Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy
Mo Gilligan hosts an entertaining Netflix exposé about the fried chicken industry that does manage to genuinely shock.
Super-sizing: Flavour specialist Mark Schatzker with Mo Gilligan
Photo courtesy of Netflix.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
It would be pat to say that that we’ve seen this kind of Netflix exposé before, that particular kind of celebrity challenge made at the expense of a beloved global brand. And while Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy scratches in the same boneyard as Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (2004) – in which Spurlock subsisted on a diet of McDonald’s food for thirty days – Mo Gilligan’s exposé has buckets of charm. The stand-up comedian from South London is an engaging figure who has had a life-long love affair with fried chicken and sets himself a challenge of consuming 84 meals of it in a four-week period. What could go wrong?
Gilligan, who hosted his own show on Channel 4, aims to get behind the appeal of fried chicken and its continuing impact in today’s cash-strapped world as KFC announces it will be opening a further 500 restaurants in the UK. But it’s not just Colonel Sanders under fire here, as Gilligan cruises the streets of London and points out such local rivals as DFC, MFC, PFC, CFC and KHF. WTF! The appeal of the crispy chicken is essentially down to its affordability and to its flavour, two virtues that Gilligan excavates with good-natured bonhomie, even as his own health declines during the making of the film. His doctor refuses to reveal the full dangers of his undertaking, as she realises that he probably wouldn’t embark on the project if he knew, and the film wouldn’t get made. As it is, the comedian interviews a host of experts across the US, from Houston to Delaware, as his own energy level deteriorates on camera. What he learns is the secrecy surrounding the ingredients of the product and the damage to local communities as well as to the finger-licking customers – and, of course, to the creatures themselves, which live and die in hideously inhumane conditions.
The irony of this cherished food source is that chicken no longer tastes like chicken, due to the forced feeding of the birds, a process that produces a giant bird from a mangy little chick in just six weeks. It’s then injected with indescribable chemicals in order to make it taste delicious and irresistible to the punter. Gilligan immediately starts suffering from unseemly amounts of gas, “bubble guts” and punishing lethargy as he hauls his considerable frame across America in search of increasingly worrisome facts.
We learn that chicken is the most farmed land animal on earth. That seventy-eight billion chickens are slaughtered annually. That the industry is worth a quarter of a trillion dollars – and is doing untold damage to the planet, our rivers and to our soil. Much of this is hard to compute, so it’s the relatable details that stand out: how children, refugees and undocumented workers are exploited in the factories, denied bathroom breaks so that they are forced to wear diapers. How the workers are exposed to toxic chemics and lose the use of their hands and fingers. How the birds themselves become deformed before their premature demise, hence their nickname ‘Frankenchickens’. And the secret stuff they inject into the birds is the same chemical used to lubricate condoms.
But if the planet and the birds suffer from the industry, so does the customer. In no-go areas of cities known as ‘food deserts’, low-income families subsist on this fast food so that in today’s world more children are actually obese than are going hungry. The industry is expanding so fast that there are now 147 countries that host KFC outlets. And if you eat enough of the stuff – as Mr Gilligan learns to his cost – it will destroy your guts, your brain and your sleep. In fact, in the US alone one person dies every four minutes from diseases related to eating processed food.
To give him his due, Gilligan completed his ordeal – sometimes reduced to crying on camera – and admits that he is part of the problem, having in the past advertised Nando’s and McDonald’s. There is so much money sloshing around that celebrities have become fair game, as have the influencers on TikTok prancing around to inspiring music. Many of the subjects refused to cooperate with the film, although the mother of one Chicago resident put it plainly: “you are what you eat.” That then would explain your high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and shortened life expectancy.
Featuring Mo Gilligan, Kate Hardcastle, Enam Abood, Mark Schatzker, Laura Schmidt, Silke Stevens, Adrian Miller, Ashley Gearhardt, Monique, Quintonele, Philip Lymbery, Alice Driver, Magoly Licolli.
Dir Liana Stewart, Creative Dir Louis Theroux, Pro Ellie Sabine-Singh, Screenplay Mo Gilligan, Ph Adam Hobbs, Will Pugh, Geoffrey Sentamu and Stefan Wiesen, Ed Charlie Hawryliw and Gwyn Jones, Music Amy Mcknight.
Mindhouse Productions-Netflix.
98 mins. UK. 2026. UK and US Rel: 5 August 2026. Cert. 15.
