Update: Morgan Spurlock: The man who ate McDonald's

"A few days into his grand experiment of eating all McDonald's, all the time, for 30 days straight, the New York film-maker Morgan Spurlock started complaining of headaches and other unpleasant side-effects: listlessness, depression, chest pains, shortness of breath, sexual dysfunction and more. His headaches, however, almost certainly pale in comparison to the giant, throbbing one his much-discussed documentary Super Size Me is causing the executives who run Ronald McDonald's global empire.
More than five weeks after it was released in the United States, the film is playing on more screens than ever - 230 nationally and expanding every week - and has racked up more than $7.5m (£4m) in domestic box office receipts, more than100 times more than it cost to make.
Instead of suffering the usual fate of documentaries - a limp roll-out in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, followed by oblivion and late-night television reruns - Super Size Me is showing every sign of being a bona fide hit, especially with teenagers, the very demographic so hotly sought out by McDonald's marketing managers.
Every night, audiences are confronted with the sight of Spurlock's alarmingly deteriorating health as he shovels one McDonald's meal into his mouth after another. He eats McDonald's for breakfast, lunch and dinner, vowing to try everything on the menu at least once in the course of his experiment, minimising his physical exercise (in keeping with the relative immobility of the average American) and agreeing that he will "super size" the portions he orders whenever the server suggests it to him (again, in accordance with the proclivities of regular fast-food customers).
For the final 15 minutes of the screening I attended earlier this week, film-goers revolted by the sight of one too many Egg McMuffins and super-sized side orders of fries were groaning and writhing in their seats. A food industry lobbyist who defended McDonald's was booed when he made the last of several appearances on screen.
By this point, Spurlock was being told by his doctors that his cholesterol was shooting off the charts, his liver was turning to paté and he risked meeting the same terminally self-destructive fate as Nicolas Cage's alcoholic protagonist in Leaving Las Vegas. The damage was far beyond anything Spurlock's trio of specialists had imagined possible, and they begged him (in vain) to abandon his stunt.
To say this is a public relations disaster for McDonald's is a gross understatement. It is a nightmare that shows no signs of ending. Spurlock has - almost literally - regurgitated the contents of his high-fat, high-sugar diet on to the collective desks of McDonald's management, and they appear to be at a loss as to what to do about it. . . .
The Australian distributor, Dendy Films, reacted to the McDonald's television advertising campaign by claiming that cinema managers were having to spend longer cleaning up auditoriums where Super Size Me has been showing because people alarmed by the dangers of bad eating presented on screen were leaving behind full cartons of popcorn and soda cups. In a less contentious climate, it is probably not something it would have bothered to put out in a press release. Dendy also offered a free ticket to the film for any employee of McDonald's Australia. Spurlock, meanwhile, has taken issue with Mr Russo's [McDonald' Australia] nutrition labelling claims, saying that the posted signs at point of purchase - which Mr Russo said were his "commitment" in the interview they did together - were not evident in most Australian outlets of McDonald's. . . .
The company had already recognised it needed to do something about the health liability of its products. In addition to the salads and yoghurt breakfasts introduced in Australia and elsewhere, it added low-fat milk and sliced fresh apples to its menus in the US, the UK and elsewhere. The revamp worked, at least financially, and soon McDonald's executives were hailing their turnaround hero, the chief executive, Jim Cantalupo, as a visionary and genius on a par with the company's founder, Ray Kroc. Or they did until Mr Cantalupo dropped dead of a heart attack in April - hardly the best publicity for a fast-food company on a health kick.
One of the most galling aspects of Super Size Me, from the company's viewpoint, must have been its illustration of the calorie and sugar content of even these new "healthy" items. The film demonstrates - using McDonald's own nutritional data - that some of the salad dressings are as bad as anything else on the menu. The Caesar salad with chicken première, for example, contains more fat than a cheeseburger.
Remarkably, just six weeks after Sundance, McDonald's announced that the super-sizing that Spurlock reacts to so vehemently in the film (his first encounter with a mega-portion of fries and Coke ends up on the asphalt of the drive-through parking lot, along with a double quarter pounder he couldn't quite bring himself to finish) was to be phased out by the end of this year. Even more remarkably, the company insisted the decision had nothing to do with the film, but had been under consideration for several months. . . .
But the counter-spinning goes on. One documentary maker, Soso Whaley, has filmed her own 30-day McDonald's diet and claims it did her no harm whatsoever. Her corporate backers: Philip Morris, the tobacco company, ExxonMobil and Coca Cola."