Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock targets 'Big Chicken' in his new film
Morgan Spurlock, fast-food restaurant owner?
The filmmaker best known for the hit 2004 documentary Super Size Me is back with a new movie, Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!.
This time he's taking on what he calls "Big Chicken," the handful of corporations responsible for the bulk of American chicken production.
He explores the industry by starting his own fast-food restaurant called Holy Chicken, a pop up in Columbus, Ohio.
"This [movie] is much more from the corporate standpoint of 'How do I get you to eat. How do I get you to eat in a specific way, and how do I get that food to you in this environment,'" he tells The Current's Friday host Piya Chattopadhyay.
The movie examines the language being used to market food in an era when "healthy" and "natural" and "organic" are buzzwords.
He says marketers have created a "health halo."
"We wrap our food in these halos that make it seem better for us ... and one of the bigger ones now is the word, 'crispy.' Crispy is a positive way to say fried chicken ... crispy has a positive health halo. Fried has a negative health halo."
Hence, why he says, he decided his restaurant would sell crispy chicken sandwiches.
He says the life of a chicken destined for your plate, called broilers, can be summed up in one word: "Fast."
"We've engineered chickens now whereas in the '50s it used to be four months, five months... now it's six weeks from birth to when they will go off to be on the dinner plate," Spurlock explains.
The film also examines the language used in labelling chicken.
"[You] imagine these great little happy chickens clucking around outside, running around in the grass, like that's what free-range is, and it's not the case," he tells Chattopadhyay.
"Free-range in the United States means you give chickens access to outside. You open a door ... If they choose to go outside or not, it doesn't matter. Just by opening that door I can label them free-range."
As in the U.S., there's no legal definition of free-range in Canada.
Spurlock says cage-free also is a meaningless term as broiler chickens raised for food are never caged in the U.S. or Canada.
The same is true for hormone free. There are no added hormones in chicken in Canada or the United States.
Spurlock says his restaurant is based on telling people the truth about their food. The walls are covered with text about the life of chickens, chicken farmers, and information about labelling and marketing.
"The idea was how can I give you what you want and what you need simultaneously. What you want is a crispy chicken sandwich. You want a fried chicken sandwich," he says.
"What you need is an education."
Spurlock has been approached by a company about franchising the restaurant and says he's considering it.
Listen to the full conversation near the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Willow Smith.