A “Super-Sized” guest speaker paid a visit to ASU’s Tempe campus on Tuesday night.

Morgan Spurlock, director of the Oscar-nominated docudrama “Super Size Me,” discussed the persisting need in America for food-nutrition education with an audience of more than 200 people in the Ventana Ballroom of the Memorial Union.

In his 2004 film, Spurlock t racked the negative social and personal health effects of the fast-food industry in the U.S. by eating a diet of exclusively McDonald’s food for 30 days. He told students that statistically less than 1 percent of fast-food patrons make a “healthy choice” when ordering.

“You don’t go there for the salads,” he said. “You go for the ‘crack fries.’ You go there for the burgers. You go there for the food that insatiates you, that makes you feel good, [but makes you] fall asleep 5 minutes after eating it.”

Spurlock’s visit was sponsored by ASU’s Undergraduate Student Government as part of its effort to promote healthy diets and lifestyles on campus, said USG vice president of services Terra Ganem.

Although Ganem said she doesn’t expect college students to cook themselves three meals a day, college-age people can still make educated choices about what they put in their bodies.

“At least if we’re going to go eat [at a fast-food restaurant], we can at least choose the healthier options” provided and keep a balanced diet, she said.

Ganem, a nonprofit leadership senior, said she felt Spurlock’s health messages were relevant to college students, even though “Super Size Me” was released almost five years ago. The documentary’s shocking themes are still important in addressing America’s fast-food-saturated culture, she said.

“Documentaries don’t come along every day where people put their [lives] on the line to prove the dangers of the fast-food industry,” she said.

Some people who attended Tuesday’s lecture said they felt Spurlock’s message carried more weight with the mostly college-age audience because of his reputation and the fame of “Super Size Me.”

Renai Rodriguez, an art senior, said Spurlock was a good choice of speaker for advocating affordable, healthy eating habits on campus because he is a more entertaining speaker than most health experts.

“No one’s going to come to see a WebMD doctor speak,” she said.

Rodriguez said restaurants like Engrained in the Memorial Uni on were a step in the right direction toward campus nutrition, but she still expressed concern over the lack of inexpensive, vegetarian options at ASU.

Secondary education senior Erin Haleen agreed that Spurlock’s visit was important for ASU because “Super Size Me” addresses the need for food health awareness in a humorous, identifiable way. Haleen said the movie also dealt with the issue of nutrition at American schools, which he felt was a problem on campuses across the country.

“School lunch programs give contracts out to highest bidder, making us have obese children,” he said. “Granted, some other health experts might have used more facts [to prove their point], but they won’t have the name [crowd] recognition.”

Spurlock said he thought the lack of health education, both regarding food and physical-education programs, is still a big problem in American schools.

Although health-consciousness should be important to everyone, Spurlock said food nutrition is especially important in college, when personal responsibility takes hold and permanent lifestyle habits are built. He said college students should realize that whether they put on “the freshman 10 — or, for some of my friends, it was the freshman 20 —” is completely within their control.

“Most students don’t realize that, especially on the college campus, what food you have to buy and eat is based off your tuition money,” he said. “If you don’t like it, you have the strength to change things at the institutional level. You can form together and change what they serve.”

Reach the reporter at trabens@asu.edu.