Super Size Us

Even a non-carnivore like me is a little heartened by the success of the Hardee's Monster Thickburger, which The L.A. Times attributes to a backlash against the food police:

Hardee's has received fan mail from people grateful for the guilty pleasure of the Monster Thickburger (about the equivalent in calories of two Big Macs and a strawberry sundae at McDonald's) and offended that health watchdogs would want to take it away from them.

"While other restaurants were a bunch of Nancy-boys and became low-carb cowards in the face of moronic 'they made me fat' lawsuits, you did the AMERICAN thing," John Frensley, a 22-year-old college student from Texas, wrote in an e-mail, "by spitting in the face of lawyers, nutritionists and food-nazi types and offering a monument to Americanism."

Comments

[Ball of Confusion]

...the Center for Science in the Public Interest called it the "fast-food equivalent of a snuff film"

OK, now I have to try one.

[Warren]

Fat laden dead animal flesh, being peddled with porn! This pisses off all the right people. Huzzah for Hardees!

God, sometimes I turly LOVE this country.

[Eryk Boston]

Hmmm...a Darwin Award on a plate...yummy.

[Mark Borok]

Yeah, unhealthy attitudes towards food (and booze and sex) are as American as apple pie.

I fully appreciate the libertarian position on getting government out of the nanny business, but how does one rationalize objecting to non-gov't organizations trying to encourage people to do something that is objectively and undeniably in their own best interest?

[Isaac Bartram]

The Monster has been singled out - the Center for Science in the Public Interest called it the "fast-food equivalent of a snuff film"

Oh, an urban legend, huh?

[Todd Fletcher]

I don't know if the burger is any good, but after seeing the commercial for it, I'm in love.

http://img.slate.msn.com/media/15/Fist_girl_110k.asf

[Ken Shultz]

I think Carl's Jr. has been marketing to the we-want-twice-the-meat-and-twice-the-cheese-and-please-add-bacon-crowd for at least a couple of years now.

...They used to have a sandwich, as I recall, called the "Bacon Bacon Double Double".

[Isaac Bartram]

Mark

The objection is to non-gov't organizations that lobby for legislation or start lawsuits. If they stuck to "trying to encourage people to do something that is objectively and undeniably in their own best interest..." there would not be a problem. Then they'd just be tiresome.

Also there is the question of whether what they are condemning is actually "objectively and undeniably" harmful.

It is not necessarily the substance that is harmful but the dose.

[Matt Shultz]

Mark: Nothing wrong with a little friendly encouragement. Advertising, talkshow appearances, books ... that's all fine. Free speech. The problem with these self-righteous puritanical health-fascists is that, when their friendly encouragement fails to bare fruit, they resort to lawsuits and 'public health' regulations. First it happened with alcohol, then smoking, now food, and lets not forget that they won with drugs (the battle to make them illegal, if not the war to actually enforce it.) They take a similar attitude towards any media depiction of sex or violence (ban it!) that they do towards any activity they think they have to protect us poor, misguided cretins from. If they stopped at lecturing me, I'd stop at ignoring them. But they don't, so I won't.

Thus the pure pleasure that comes from doing something that really pisses people off ... like chowing down on a big greasy grass-fed carcass dripping with meat-juice and rotten milk while the vegan across the table turns green at the smell and looks at anything but you. Maybe I'm just an abnormally antagonistic bastard, but for me, that just makes it taste all the better.

[Stevo Darkly]

Warren, thanks for the link; those are great commercials! Except they don't particularly make me want to eat the burger.

Mark: I fully appreciate the libertarian position on getting government out of the nanny business, but how does one rationalize objecting to non-gov't organizations trying to encourage people to do something that is objectively and undeniably in their own best interest?

No objections to those organizations trying to pursuade. However, what's in a person's "own best interest" is not objective and therefore not "undeniable." Everyone has his/her own subjective hierarchy of values. Some guy may really love eating hamburgers and other sensual pleasures, and a very short-term perspective on life, and a fear of getting old, so he may prefer to die fat and young. If that's what he really wants. No harm in offering him information to help him make an informed decision, however, to make sure he knows what road he's on -- or in trying to persuade him to go for dying old, thin and healthy.

[Brian]

"a 22-year-old college student"

Enjoy that metabolism while it lasts. At a rapidly aging 34 if I just looked at one of these things I'd have to break out the fat pants.

Can't drink when you're old either. Hangovers last for days.

[Number 6]

Mark-Because they're sick of being harped at by self-righteous busy-bodies.

