My weekly column ran in today’s Wednesday (Prattville) Progress:

You may have seen or heard about an Academy Award-nominated film called “Super Size Me”. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock ate only McDonald’s menu items for 30 days with rapid negative effects on his health. The film re-surfaced in a particular segment of the media this week because of the pending release of a film billed as a counter-”Super Size Me”. Most of the talk show hosts interested in this film never saw Spurlock’s film, but they don’t let that stop them from denigrating it.

The anti-”Super Size Me” involves a woman named Soso Whaley who ate McDonald’s food for sixty days straight and lost weight. In her appearances Soso is being billed as a simple “animal trainer”, but that is not the whole truth. Soso was given a fellowship by the Competitive Enterprise Institute to give her the ability to complete her film. This is important because CEI is a think tank that, among other things, favors repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (created in response to the Enron and Worldcom debacles and that allowed for the prosecution of Richard Scrushy) and opposes almost any effort to regulate industry to reduce global warming (including the McCain-Lieberman amendment that came before the Senate last week). So, we can McDonald’s had every expectation of favorable treatment, given CEI’s pro-corporate agenda. In fact, she was touting her weight loss before she even started! Morgan Spurlock made no contentions about what would happen during the course of his 30-day experiment.

Can you eat healthy at McDonald’s? Of course you can. Is it easy to do? No. Is it obvious from the menu what the healthy options are? No. For example, Soso had to take special precautions to stay below her daily calorie limits by using half of the salad dressing provided by McDonald’s, for example. Because, if she had used all of it, she would have gone over the limit. And, even with her extensive research, she was unable to find the nutrition facts for a number of the things she ate. What chance do the rest of us have?

To her credit, Soso posted her receipts on the CEI website. However, they reveal that she was not eating the way most people do. Here are some typical meals: dinner on April 2nd: a fish sandwich and a shake; dinner on the 4th consisted of a small fry and a McFlurry; dinner on the 5th was 3 cookies and a milk. I mean, is she serious? If that’s not dieting I don’t know what is and it certainly isn’t typical of the way most people eat.

People who have bothered to actually see “Super Size Me” know that it is about a lot more than Morgan’s experiment. He investigates school lunch programs, exercise habits, where fast food originates and how it is processed and the unavailability of nutrition information for fast food. Spurlock left no doubt that personal responsibility plays a role in the obesity epidemic in this country, but there is also no doubt there is a corporate element too.

Corporate responsibility to me means full disclosure. Why can’t we have the nutrition information for our food right next to the price? A capitalist democracy only functions when there is full disclosure. We have a long way to go in receiving full disclosure regarding what we eat and drink. When we get there, then I will listen to those who say we should leave the corporations alone.

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