Keto Diet Documentary: What 600 Burgers Did to One Doctor

A fit doctor, Dr. Michael Brandon, ate 600 fast-food burger patties in 30 days on camera with bloodwork before, during and after, and that single-subject test is what our keto diet documentary, The Keto Project, is built on. Ours puts one body through a fixed protocol with repeated panels, brain scans, HRV and a fitness combine, and shows the numbers as they land, with the day-30 results kept for the film.

What happened when a fit doctor ate 600 burgers in 30 days?

A fit doctor ate 600 burger patties in 30 days, on camera, with blood drawn before, during and after — and the question a browsing viewer wants answered is what happened to his body. That month is the spine of our keto diet documentary, The Keto Project. The film shows the protocol without softening it: 20 Burger King patties a day, no bun, no condiments, water only, for 30 straight days, bought 140 patties at a time on a weekly drive-through run. Dr. Michael Brandon — Dr. Mike — was the subject. I shot it, I paid for the panels, and I was in the room for most of it.

The film shows the trouble arriving early and on schedule. Dr. Mike wrote on Day 14, at the second fitness retest, that his best long jump was an inch shorter than his worst baseline attempt of 8’5″, and his mile about 20 seconds slower. On Day 21 he wrote that he had carried a headache for six hours and that four people in an hour told him he looked like an albino zombie. That is a man reading his own vitals out loud while the camera runs.

The day-30 panels are in the film and nowhere else, including here. That is the entire stakes of watching it.

Why does LDL climb in lean people, and did we settle it?

The lipid question follows keto everywhere, and it followed us into the room every time Dr. Mike rolled up a sleeve. I did not walk into the month with an answer, and I did not walk out with one.

Be generous about the research on both sides, because both sides are serious. The evidence says Budoff’s KETO-CTA work found coronary plaque in metabolically healthy people with carbohydrate-restriction-induced LDL-C was not greater than a matched cohort with 149 mg/dL lower average LDL-C, and that paper’s limits are blunt: small, selected, cross-sectional, unable to prove what decades of high LDL do. The evidence also says a meta-analysis of randomised trials in 1,379 participants found LDL rose substantially on low-carb diets in people of normal body weight but not in people with a high BMI. The other side is not fringe either: an European Atherosclerosis Society consensus panel concluded LDL causes atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, with risk proportional to how much and how long.

Our film does not settle that argument. It shows what one set of panels did in one man on a fixed protocol, in the order the results arrived. We have a page on what a rising panel on keto actually means, and it ends in the same honest place: numbers in a person, not a slogan.

Why did we strip out the bun, the condiments and the fries?

Because much of what is labelled keto is a package, not a food, and I did not want the package anywhere near the experiment. A fixed test needs one variable, and a bun with sugar in it is a second one.

The evidence says the packaging matters on its own. In a 14-day inpatient randomised crossover trial of 20 adults, people ate about 500 kcal a day more on an ultra-processed diet and gained 0.9 kg, while losing 0.9 kg on the unprocessed one — 20 people, two weeks, a metabolic ward, mechanism still unexplained. In my experience that is the most useful thing a skeptic can hold onto: the aisle marked for your diet is marketing, and nothing in it is a magic pill.

So our test went the other way. We stripped out the sugar and the seed oils by removing the bun, the condiments and the fries — the book notes a typical fast-food bun carries up to 9 grams of sugar — and left one food and water. I wrote about that decision in the piece on Super Size Me.

What makes a one-subject keto diet documentary different from a panel film?

A one-subject film is different because nobody can edit the body’s answer. A panel of experts gives you claims you can weigh; a fixed 30-day protocol on one person with repeated testing gives you a result that arrives whether or not anyone wanted it. The Keto Project runs 1 hour 49 minutes, and most of it is one man’s month.

Here is the test, as it was built before Day 1. The book sets out four testing points — before the burgers, after the burgers, after a reset month, and after a month of grass-finished beef, with hormone, cardiometabolic, liver, thyroid, kidney and inflammatory panels, brain scans, autonomic and HRV testing, a 3D body scan and a fitness combine repeated at baseline, Day 14 and Day 29. The burger was chosen blind, not by a brand deal: the panel scored grass-fed 46 points, Burger King 34, Wendy’s 21.5 and McDonald’s 17, so the fast-food winner became the food of the month.

We also tried to analyse the patties and failed. Every lab either refused or quoted a minimum of $12,000, so it never happened. Let me rephrase that: the hole in our own data is on screen, which is the only way a test film should handle a hole.