[Ball of Confusion]

but after seeing the commercial for it, I'm in love

With the burger or the girl? Or was the commercial successful enough in fusing your desires that you're not even sure which?

[Ayn_Randian]

I drove 45 minutes to the nearest Hardees' just to get one. I large-sized the meal and had a cookies and cream vanilla shake with it. It was everything I thought it could be.

And if CSPI really just advised people, that would be one thing, but these were the loonies who recommended a 1000-calorie diet because some people lived 10 years longer. Gack. Whatever happened to quality of life?

[joe]

You know what really pisses off "nanny staters?" Barnyard porn. Maybe that goat video in the internet pop up should be the next great monument to Americanism.

Isaac, yes, the dose. If one of these was cut into 7 pieces and consumed over the course of a week, you'd probably suffer few health effects.

[Pavel]

Exploiting the health police's own messages against them strikes me as pure marketing genius. I never understood why Death brand cigarettes weren't more popular.

In the immortal words of Bill Hicks,

More Snickers! More Coke! Mmrfm.

[speedwell]

I'm a strict vegetarian and I think these damn hamburgers are just peachy. Wouldn't have one myself, but if you feel like forcefeeding yourself that much crap, it's your privilege. I will even sit across the table from you with my bag lunch (I hate fast-food salad) and cheer you on.

That sounded much more belligerent and much less ironic than I meant. What I'm trying to say is that nobody is forcing Americans to eat the things. If you do buy one, there is no law saying you have to eat the entire thing. If it's cheaper to buy one huge burger and cut it in half than it is to buy two smaller burgers, that's fine too.

It's not as though the burgers are made out of endangered tropical birds with iridescent feathers or anything, anyway. Not that I would particularly care if they were. I'm a humanist, not an animalist.

[Mo]

Why is it tomboy and Nancy-boy? Shouldn't it be a nancy girl?

What I don't get is the blogospheric blue state/red state dynamic to this whole thing. We have Carl's Jr. here in CA and a double Six Dollar Burger, which I believe has more calories and a whole pound of beef. Is everything f'ing political or does the blogosphere desire to make itself irrelevant?

[Jose Ortega y Gasset]

Actually, Steve, the burger eaters are simply trying to help solve the social security dilemma. On this note, I prefer to live only so long as I am mentally fit. Being thin, old and demented strikes me as a rather lousy situation.

[Isaac Bartram]

No, joe, I was actually thinking that if someone ate one, say one day a month it would do no harm. I realize that few people do this but that's their problem.

There are people (my mother is one) who seem to think that eating one of these will damage one for life. She's still blaming her breast cancer at age 78 on the creamy pastries she enjoyed in her forties when she visited my brother who was living in England. And no, she is not obese, she has weighed about the same (well within the normal range) since she was 18 yrs old.

[Mikiel]

Pavel, it's because they're generally at least a dollar a pack more than already-premium-priced Marlboros. I'd smoke 'em if they were cheaper.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

You all keep your laws, your lawsuits, your opinions, and your hate'n off my oversized hot meat sandwiches.

Brian: I'm with you, man. Wait until you hit 35. They start turning alt rock stations you loved during the 80s-90s to Spanish radio. Time passes you by.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4390-2005Jan12.html?sub=new

[AJS]

Monsieur Nice Guy, Agreed on the age front (I'm 32) and I had to laugh at the radio comment. The venerable KLOL station here in Houston was just turned into a Spanish pop channel. Damn, where I am going to hear my Mandatory Metallica(tm) when I'm driving now?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

AJS:

Hopefully satellite radio will get cheaper, more accessible, and deliver us all from the current bullshit formats.

[Warren]

Mr. Nice Guy & AJS,
Anyday now, you're gonna tune that dial looking for those tunes you love, and your gonna find them. After 'rocking out' to two or three of the greatest songs ever recorded, you will realize that you are listening to the 'oldies' station.

Welcome to middle age

[Wild Pegasus]

Someone needs to stand up for snuff films.

- Josh, not me, though, too busy

[Peace Hippy]

Where is my one pounder, double tofu burger with extra soy cheese, organic onions, sprouts, cucumbers, special canola (and eggless)sauce and spelt bun? I'll take it with my soy shake and oven baked, salt free organic freedom fries!

...oops, wrong thread, I thought this was the veggie hut blog.

[joe]

"After 'rocking out' to two or three of the greatest songs ever recorded, you will realize that you are listening to the 'oldies' station."

Or worse, the dj on the alternative station will come and announce that you're listening to the "Leftover Lunch."

That's what they call playing The Cure, The Smiths, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, New Order, and even Nirvana or Dookie-era Green Day in my city.

