Morgan Spurlock from Super Size Me opens fast-food restaurant | The Independent | The Independent
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You would be forgiven for thinking Morgan Spurlock would be put off fast food for life after eating nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days in a landmark documentary.
However, you would be wrong. The subject of the 2004 documentary Super Size Me has now launched his own fast food restaurant: Holy Chicken! – but with a twist.
The restaurant has been trialled in Columbus, Ohio but Spurlock has said the eatery will be a permanent fixture in 2017.
However, all is not as it seems. Local paper Columbus Dispatch reports that what was initially sold as a more “humane” fast-food restaurant – they promoted their “free-range, free of hormones and antibiotics” chickens – was actually an illusion to highlight certain regulations fast-food chains apparently side-step.
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When customers visited the restaurant last weekend, they found cards on the tables which said the chickens were “pretty much the same as all industrial chickens but we make minor adjustments so that we can call them cage-free, antibiotic -fee, all natural and a bunch of other labels that mean little to nothing”. Other cards said they would be adding “fake” grill marks to the chicken to make it appear healthier. The gaudy walls even featured signs explaining: “The colour green makes you feel healthy and relaxed”.
Spurlock says he intentionally used the tactics fast-food restaurants do to show customers how easy it is for companies to make their food appear healthier or more ethical.
“We are ultimately going to be the first honest fast-food restaurant,” he told Today. “We are going to set the record straight.”
His publicist also told This Week he was being satirical to purposefully raise a wider point about consumer awareness.
“The whole ideas is to open more restaurants and you can’t do that with a product that tastes bad,” she said.
Customers also reportedly had to sign waivers saying they were aware they were being filmed yet Spurlock will not confirm whether this is all just for another documentary.
The effects of an unhealthy amount of fast food were portrayed by the 46-year-old in the Academy Award-nominated Super Size Me. After purely eating McDonald’s for his three daily meals for a month, he was ill, gained two stone, had an increased cholesterol, experienced mood swings and took 14 months to lose the weight.