If you’re eating any form of chicken as you read this, you might want to put it down.
Morgan Spurlock, who first hit the world stage for his film Super Size Me where he ate only McDonald’s for a month is back – and this time he’s taking on the chicken industry.
Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! sees Morgan trying to start his own fast food restaurant using the same ‘health-washing’ techniques as many of the main players already in the industry.
You may have noticed as you go for a burger or some nuggets that you’re bombarded with messaging about ‘health’, ‘balance’, ‘real’, ‘organic’, ‘free-from’, and all sorts of other buzz words.
Even the decor of your favourite food restaurants has changed in the 15 years since Super Size Me was released.
In Holy Chicken, Morgan looks at all these little tricks companies use to make us think what we’re eating is good for us, even when the reality couldn’t be further from nutritious and wholesome.
In a climate of documentaries like Cowspiracy and Vegucated, Holy Chicken doesn’t go as hard on meat eaters. But, it will make you think much more carefully about where you purchase that meat, and how everyone from the animals themselves to the employees that got it to your table are created.
To start up his chicken restaurant, Morgan is forced to contend with ‘big chicken’; the cabal of mega-corporations that dictate everything from what most of America’s chickens eat to how much farmers are paid for them.
He’s treated with suspicion by everyone except from Jonathan Buttram and his family, who take him in and help him farm chickens.
They get around all sorts of regulations in the exact same way the others do. For example, instead of saying ‘fried’ chicken, they say ‘crispy’. Grill marks are painted onto the chicken with charcoal powder to give the illusion of health.
Even the definition of free range is stretched. Where you might imagine is a world where chickens run free in a beautiful forest actually constitutes one tiny balcony-type area of their coop, technically giving them access to the outdoors and meaning Morgan can say that his chicken is free range.
There is so much smoke and mirrors around food that we aren’t told about as consumers. For example, although American chicken producers regularly label their products as hormone-free, it’s already illegal to inject chicken with hormones anyway. They’re using this wording to create an image of social responsibility.
Morgan told Metro.co.uk that he certainly isn’t trying to force people become vegan, just to think about how our food gets from farm to table:
‘We’ve been so blinded by what we’re told that we don’t have a deeper understanding of everything that goes into it. And so by opening a restaurant, that’s what I wanted to really show you.
‘Because nobody’s ever going to give me access to a chicken barn. Nobody’s ever gonna let me shoot that, nobody was ever going to show you how it was raised. Nobody was ever going to walk me through how they market their product to you.
‘So by bringing you into that company and by me becoming Ray Kroc or me becoming Colonel Sanders, you get a front row seat of literally how that manipulation starts from day one, literally until the food’s on your plate. I think that’s a level of understanding that we’ve never gotten when it comes to a restaurant like this or a food system like this.’
There are some shocking moments in the film. When Jonathan first shows Morgan to the coop and they’re throwing the chicks onto the floor, they all flock underfoot.
At one point Jonathan steps on a chick’s head, and you hear it crack.
‘It’s hard. Those little tiny chickens are so cute,’ says Morgan.
‘Like, here you are on day one, and like these little birds are already dying. Some of them show up dead… And then like they huddle under you they chase under you and it’s impossible to not step on one or two while you’re doing this.’
There’s also the matter of the farming industry, and how families who have spent generations in agriculture are being forced to leave the industry because of strict regulations and race-to-the-bottom prices.
While interviewing farmers, they break down, clearly drained by feeling like they have nothing to show for their years of hard work.
It’s hard-hitting, but there’s an understandable feeling in the world right now where we feel like we can’t possibly take on the responsibility of farming, trade, and animal welfare on top of everything else.
Morgan says, though, that we absolutely can: ‘If you’re going to eat meat, you should bring it from a place, buy it from a place, try and support as many places as you can that raise it ethically, that treat the people who raise that food fairly, that get it to your table in a way that is economically sound.’
While it’s not as easy for everybody to eat food where you know exactly where it comes from, we have to vote with our feet where we can, he says: ‘If you can afford a chicken like that, you should buy a chicken like that.
‘Because the more you buy chickens like that, the cheaper they become and more people can have access to them.
‘I think if you’re literally keeping them up for only the Super 1% of the people can by this food then it’s never going to make a difference.’
He calls this change small food (much like slow food, but specifically focusing on keeping it local).
Morgan has fully come for the industry again, and McDonald’s definitely aren’t exempt. He says their food hasn’t improved in taste in the decade and a half since he had it last. What they have done a number on, though, is their spin.
He says their colour schemes and messaging is ‘a bit softer, a bit more kind of fun – everything’s bit more approachable. But the food tastes exactly the same.’
He also says that the worst chicken sandwich he tasted while making the film was the Popeyes recent super-hyped introduction. Morgan says, ‘The bread is boring, the flavour of the chicken isn’t good. It’s this thing that I think the company has done an incredible job of overhyping and under creating.’
There’s also a scene where he called the Burger King chicken sandwich a ‘mitt’ (he tells us he doesn’t actually count this as a chicken sandwich as it was so bad) because it’s so dry and processed it can be worn like a glove.
Add to that that he tells Chick-fil-A to go fuck themselves due to the company’s history of homophobic views and says that their food is only tasty because they fill it with MSG.
‘If your sandwich was that good and that craveable, you wouldn’t need to add this to make me want it,’ he said.
‘And I think that they have created a menu that relies on something else to make me want it rather than the food actually tasting good on its own.’
Is he scared about the fact he’s taken on some of the fast-food industry’s biggest names? Clearly not.
‘What are they gonna do?’ he asks.
‘I’m a little filmmaker. Chick-fil-A is like the least of my worries’
What’s next for Morgan includes opening permanent Holy Chickens, and working with Jonathan as his chicken industry guru.
The thing he really wants, though, is a food revolution where we all work together to make things better for farmers and animals.
‘The more that you can unify people with a like-minded interest, the more successful they’ll become,’ he says.
‘And I think that it hasn’t happened in chicken farming. It hasn’t happened in most of the farming in the States in general because it has been so kind of co-opted by the corporatocracy. So I think that that’s the next push.’
He adds: ‘I really believe that if we can start to just hammer in piece by piece by piece, chicken sandwich by chicken sandwich, there’s a way that you can make that happen.’
SUPER SIZE ME 2: HOLY CHICKEN! is released on iTunes and On Demand from 9 December 2019
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/09/super-size-creator-morgan-spurlock-ruin-chicken-forever-11407567/
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