[Toxic]

You know, they can persuade all they want. Fine. I won't try to ban them. But that doesn't mean that it is wrong for me to think of them every time I eat a thickburger just to piss them off.

They are good burgers. Never tried the monster though.

[Mo]

Yeah I heard Pumpkins, Nirvana and black album Metallica on the oldies station here in LA. I never thought I'd feel so old at the age of 26.

[Pro Libertate]

Almighty Zeus, we're talking about a hamburger. Maybe we've finally reached the stage of absolute wimpetude, after all. I've got quite ancient relatives who eat pork in their vegetables, lard in their cornbread, sausage gravy, biscuits, etc., etc., etc. Alive they are and pretty danged healthy. Of course, they are almost all fairly active, too, but my point is that nutrition science is about as confused as, say, psychology. Don't some Inuits still live almost exclusively on blubber and fish? Isn't blubber a wee bit less healthy than a hamburger? And to think humanity used to be tough enough (and hungry enough) to pick up something off the ground and eat it (Hmmm, bugs). Whoever or whatever our well-welcomed, soon-to-arrive overlords may be, I bet they won't be scared to eat a hamburger or equate it with killing somebody (well, except for the cow, I guess). Ye, gods.

Next thing you know, someone is going to tell me that I can't eat the whole pint of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey, either.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

"Oldies" indeed.

Several months ago I took my teenaged stepdaughter and a friend to a multi-generational rock festival. After suffering many hours of contemporary crap my band The Cure finally came on stage. My charges sat down and rolled their eyes. First, about 2/3 of the crowd left. I then saw a lady who looked to be at least 40 on the jumbotron swaying and singing along with the music. "Kids, it's time to go".

[Coarsetad]

A thickburger and shake everyday. Live to 45.
Whole bran and soymilk everyday. Live to 85.

Im fine with a little of both and checking out around 65.

[Pavel]

Mr. Nice, I find that hard to believe! I've been to several Cure shows in the past year. Their comeback and subsequent following among the kids is so enormous it's embarassing.

[Steve ExPat]

A better "monument to Americanism" would be the big fat clump of shit created by eating and (partially) digesting a Hardee's Monster Thickburger.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Pavel:

Granted, the festival went on all day in unbelievably hot weather, and The Cure was the last act. Most of the teeny-boppers there probably didn't even know who The Cure were.

They also loaded the front end of the set with "new" songs. I know it's narrow-minded, but dammit, I wanna hear the classics. I held on as long as I could to hear "In Between Days", but it didn't come up. Finally, as I was fighting the massive hoards into the subway entrance about a mile away, I heard the strains of "In Between Days" drifting from the stadium. Grrrr....

[Matt]

I am displeased to confirm my suspicion that the nearest Hardees to me is not even in my state.

And yes, there is a fair amount of pure joy in the simple concept of pissing off everyone who thinks they know what's good for me better than I do. Even if the burgers taste terrible, I'm going to enjoy the one I have next weekend as I pass through that part of Indiana which happens to contain the nearest Hardees restaurant. Buying and eating at least one as an act of defiance is a moral imperative, at this point.

The food cops are almost certainly right (at least in the broad strokes) about what foods promote a longer life and what foods...um...don't. I have no quibble with them on that score. Their error is in their _unadmitted assumption_ that longevity is the ultimate positive good. Perhaps for them it is...and if so, I wish them good luck with their plan to live forever, and will genuinely feel sorrow if they get killed in car crashes before they hit 50. But for a lot of people, myself included, trading off an enjoyable life for a longer one is a bad bargain. Ultimately it's a question of opinion and thus can't be answered objectively.

Given the 50+ mile round trip from my place of residence to the nearest source of this politically-incorrect burger, I doubt I'll be eating them frequently whether I like my first one or not, though.

But I would if I could.

[joe]

Matt, if eating that crap left you with exactly the same quality of life, but caused you to suddenly keel over at age 45, there would be a lot fewer people eating salads and going to the gym.

But it doesn't. Looking like crap, feeling like crap, and getting winded every 100 feet is not a good quality of life.

[Warren]

Looking like crap, feeling like crap, and getting winded every 100 feet is not a good quality of life.

And that is not the result of eating a monster thickburger either. It's ludicrous to suggest that eating delicious food doesn't increase the quality of life.

[Twba]

Matt, if eating that crap left you with exactly the same quality of life, but caused you to suddenly keel over at age 45, there would be a lot fewer people eating salads and going to the gym.

Gyms would be filled with 44 year old salad eaters.