. The Victorians at least mostly relied on only shame.

Why Does Morgan Spurlock Hate Recycling?

Last night's episode of Spurlock's TV show was called "Off the Grid." It featured a yuppie-ish, "wired," SUV-owning couple who spent 30 days on a commune, back-to-basics farm in Missouri. The lesson we were to take from the show, I guess, is that our consumer culture is overly wasteful. As Spurlock explains on his blog:

On tonight's show, we take a couple of all American consumers away from their daily lives of consumption and move them "off the grid" to an eco-village in Missouri called Dancing Rabbit.

You guys are gonna love Vito and Johari (the two people who go to the village), be on the lookout for the dolls ... its one of the funniest things in the whole show and one of those things that we could never plan.

ALSO - the word of the day is Humanure ... you'll understand after you watch tonight.

BEST PART OF THE SHOW - The farm that recycles all the manure from cows to create methane gas that he uses not only to power his entire farm, but enough energy to power 70 homes around him! How many feedlots and farms are there in the US? This should be done everywhere (not only is it giving off electricity en masse, it also kills the shit smell that permeates most massive farms.)

This kind of praise for earthy commune farms is pretty typical. We're told how nothing gets discarded, and everything's fully consumed, recycled, and conserved -- in this case, apparently, even solid human waste.

Communes and Luddite farms are fine, so long as we approach them with the understanding that they are, at heart, parasitic. They may shun technology, markets, and commerce but technology, markets, and commerce make it possible for them to exist. They aren't applicable in the macro. That is, if we all lived this way, we'd all starve.

But that's a little beside the point of this post. This post is actually about recycling. Spurlock seems to be rather fond of it. At least in some contexts. But his fondness for the communal farm is hard to explain in light of the way he exploits and mischaracterizes the rendering industry in his book. I suppose the intent in his book is take cheap shots at the cattle industry. The intent of the TV show is to take shots at consumer culture. But the two positions aren't consistent. Here's why:

Spurlock writes:

In an amazing display of collective insanity, the meat producers of this country are feeding all sorts of animals to the animals they feed to us. Dead pigs and dead horses are ground up into cattle feed, and so are dead chickens. A lot of chicken manure gets mixed up into the feed in the process, so the cows are not only eating chicken, but chicken shit, which can spread salmonella, tapeworms, and chemicals like arsenic. Not only are cows fed dead chickens, but chickens are fed dead cows (Cue "The Circle of Life" from The Lion King).

You want to hear something really disgusting? The cattle industry buys millions of dead cats and dogs from animal shelters every year, then feeds them to the cattle who end up in your burger.

Yeeecccchhhh!!.

Oh, and the do the same with roadkill.

Is your mouth watering now?

This is not only disgusting, it's utter madness. It's the new, insane version of the old "circle of life." It passes new types of diseases around and around the food chain. And at every pass, we make some of those strains of disease stronger and stronger, because we keep bombing them with antibiotics that kill of some of them but only make the survivors and their offspring more resistant. And then they pass through the whole cycle again.

The FDA has regulated some of this and issued recommendations on certain points, but the basic facts are as I just told you. (p. 106)

No, they aren't.

The process of using animal waste for other purposes is called "rendering." For the uninitiated it is, to be sure, an ugly process. But then, who would have thought spreading animal waste over the ground where vegetables grow would be a good idea? We've come to accept it because we're familiar with it, and because it works. It's the main way organic vegetables are grown, and Spurlock's awfully fond of organic food in his book.

But let's get back to rendering. When Spurlock writes that some animals are "ground up" into cattle feed, he's oversimplifying the rendering process to the point of dishonesty. Here's what actually happens:

The "raw materials" -- by-products from slaughterhouses, mostly -- are pulverized down to a fine grain, which is then cooked at temperatures between 240 and 290 degrees, Fahrenheit. That's plenty hot to kill off all of the bacteria, protozoa, viruses, and parasites. The stuff is cooked at those temperatures until it breaks down into basic nutrient building blocks -- protein, water, and fat. At this point, the protein and fat are separated, and the excess water is evaporated. The protein and fat are stored separately. The protein is dried. The fat is further separated. Some is processed further, some is sold to other industries.

