The author, John Marek, is executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
Honestly, I don’t know what to think about Morgan Spurlock. There are aspects of his work I very much agree with, and elements of his work I find overly sensationalized and frighteningly naive. For those who may not be familiar with the name, Spurlock is a documentary filmmaker whose work can be classified as “crusading” or “muckraking,” depending on your point of view.
His first film, 2004’s “Super Size Me,” focused on the fast-food industry with a particular emphasis on McDonald’s. He ate nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days and filmed the changes in his appearance, health and mood during the experiment. As you might imagine, he did not come out of the experience a lean, mean, fighting machine. He gained 24 pounds (almost a pound a day!), raised his cholesterol to a dangerous 230 and experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction and fat accumulation in his liver.
I agree with Spurlock that obesity has become an epidemic in this country, and our societal dependence on fast food likely plays some role in that. Where we part company is his almost complete denial that personal responsibility plays any role in one’s health. I would never claim that McDonald’s is the healthiest restaurant on Earth, and some of what they place on their menu is unhealthy in all but the most modest of quantities. But that’s my point. During his experiment, Spurlock largely eschewed the healthier items on the menu – although he did eat everything at least once – in favor of Big Macs, fries and milkshakes. He made up the stupid rule that anytime the counterperson asked if he wanted to “super size” his meal, he did … and ate it all. I don’t care what restaurant you use as an example, if the waiter brings out a dessert cart and you are required by rule to eat every item, you are going to have problems.
Over his 30 days of eating exclusively McDonald’s he consumed an average of 5,000 calories per day, nearly twice the number recommended for someone his size. Perusing McDonald’s online menu, it is clearly possible to eat three meals for far fewer than 5,000 calories. To my thinking, his focus on the extreme partially deflects the legitimacy of his concerns about obesity and fast food and makes it seem like he rigged the outcome.
A few days ago, I watched Spurlock’s newer (2017) movie, “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!” The film takes a few parting shots at the fast-food industry, which he claims has successfully rebranded itself as healthier since his earlier film (wrapping themselves in a “health halo”), even though they have done very little to actually improve the healthiness of their fare. Spurlock, however, reserves the brunt of his criticism for what he refers to as “big chicken.”
Make no mistake about it; chicken is big business in Anson County, and big chicken has a strong presence here. There are currently more than 920 poultry houses in the county, with another 100 expected to come online over the next five years. Spurlock focuses his investigation on a town in Alabama, but it could have just as easily been Polkton or Wadesboro; the players, issues and economic impacts are the same.
In particular, he takes aim at the “tournament system,” which the major chicken companies say provides a healthy dose of competition, but which some growers say skews the process to the advantage of “favored” growers. Under this system, growers earn points for things like average bird size, mortality rate, feed consumption and days-to-market. These points are totaled at the end of each cycle, and the highest-scoring growers get paid the most for their chickens. Some growers contend, however, that the big chicken processors rig the game by giving the healthiest, fastest-growing chicks to their favorites, saddling new or out-of-favor growers with the leftovers.
Spurlock also pokes fun at the vagueness of terms like “natural,” “antibiotic-free” and “free-range,” going so far as to build a tiny 3′ X 3′ fenced-in area just outside his chicken house so that he could legally sell his birds as free-range, even though they skedaddled back into the house within seconds.
Again, I don’t disagree entirely with his points. We do need to be more vigilant about where our food comes from and how it is produced. Folks I know and trust in the chicken business agree that the tournament system can, at times, seem unfair. The problem is that the sheer volume of chicken consumed makes it virtually impossible to do it any other way. I’m sure we would all like to buy chicken that was raised on a family farm, cuddled in the morning, hand-fed the finest of grains and given a counseling session before being escorted over the rainbow bridge. Unfortunately, such an endeavor would require about 50 percent of the population to be chicken farmers (or counselors), and a rotisserie bird at the Harris Teeter would cost $50.
Yes, it’s primarily about profit, but it’s also about feeding 360 million people, and to do that we may have to accept some compromises.