I get the comparison every time I describe the film, and I don’t fight it. A guy eats fast food every day for a month while a camera watches. Morgan Spurlock did it in 2004 with Super Size Me and it became one of the most-seen documentaries ever made. Twenty years later I did it with Dr. Mike and 600 burgers. Same stunt. The question underneath it is the opposite one, and that’s the whole reason I made the film.
What Super Size Me asked
Spurlock’s premise was simple: eat only McDonald’s for thirty days, say yes every time they offer to super-size it, and see what happens. He ate the burgers, the buns, the fries, the sodas, the shakes, the desserts. His doctors watched his weight, his liver and his mood go the wrong way, and the film became shorthand for “fast food will wreck you.”
The conclusion the audience took home was about fast food as a category. The burger, the bun, the fries and the soda were one thing, and that thing was bad for you. Nobody separated the parts, because the film wasn’t designed to.
What The Keto Project asked
Our question was: which part? Take the same fast-food counter, the same beef, the same month. Now remove the bun, the fries, the soda and the dessert, keep the meat and the cheese, and eat far more of it than Spurlock ever did: twenty burgers a day, 600 in thirty days. If the damage in Super Size Me came from “fast food,” this should be worse. If it came from the sugar and the starch around the meat, this should look very different.
That’s not a gotcha; it’s a control. Spurlock changed everything at once. We tried to change one thing. I’ve never claimed our film is the better one; his changed the culture and ours is a small independent documentary from New Jersey. But ours asks the question his left open.
The other differences that matter
The subject
Spurlock was a healthy guy, but he was a filmmaker doing a bit. Dr. Michael Brandon is a chiropractic physician and a serious athlete who understood the physiology before he agreed to it, kept training through the month, and read his own labs. He’s not a stand-in for the average person; he’s a best case, and we say so. That cuts both ways, which the film is honest about.
The measurement
Super Size Me had doctors checking in. We drew a full blood panel before day one, every week, and after day thirty, and had a physician read each one before the next week started. The list of what we tracked is in what happened to Dr. Mike’s bloodwork. Weekly panels are the difference between a story and a dataset.
The experts
Spurlock’s film had his physicians and a lot of vox-pop. Ours has people who’ve built careers on this argument, on both sides of it: Dr. Dom D’Agostino on ketone metabolism, Dr. Shawn Baker on carnivore, Dr. Richard Shaker on what the clinical markers mean, Ron McKeefery and Antonio Tarver Jr on what a body can do on it. The full roster is in every expert in The Keto Project.
The frame
Super Size Me was made in a world where fat was the enemy. Ours was made in a world where a lot of people now think sugar and seed oils are, and where a meat-based diet has gone from fringe to a movement. Same counter, different decade, different argument. Our early post on the truth of fast-food diets was where I first worked this out in writing.
The stakes
Spurlock had a studio-sized audience waiting and a culture primed for the message. We had a self-funded shoot, a distributor that placed us on Amazon as a rental, and a subject who kept seeing patients between burgers. That changes the film you make. You can’t afford to be wrong, so you measure more. You can’t afford a big crew, so you’re in the car with Mike at the drive-through. Some of the best material in the film exists because we didn’t have the money to stage anything.
The ending
Spurlock’s ending was a foregone conclusion by the third week, and the film knew it. Ours wasn’t, and the film knows that too. The final panel was read on camera by people who had bet against each other, and I hadn’t seen the numbers before they did. Whatever you think of the diet argument, that’s a different kind of ending than a warning label.
What the two films agree on
More than you’d think. Both say the food industry is not on your side. Both say you should know what’s in the thing you’re eating. Both were made by someone willing to put a body on the line to find out. And both, if you look past the stunt, are really about how little most of us know about what our own bloodwork is doing week to week.
The criticisms, and where they land
Super Size Me took criticism later for how it was made and what was left out. I’m sure ours will take its share, and some of it will be fair. One person, thirty days, is a case study, not a trial; I say that in the film and in every post on this site. What I’ll defend is the method: we measured often, we let a clinician who didn’t share the carnivore view read the panels, and we didn’t cut the parts where the experts disagreed. If you want to argue with the film, the numbers are on screen to argue with.
Two months, side by side
- Subject: a filmmaker (Super Size Me) versus a physician and athlete (The Keto Project).
- Food: every item on the menu, super-sized when offered, versus beef and cheese only, no bun, fries, soda or dessert.
- Volume: three meals a day versus twenty burgers a day, 600 total.
- Measurement: periodic doctor visits versus a full panel before, weekly, and after, each read by a physician.
- Training: minimal, by design, versus continued training under a strength coach.
- Experts: the subject’s own doctors versus researchers, clinicians and athletes who disagreed with each other going in.
- Frame: fat and calories are the enemy (2004) versus sugar, starch and processing might be (2025).
I’m not listing these to score points. They’re the reasons the two films can reach different places while sitting at the same counter.
Which should you watch first?
Watch Spurlock first. It’s the reason the genre exists and you’ll understand what we were answering. Then watch ours and decide whether the question he asked, “what does fast food do to you,” was ever the right question, or whether it was always “which part of it.”
One more thing: if you’ve only ever seen clips of either film, watch them whole. Both are built to be argued with, and the argument only works if you’ve seen the whole case.
Where the two films leave you
Super Size Me ends with a warning. The Keto Project ends with a set of lab results and a room full of experts reacting to them. I’m not going to tell you what they saw. That last act is what the film is for.
Same counter, opposite question, a very different ending. Watch The Keto Project on Amazon, rent $2.99 or buy $9.99.
Frequently asked questions
Is The Keto Project like Super Size Me?
Same setup, opposite question. Super Size Me tested a month of full fast-food meals. The Keto Project kept only the beef and cheese, removed the bun, fries and soda, ate 600 burgers in 30 days and drew blood weekly.
How many burgers did Dr. Mike eat?
600 fast-food burgers in 30 days, twenty a day, without buns, fries, soda or dessert.
Is The Keto Project a scientific study?
No. It is a documented single-person case study with weekly physician-reviewed blood panels, not a clinical trial, and the film says so.
The whole experiment is in the film. 600 burgers, 30 days, every blood test — and the ending we never post.
Watch The Keto Project on Amazon