About 80% of the dried protein from rendering plants is eventually used to fortify animal feed. The fat is used for a variety of things. Much of it is used to make soap, or as an additive to lotions, creams, and makeup. Some if it is turned into grease -- for lubricating automobiles and other heavy machinery. Some is used to make artificial rubber. There's some research now that may find ways to use it for natural biofuel. A very small percentage of the highest-grade tallow is used for flavoring in food we eat.

Rendering is recycling. In fact, it's a much more efficient, productive, useful way of recycling than, for example, putting your bottles, cans, and paper in separate bins at the end of the driveway each week. Not only does rendering turn waste into usable consumer products and put fat and protein to new uses, it safely eradicates between 40 and 50 percent of post-slaughter animal waste. It breaks that waste down, kills off pathogens, and puts it to new uses. Were it not for rendering, we'd have twice as many cow, pig, and chicken remains we'd need to find something to do with -- likely disposal in a landfill.

Contrary to Spurlock's claims, only a very few rendering firms still process dog and cat carcasses or roadkill. None of these firms sell that waste domestically, and none sell it for livestock feed. Of course, in terms of safety, there's no reason they shouldn't. But most have stopped precisely because people like Spurlock have fueled public queasiness about the process. Instead, carcasses from vet offices and animal shelters are now generally sent to landfills. So much for recycling.

Spurlock seems to be in awe of commune farms that find a use for everything, even products most of us consider disgusting, like human feces. But when industry does the same thing on a larger scale, Spurlock is not only outraged, he distorts the actual process of rendering to exaggerate the "ick" factor. For Spurlock, when anti-consumerists recycle biomass, it's something to be celebrated. When industry does it, it's something to be vilified.

More on the Way

I'll be out of town for speeches the next couple of days, but promise to have quite a bit more for you when I return.

In the meantime, you might check this white paper debunking many of the myths about child obesity, written by Dr. John Robison.

So much of today's obesity debate centers on kids, and what we need to do "for the children." Robison shows us in statistics what Pete Townshend told us forty years ago:

The kids are alright.

Les Sayer

Sayer is a biology professor who replicated Spurlock's thirty-day experiment to teach his students about how the documentary medium can be abused to further a political agenda. The difference between Sayer and Spurlock: Sayer didn't deliberately double his daily calorie intake, nor did he stop exercising. He ate three meals per day at McDonalds, diversified what he ate, and was able to keep his calorie count between 2,000 and 3,000. Over 30 days, he lost 17 pounds. His blood pressure dropped. And his cholesterol basically remained the same. He suffered none of the effects Spurlock shows in Super Size Me.

Wiki

Someone kindly listed this site on Morgan Spurlock's Wikipedia entry.

I clicked over, however, and saw that the body of Spurlock's entry didn't contain a single sentence laying out the position of Super Size Me critics. So I added the following, which I think is a pretty fair assessment of their criticisms:

Spurlock's critics contend that his movie was a dishonest depiction of how fast food -- or any food, really -- fits in with a regular diet. Spurlock deliberately ate 5,000 calories per day, more than twice what's recommended. It isn't difficult, in fact, to eat a McDonalds diet for each meal at under 2,000 calories per day (including a double cheeseburger and fries for dinner). Spurlock also intentionally avoided any physical activity during his McDonalds diet. That such a drastic diet-exercise regimine would cause deleterious effects on his health, critics say, is self-evident. Five thousand calories per day of any food will cause immediate, noticeable weight gain in all but the most serious and rigorous of athletes.

We'll see if it stays up.

More Source Abuse

In Super Size Me, Spurlock interviews Jacob Sullum of Reason Magazine. Here's how Sullum describes the interview:

The movie pays virtually no attention to the individualist critique of the war on fat, instead depicting it as a struggle between public-spirited activists and greedy corporations. When Spurlock interviewed me for the movie, I tried to interest him in the paternalism angle. At one point I suggested that it may soon be socially acceptable to publicly hector fat people for their unhealthy habits, just as it is acceptable to hector smokers. The appropriate response in either case, I suggested, is: "Fuck you. Mind your own business." He ended up using that bit of the interview, mainly to establish the background of rising concern about rising weight.