What should I watch for, and in what order does it land?

Watch it for the order the numbers arrive in, because that order is the story. Here is what I would keep an eye on as the month runs.

• The mechanism. The physiology is shown on a person rather than drawn on a whiteboard, and if you want the thinking behind the food choice, read what the experiment tested about keto versus carnivore. The evidence says low-carb diets raised type 2 diabetes remission rates at six months across 23 randomised trials and 1,357 participants, with the benefit fading by 12 months.
• The Day 14 retest. The combine comes back around at the midpoint, and the jump and the mile tell on him before any lab does.
• The labs and the scans. The panels, the HRV, the brain scans and the body scan all belong to Dr. Mike, and you watch each number land when he got it, not when it would have been convenient.
• The experts who disagree. They disagree on camera, and we left it in. You can see who argued what in the rundown of every expert in the film.
• The log before the film. Read 600 Burgers in 30 Days, the official book of the movie, which prints Dr. Mike’s daily journal.

Individual results vary, and one trained physician eating one fast-food patty for a month is exactly one data point — a loud one, a measured one, but one.

What is the controversy, and what would I have liked to see more of?

The controversy is simple to state and hard to live with: lean, healthy people often see LDL climb on a ketogenic diet, and the field does not agree on what that means for them.

What would I have liked more of in my own film? Longer follow-up, because 30 days shows adaptation and strain but cannot show a decade. More than one subject. And numbers for the food itself, the one thing money stopped us getting. The film opens with cards on the scale of the obesity problem and the size of the weight-loss industry; those are the film’s own cards, not cited statistics, and I would rather be judged on the panels.

In my experience what survives all of this is the method, not the diet. During the month I ran a small test on myself, with blood ketones manipulated down to 0.1 mmol/L and then 12 grams of exogenous ketones and a two-and-a-half-hour wait, which moved my ketones up by 0.7 in the film at 01:34:56 — one person, one day, no conclusion beyond my own finger pricks. If you aren’t testing, you’re guessing.

Frequently asked questions

No, it is not on Netflix. The Keto Project is on Amazon Prime Video to rent or buy, rated 13+, directed and produced by Jim Goetz, and released in 2025 following a red-carpet premiere in Red Bank, New Jersey on May 8, 2025. Prime Video is the only place we point people to.

Dr. Michael Brandon, DC, ate every patty. I had planned to do it myself, and he insisted on being the test subject instead, so I documented it and ran the testing side. Every lab panel, brain scan, HRV reading, body scan and fitness result from that month is his, not mine.

No, the film stands on its own. The book is the prequel and the official book of the movie, and it prints Dr. Mike’s day-by-day journal in his own words, which the film can only sample. Readers who want the log before the footage usually read first, then watch.

No. The book is explicit that it is not an attack on fast food or on any restaurant. Burger King neither approved nor denied the use of its hamburgers, and every single patty in the 30 days was bought and paid for at retail, like any other customer’s order.

The book’s own disclaimer says no: it is for education and entertainment, Dr. Mike’s month was done under observation for a film, and readers should not try it themselves. It was built as a measured stress test with panels and monitoring behind it, not as a diet anybody was recommending.

The Bottom Line

Here is the honest answer for a skeptic with an evening to spend. If you want the lipid fight on its own terms, open the papers above and argue with them. If you want to know what happens to a healthy body when the food is fixed, the dose is fixed and the blood is drawn on a schedule, watch The Keto Project, to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video. Dr. Mike’s final panels are in the last act, and I am not spoiling them.

If you would rather have the log first, start with 600 Burgers in 30 Days, the prequel book, and read the journal day by day before you watch him live it. We make these out of Functionised Productions LLC, 8 Merchants Way, Colts Neck Township, New Jersey — a small shop that would rather measure one man properly than interview forty. What will you do with it?

Sources

• Carbohydrate Restriction-Induced Elevations in LDL-Cholesterol and Atherosclerosis: The KETO Trial (JACC: Advances)
• Increased LDL cholesterol on a low-carbohydrate diet in adults with normal but not high body weight: a meta-analysis (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition)
• Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain (Cell Metabolism)
• Low-density lipoproteins cause atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease — European Atherosclerosis Society Consensus Panel (PubMed)
• Efficacy and safety of low and very low carbohydrate diets for type 2 diabetes remission: systematic review and meta-analysis (PubMed)