On May 24, the world lost brilliant filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, creator of the legendary film Super Size Me. I met Spurlock in 2016 while I was working for the food consulting company, CCD Innovation. He contacted us to help with a sequel called Holy Chicken, Super Size Me 2. His idea was to document the entire development process from “ideation and product development” with us at CCD Innovation, to creating and launching his own fast food restaurant.

I have to say, working with Morgan Spurlock, though intimidating, was a lot of fun! He really was as authentic and enthusiastic in person as he appeared on camera. Watching Super Size Me, I always wondered how he got the candid conversations that he did. After meeting him, I understood. He was the sort of engaging, charming person who made you want to spill your guts and tell all.

During the filming at CCD Innovation, we didn’t know the entire plot of the finished film. More than that, we did not know how he would portray our work. Would consumer testing and ideation to come up with the “perfect food” be portrayed as helpful, or “part of the problem”? To his great credit (and our huge relief), our work was treated positively. Morgan saved his scorn for the poultry industry.

In our sessions together, Morgan repeatedly said he wanted to develop a chicken sandwich with a “healthy halo”. This is a marketing term he must have heard somewhere. It describes food that is not really healthy, but seems “better for you” because of certain “healthy” ingredients and product claims. Knowing his background with Super Size Me, I kept pushing him to develop something REALLY healthy, or at least investigate what it is about fast food that makes it unhealthy (used fryer oil? salt? saturated fat? lack of fiber? packaging?). (See my related blog about Obesity.)

But Morgan was adamant about exposing the “healthy halo” idea and the meaningless claims it is based on. Ultimately, in addition to being an indictment of the chicken industry, the film Holy Chicken and the pop-up restaurant it featured, was a spoof on all the meaningless claims the food industry uses to sway consumers. The chicken sandwich CCD Innovation developed for the film was delicious and had all the buzzwords of a good “healthy halo”. But I would not consider it health food. You can see my skepticism as the “laughing food scientist” in the first part of the film (watch the trailer).

Looking back, I think working with Morgan on Holy Chicken helped me realize the need for Yumbini. What really is healthy food? And what can we create that is fast and easy to make, tastes good, and is not too expensive? Not long after filming with Morgan Spurlock, I came up with the idea for Yumbini and left CCD Innovation in 2018 to focus more time on beans and rice.

There was a second day job and a pandemic in the middle, but finally in 2022, I launched Yumbini quick beans and rice. If I could talk to Morgan Spurlock today, I hope he would approve. Quick, healthy, yummy meals for everyone, not supersized, and no chicken. Just delicious bean and rice meals ready in 6 minutes. The real deal.