Sullum later viewed Super Size Me at a D.C. film festival, and left with this impression:

I suspect that idea would be alien to most of the audience at the D.C. film festival, which seemed to consist almost entirely of people who buy organic food, take a dim view of SUVs, and think recycling is self-evidently virtuous. Aside from a lone skeptic who was booed back to his seat, Spurlock's sharpest critics were people who loved the movie but wished he had paid more attention to the trash generated by fast food packaging or the connection between socioeconomic status and obesity. Watching Spurlock bask in the praise of all these like-minded people, who were congratulating themselves by congratulating him, left me feeling rather like he did after forcing down his first supersize cheeseburger meal.

Pretty clear where Sullum comes down on the movie's message, isn't it?

Bizarrely, here's how Spurlock characterizes Sullum's take on the obesity issue, in an interview with the L.A. Weekly:

L.A. Weekly: In the film, Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine asks whether it will eventually be socially acceptable to hector fat people the way smokers are hectored now. What do you think about that?

Spurlock: I think that would be terrible. But I think he's just raising the question of where we draw the line between corporate responsibility and personal responsibility. What can I control, and what is so heavily pounded into me through marketing and advertising and the lack of better food in my neighborhood or in my school? Where is that fine line? There are things that have to change.

Either Spurlock is completely ignorant of and oblivious to the idea of personal responsibility, or he deliberately mischaracterized Sullum's position. Neither says much about his credibility. Sullum is a consistent, principled civil libertarian. Here's what he writes about one of Spurlock's favorite themes, that parents are overwhelmed by the marketing and advertsing "pounded" into their children:

Please. If parents don't have the wherewithal to say no when their kids ask for something they saw on TV, their problems go far beyond the risk of chubby offspring.

And here's what Sullum says about the way Spurlock characterized him in that L.A. Weekly interview:

I was startled to see how Spurlock . . . explained my comment.

[...]

Actually, I was saying that how much people weigh is their own business, and that meddling do-gooders -- the heroes of Super Size Me -- ought to be put in their place.

This seems to be a common problem with Spurlock. He regularly attributes claims and opinions to sources that, when checked, take the exact opposite position Spurlock attributes to them.

See here for a similar example from his book.

The Big C

Cancer, that is.

Spurlock quotes someone from the "Vanerbilt University Online Wellness Center," who writes:

"According to studies conducted by the American Cancer Society . . .more than 20 percent of all cancer deaths in women and 14 percent in men ar linked directly to being overweight. Another 33 percent of cancer deaths are linked to poor diet and physical inactivity . . . that's a lot of people dying needlessly." (p. 15)

That study from the American Cancer Society made huge news. Most media outlets did just as Spurlock has done -- found someone who had read the executive summary, and quoted him. Few reporters read the actual study (or if they did, they ignored its findings). It's odd how rarely Spurlock cites an actual study. Instead, he usually cites a newspaper's account of the study, or something he found online, such as the Vanderbilt Online Wellness Center.

If he had looked at the actual data , he'd have found some pretty striking contradictions. For example, the study found that among people the government classifies as of "healthy weight," there were 4.5 cancer deaths per 1,000 people. But get this: Among people the government classifies as "overweight," there were only 4.4! If you're worried about cancer, it's actually healthier to be overweight than of "healthy" weight. Paul Campos and others have also pointed out that the study's data shows that women who are extremely obese actually have a lower risk of cancer than men who are underweight. As the Center for Consumer Freedom has put it, if risk from fat is our barometer, Roseanne Barr is at lower risk of cancer than David Spade. The study also concedes that being overweight actually helps prevent brain cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, and melanoma.

Here's what the study did: Among the extremely obese, deaths from cancer increase prett significantly. Incidence is higher, but deaths are also higher -- probably because cancer is more difficult to detect and treat in the very obese. In any case, in drawing its conclusion (the conclusion carried by most of the media), the study merely lumped the very high rates among the very obese in with the rates of the obese and overweight. It then compared the aggregate rates of those with the aggregate rates of those of "healthy" weight and the underweight. The former was higher. Therefore, we were told, being overweight puts us at greater risk of cancer. But the vast majority of Americans aren't obese, or very obese. They're merely overweight by government standards. And they aren't at greater risk for cancer, they're actually slightly at less risk.

