Super Size Me brought the nutrition issue into public debate at the very moment when the American courts, in the Pelman case, were declining to rule on a chain's liability for its customers' obesity.
Its significance is that of a media object, not of evidence: one man, thirty days, no control group. It nonetheless durably associated the brand with a public health issue — and made visible, by contrast, the figure of Don Gorske, who appeared in the film, and who has eaten a Big Mac a day since the 1970s with no measurable effect on his health.