Morgan Spurlock, maker of the classic documentary Super Size Me (2004) passed away on Friday May 24. Not from eating too many fries and burgers, but from cancer. In Super Size Me, for those who forgot, Spurlock does a fast food experiment. For a month, he eats at McDonalds three times a day. And whenever they offer him a supersize meal, he has to take it. The filmmaker gained serious weight and suffered significant health issues at the end of the documentary. The not so surprising message: fast food is not good for you, and the fast food industry has a great hold over America which suffers from a health and obesitas crisis.

I wanted to rewatch it, but could only find its sequel Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! (2017) on the streaming services. So I watched the sequel instead. His mission this time around is to open his own fast food restaurant and see how the industry has changed in 13 years. This mission may seem less exciting, but it is a huge undertaking.

Spurlock talks to all kinds of experts and innovators to be as successful as possible. It turns out that chicken is the way to go forward, because it is cheaper, potentially healthier and trendier than beef. I write ‘potentially’ because grilled chicken is not so bad. The thing is: more than 90 percent of Americans prefer fried chicken. The industry just adds artificial grill marks to make it appear healthier.

Surprise: the industry is all about marketing. The food hasn’t changed at all, but how everything looks has. McDonald’s now has green and brown paper boxes instead of the foam boxes they used to have. It looks more farm-like. The fast food chains use slogans like ‘food as it should be’ or ‘home style’ to make it all appear natural and artisan. Many fast food restaurants have pictures of traditional farms hanging on the wall. Subways shows you all their vegetables, so you almost think your sandwich, which is drooling with fat, is not so unhealthy after all.

Spurlock goes with the home grown theme, so he buys chicklets and his own growhouse. It turns out that fast food chickens are now engineered to grow from chicklet to full grown chicken in just six weeks. By then they weigh 2,75 kilos. By comparison, that’s the same as when a baby would grow to 300 kilos in two months time. The result of this unnatural growth cycle? Heart attacks, crushed bones and all kinds of diseases. Who can see the next pandemic approaching?

When a lobby group is pressuring farmers not to talk to Spurlock, he dives into the world of Big Chicken and what they are hiding. Turns out that these corporate villains have enslaved the chicken growers with a tournament system. Everybody used to get paid the same, now they decide based on a measurement system they control, who gets paid what. The farmers also need to take on massive debts to be able to stay in business. This corrupt, rigged system has these farmers living in intense stress. One of them even starts crying in front of the camera.

The brilliant ending sees Spurlock open the first Holy Chicken restaurant, the most transparent fast food restaurant in the world. Here, the customers can experience in funny and inventive ways how the industry is bullshitting them. The design of the restaurant is fantastic and reason alone to see this film. This is great documentary making. Spurlock was a master of the craft and will surely be missed.

Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! is available on Amazon Prime.