This is how the public healty hysteria industry works.

There were data collection problems, too. The study was based on surveys. Researchers asked people how much they weighed at the time, and asked them to remember how much they weighed a year ago. The study was based on their answers, not on actual medical records. When the New England Journal of Medicine published the study, it actually published an accompanying editorial expressing reservations about the study's conclusions. Most media outlets went with the study's summary, ignoring its data tables and the accompanying editorial.

Moving on, Spurlock writes:

Specifically, diet and obesity have been linked to increased risk for breast, colon, endometrial, esophageal, and kidney cancer., (p. 15)

Linked by whom? Deaths from every one of those types of cancer is down over the last fifteen years, the very period over which we've been allegedly getting obese. In fact, of the ten types of cancer nutrition activists tell us are most strongly linked to obesity, deaths from nine of them are down (breast, kidney, gall bladder, stomach, ovarian, cervical, prostate, colon, and pancreatic). Only esophogeal cancer has gone up. See a few handy charts and graphs I made here.

In fact, deaths and incidence of cancer in general have dropped every year for the last fifteen years. And this, while we've all been getting fatter. Pretty strong correlative evidence that obesity isn't going to drive up our cancer rates.

My favorite part of Spurlock's passage on cancer comes here:

Diets high in animal fat seem to promote cancer and inhibit recovery from things like breast and colon cancer.

Where do people eat high-fiber, plant-based diets? The nonindustrial world, that's where. Where do people eat too much meat and fat? Guess.

Again, Spurlock longs for a culture more like those areas of the world untouched by capitalism. Have a look at this table. There are three columns. One is the name of the country. One is per capita GDP, a good indicator of a given country's "industrialization." And one is life expectancy, a good indicator of a country's overall well-being. I'm sure you can guess where the correlation lies. Big GDP equals long life expectancy. Small GDP equals early death.

Fast food and all, the people of the industrial world live about 25 to 30 years longer than the people of the non-industrialized world. There's no comparison. Progress and industry have bettered and lengthened our lives.

Amazon Reviews

Here's the Amazon review page for Spurlock's book.

If you've read it and want to sketch up a quick review, go for it.

400,000

Spurlock writes:

Fat is deadly. Obesity-related illnesses will kill around 400,000 Americans this year--almost the same as smoking. (p. 13)

Spurlock comes back to the "400,000" figure, and the "second leading cause of death" idea several times in the book. Both are wrong.

Last April, the CDC released a report confirming what critics of the obesity hysteria have been saying for some time -- that 400,000 figure (revised from a similar 300,000 figure a decade ago) is a gross overestimation. The real number is closer to 100,000. And if you add in the lives saved by the protective effects of mild overweight, the number is closer to 25,000. Meaning that:

(A) The number Spurlock quotes here is off by a factor of fifteen.

(B) Those statistics about how many Americans are "overweight" by government standards don't mean a damned thing. Overweight is actually healthier than what the government says is the "ideal" weight. And overweight is much healthier than what the government calls "underweight."

Predictably, bureaucratic politics and turf wars are now at play. The CDC has been slow to embrace the new study, despite the fact that the agency commissioned it. The reason? The CDC's director was a co-author of the old study. There's some evidence now that the old study's flaws were known before it was ever released, but power politics trumped objections raised by other researchers during the peer-review process.

The New York Times, Forbes, Batimore Sun, USA Today, Rocky Mountain News, and Des Moines Register, among others, all slammed the CDC for letting politics trump good science. Several editorial boards and pundits (including yours truly) called on CDC director Julie Gerberding to resign.

In any case, these developments are a fine example of why it isn't wise to take every health scare pushed by the government at face value. When a study comes out that was funded by Philip Morris, people tend to read it with a good deal of skepticism. Perhaps that's appropriate. But perhaps it's time we looked at government studies the same way. They're plagued by the same biases, motivations, and slants that plague any privately-funded health research.

The new study came out about a month before Spurlock's book was published. So perhaps we should cut him some slack. My guess is that the book was already in printing when the new study came out. I'll look for a correction in the paperback edition.

