Sixty per cent of Americans are overweight, 20 per cent obese. As the Mid-Western Health Board questions the merits of a McDonald's outlet in Ennis, Conor O'Clery reports from New York on the bad health plague sweeping the US
Two teenage girls in New York sued McDonald's in 2002 for making them obese. A news item about their case, which included McDonald's defence that their food was nutritious and not to blame, caught the attention of film-maker Morgan Spurlock.
The six-foot, two-inch, 185-pound New Yorker wondered if McDonald's was right. He decided to eat only at McDonald's outlets for a month, while three doctors monitored his health and cameras recorded his ordeal. He gobbled up everything they served him, Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, Egg McMuffins, Chicken McNuggets, French fries, Filet o' Fish sandwiches and 44oz cokes. The resulting documentary Super Size Me earned Spurlock a director's award at the Sundance Film Festival last week.
During his 30-day experiment, Spurlock consumed 5,000 calories a day, took in a total of 30 pounds of sugar and 12 pounds of fat, and gained 25 pounds in weight. His sex drive vanished, his cholesterol level soared from 165 to 230 and his liver, saturated with fats, came to resemble pate.
"It just destroyed my body," he said. "I was depressed. I felt terrible. My blood pressure skyrocketed. It was scary."
The title of the documentary comes from the practice in McDonald's of "super-sizing" meals. Since 1960 the number of calories in an average order of McDonald's French fries has soared from 200 to 610. The symptoms Spurlock experienced are the forerunners of the chronic diseases that afflict the fast-food nation that American has become.
A study at the Children's Hospital in Boston published in the January 2004 issue of Pediatrics found one in three American kids aged four to 19 eat fast food, adding a likely six extra pounds per child per year and increasing the risk of obesity.
The findings are not surprising given the billions of dollars spent on fast-food advertising aimed at children, according to the lead author, Dr David Ludwig. The increase in the number of fast food restaurants since the 1990s and more aggressive marketing means that American children's current levels of fast-food consumption are probably even higher.
McDonalds, which Spurlock claims feeds more people worldwide than the entire population of Spain, refused to comment during the making of Super Size Me but corporate vice-president Ken Barum, noted the fast-food chain has an array of healthier options in restaurants around the world now.
It has begun advertising a new line of salads, is adding fresh fruit to Happy Meals and is putting up notices of calorie, carbohydrate and fat content in its restaurants. It has also appointed a vice-president for healthy lifestyles. Similar initiatives has featured in Irish outlets.
But danger lurks for customers who think they are eating more healthily. A McDonald's crispy-chicken salad with full-fat Newman's Own dressing has an estimated 500 calories, more than a cheese-burger.
The two girls who took legal action in New York against McDonald's got nowhere and class action lawsuits blaming fast-food chains for obesity have so far failed. But the fast food industry has been thrown on the defensive by the growing public awareness of the obesity epidemic which affects 15 per cent of American children.
Sixty per cent of adults in the US are overweight according to government statistics and 20 per cent are obese. Fearful that a lawsuit will one day succeed and set of an avalanche of claims such as those that hit the tobacco industry, the fast-food and insurance industries have backed a bill in Congress that would prevent overweight people suing restaurants or food manufacturers.
Its premise is that what people eat is a matter of personal responsibility. At a hearing last June the author Republican Congressman Ric Keller argued that most people should know that stuffing themselves with junk food would make them fat. John Banzhaf, the George Washington University law professor who began suing tobacco companies in the 1960s - and who acted for the teenage girls in New York - testified in Congress that obesity plaintiffs, like tobacco plaintiffs, acknowledge their role in getting sick but fast-food companies are also complicit because they do not clearly label the food content.
His students won a $12.5 million settlement against McDonalds for not disclosing that its French fries were cooked in beef tallow, putting the company on notice that it could be held accountable for not making full disclosure of fat and calorie content at point of sale.
The World Health Organisation has proposed that countries limit advertising directed at children that encourages unhealthy diets and has proposed less sugar in diets, something that is being opposed by the US sugar industry and the US government. The documentary Super Size Me, rated 'F' for fat audiences, may work better to convince Americans that junk foods can be damaging to health.