Angry about Super Size Me, crusading calorie-counters show you can eat full time at McDonald's and lose weight.
By Associated Press
Published August 12, 2005
RALEIGH, N.C. - Inspired by the documentary Super Size Me, Merab Morgan decided to give a fast-food-only diet a try. The construction worker and mother of two ate only at McDonald's for 90 days - and dropped 37 pounds in the process.
It was a vastly different outcome than what happened in the documentary to filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who put on 30 pounds and saw his health deteriorate after 5,000 calories a day of nothing but McDonald's food.
Morgan, from Raleigh, said she thought the documentary was unfair, implying 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.
One person went so far as to make her own independent film about dieting at McDonald's. Me and Mickey D follows Soso Whaley of Kensington, N.H., as she spends three 30-day periods on the diet. She dropped from 175 to 139 pounds, eating 2,000 calories a day at McDonald's.
"I had to think about what I was eating," Whaley said. "I couldn't just walk in there and say, "I'll take a cinnamon bun and a Diet Coke.' ... I know a lot of people are really turned off by the whole thought of monitoring what they are eating, but that's part of the problem."
Morgan used nutritional information downloaded from McDonald's Web site to create meal plans of no more than 1,400 calories a day. She only ate french fries twice, usually choosing burgers and salads. Those choices are a stark contrast with those made by Spurlock, who ate every menu item at least once.
At the end of the 90 days, she had dropped from 227 to 190 pounds.