On the other hand, it wasn't hard to find critics of the 400,000 study. if Spurlock had been the slightest bit curious about opposing viewpoints, he would have found enough criticism of the 400,000 number to at least have acknowledged in his book that the number isn't without its detractors. In fact, the CDC itself lowered figure to 365,000 early last year in response to many of those critics. That correction took place long enough ago that Spurlock has no excuse for going with the higher, 400,000 figure.

Poor People Don't Eat Artichokes

Spurlock writes:

The USDA reports that the cost of vegetables and fruit rose 120 percent between 1985 and 2000, while the price of junk like sodas and sweets went up less than 50 percent on average (p. 12)

This may be true, I'm not sure. Spurlock's source is a 2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencier article, and the reporter gives no specific source for the claim, other than the tag "according to the USDA."

Spurlock uses this same S-I article a number of times, but never bothers to doublecheck its assertions. He could have at least cheked with the USDA to verify.

If he had, he'd know that the USDA did commission a highly-publicized study on how much it would cost for the average person to get his full daily requirement of fruits and vegetables.

The answer? Sixty-four cents. Or, about twelve percent of the average American's food budget. There are "127 different ways to eat a serving of fruits and vegetables for less than the price of a 3-ounce candy bar," the study says. The notion that processed food is cheaper than fresh food was dismissed by the study, too: "Researchers found that nearly two-thirds of the fruits and vegetables studied were cheapest in their fresh form."

In fact, according to the USDA, per capita fresh fruit and vegetable consumption has gone up by 20% since the 1970s!

I know what you're thinking. "Doesn't the government count the potato as a vegetable? Isn't most of that increase probably due to french fries and potato chips?"

Actually, no. Check out this table from the USDA (from this report). Potato consumption is included in the "frozen" statisitics, not the fresh (as you might imagine, it is up, by about 21 pounds per year).

This makes sense. Revolutionary improvements in agriculture, shipping, and preserving fresh foods, together with a rapidly growing economy (there's all that awful "consumption" again), have created a market for diverse, fresh produce, and a means of satisfying it.

Typically, nutrition activists' response to this is to point out how hard it is for low-income people to access fresh fruits and vegetables. Indeed, that's Spurlock's next paragraph. He points out that low-income areas are often dotted with fast food joints and convenience stores, but few if any outlets for fresh produce.

Here, he's right. And I sympathize. But I have a solution: We have business models that can deliver good food at low cost to low-income people. They do it by stocking huge inventories at very small mark-ups, and by cutting costs just about everywhere they can. They're called big box stores, and they've been doing it all over the country, except in urban areas. The best in the business is Wal-Mart.

The problem is, every time Wal-Mart attempts to open a Superstore (the Superstores carry a full line of groceries, including fresh produce) in an urban area, it's people like Spurlock and his nutrition activist allies who raise holy hell to prevent it from happening. We've seen it happen in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and here in Washington, D.C.

People like Spurlock want low-income people to have access to fresh, preferably organic, cheap, diverse produce, but only if the means for delivering said produce isn't evil Big Box Retail. Sorry, but that's asking too much.

One nutrition activist I debated a few months ago had an interesting solution -- communism! Or at least a localized application of communism. Her comments on artichokes are particularly amusing.

UPDATE: In the comments section, Evan Williams says there's too much guilt by association in this post. He's probably right. But a subsequent commenter passes along this link, in which Spurlock expresses the very opinion of Wal-Mart I suspected he might. Williams is still probably right. But the post is ultimately right, too.

Income, Race, and Obesity

Spurlock writes:

But like so many health issues in this country (smoking, for one example), [obesity] has the worst impact among poor Americans, especially African Americans and Hispanic Americans. (p. 11)

Lots to address in so short a passage. First, a big reason why the poor disproportionately smoke is because local, state, and the federal government have levied excise taxes on cigarettes, a policy Spurlock and his ilk generally support. According to the Congressional Budget Office, such taxes do encourage people to quit, but the people who do quit tend to be higher-income, leaving a greater percentage of smokers in lower income brackets. Government efforts to discourage smoking, then, don't alleviate the black-white, rich-poor smoking gap, they make it worse.

