In Morgan Spurlock’s film Supersize Me, Spurlock eats McDonald’s food every day for an entire month before having to stop when his health becomes endangered. Clearly, Mr. Spurlock and his digestive system did not have the same commitment to greasy food as CHS’s very own senior Daniel Friedman, who has been eating McDonald’s nearly everyday since about the age of 6.
Whenever the time may come to fill his McDiction, Friedman takes the walk from his home to McDonald’s (about half the length of what a junior parking on Tuckerman would have to walk to his first period class) nods to the cashier, swipes his Arch Card and receives his usual order of two large fires and a medium coke.
According to Friedman, his appetite for fries goes back to his first Happy Meal.
“I asked my mom if I could substitute the hamburger for another bag of small fries,” Friedman said.
From then on, his consumption of fries has evolved with his growing appetite. Friedman has worked his way up from a daily two small fries to one pre-Spurlock supersize fry, then to one large and one medium, until finally his appetite reached a notorious two larges.
At first glance, one could find it nearly impossible for six-foot, 135-pound Daniel Friedman to be scarfing down a McDonald’s order that totals 1,210 calories and 50 grams of fat almost every day, but it may have to do with his overall diet (or a superhuman metabolism). As a child Friedman decided not to eat meat according to the logic, “If I eat the chicken, it can’t run around on the farm,” and to this day he lives by his word.
The only time he has eaten outside of his McDonald’s fries-coke dynamic was when he was “double doggy dared” to eat a McNugget at the age of 8.
Due to the ensuing nausea, Friedman has since stuck to his guns. Other than fries, Friedman only eats meals that are “white or yellow”: white pizza, corn, plain pasta or rice and avoids sauces and condiments like they are the plague. He does make an occasional exception for the Wendy’s chocolate frosty that he so dearly loves to dip his fries in.
According to Friedman, in order to keep his diet the way it is he must drink ample amounts of protein rich banana flavored muscle milk and take daily B12 and Omega-3 supplements.
Friedman’s McDiction has become normal to his close family and friends. His Arch Card, the McDonald’s gift card, is refilled bi-weekly by his mom and grandma to keep his tab paid, and he even took his current girlfriend on a “McDate” to his favorite restaurant their first time out.
According to Friedman, he has never really gone long enough without french fries to experience any sort of withdrawal that people associate with most addictions. And he does not see an immediate end to his obsession in the near future.
“In my mind I think I’ll change one day,” Friedman said. “But only if a doctor eventually told me to.”