Morgan Spurlock Watch

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.