As for the "obesity gap" between rich and poor, it simply isn't true, particularly over the last thirty years. It is upper income people who have gained the most weight since the mid-1970s. This data from a University of Iowa study released just about a month ago:

Percent Increase in Obesity Rates Since 1971:

Less than $25,000: increase of 144%

$25,000-$40,000: increase of 194%

$40,000-$60,000: increase of 209%

More than $60,000: increase of 276%

Obesity rates are similar across all income groups now, with the poorest quarter just 5.7% more obese than the richest.

Also, don't forget that this information comes from government surveys, which use BMI. So view eventthese statistics through your BMI BS-o-meter.

As for differences with respect to race, Paul Campos has pointed out that epidemiology tables show African Americans and Hispanics (particularly women) tend to be healthier at a weight 10-15 pounds heavier than white women. There are also cultural differences at play here that have nothing to do with evil Big Food. Black men, for example, don't put the premium on thinness in women that white men do. So black women tend to be heavier. As Campos notes:

Several studies have suggested that African American and Hispanic girls tend to have much more positive body images than white girls. For example, one University of Arizona study found that, while only 10% of the white teenage girls surveyed were happy with their bodies, 70% of the black teenage girls were happy with theirs (the black girls weighed more, on average, than the white girls). Is it a coincidence that black women are both far less obsessed with weight than white women, and seem to suffer no significant ill health effects from even extreme levels of fatness? Researchers have been unable to find a relationship between increased mortality and body mass even among African American women who are classified as “morbidly obese.”

Drawing Campos out a bit, to the extent that there is an emerging obesity gap on racial lines, it doesn't appear to be affecting mortality rates. Black men are closing the gap with white men when it comes to life expectancy, and black women are closing the gap with white women. All the while, however, blacks are getting disproporationately heavier than whites.

That's at least suggestive that obesity isn't the death-knell people like Spurlock have made it out to be, isn't it?

Kids and Fat

Spurlock writes:

Sixteen percent of American kids are now overweight or obese. As of September 2004, nine million American kids between the age of six and eighteen were obese. Kids are starting to clock in as obese as early as the age of two.

This is a complicated issue, but the gist of my complaint here is that there's no reliable way to measure "average" or "ideal" weight in kids. The statistics Spurlock cites use data from decades-old insurance tables. On those tables, arbitrary cutoffs along percentile lines classified this kid or that kid as "overweight" or "obese" -- kids in the 90th percentile, for example, were automatically considered dangerously overweight. Today, researchers still use those same tables, weights, and cutoffs from decades ago, but simply plug in the weights of today's kids against percentile cutoffs set decades ago. Since today's kids are maturing at earlier ages than kids of twenty or thirty years ago, they're naturally going to be heavier at earlier ages. Weighed against those older tables, then, today's kids are going to look fat.

I wrote the foreword to a forthcoming research paper by Dr. Paul Robison that covers this very issue (it'll be released on Monday). The meat of the paper: There's no real evidence that today's kids are dangerously overweight. There's no evidence that the weight most of them are carrying is unhealthy. And there's no real evidence that curbing marketing and advertising or access to junk food will help them lose whatever extra weight they are carrying. I'll post a link to the paper when it's released next week.

And as regular readers of my blog know by now, today's adolescent or teen is still 200-700 times more likely to have anorexia or bulimia than to have Type II Diabetes. So all of this focus on weight and food with respect to kids is probably doing a hell of a lot more harm than good.

Communist Chic

Spurlock writes:

Right now, I'm planning a trip to Cuba. I want to experience the coutnry and its people before that Pandora's box is opened there. Because you know after the day Fidel dies, the shipments of American consumer crap will come flooding in. (p. 65)

What an incredibly crass sentiment. Judging by their actions, I gather most Cubans are rather eager to be "flooded" by "American consumer crap." Last I checked, there weren't many Miamians risking their lives on ramshackle rafts to escape our "consumer crap" for Castro's anti-capitalist paradise. Let's hope Spurlock does a bit of research while he's there. More than he did for his book. After he learns a bit about what really happens to the citizens of command-and-control regimes, perhaps he'll have a change of heart about all that capitalism he's forced to endure back home. If not, perhaps he'll offer to switch places with an actual Cuban. I'll bet there are at least 10 million willing take him up on it.