Huge Food: The Residual Effect of Gluttonous Ruin
At this point in time, we are confronted with the Claim Jumperization of American restaurant portioning. It is then no wonder that people make fun of the miniscule portions of haute cuisine, not realizing they are getting six three-ounce portions of varied creations, instead of one 48 foot obelisk of ribs, served on a plate that could be mistaken for the Arecibo telescope.
For those who aren't familiar with the mastodonic portions of Claim Jumper, they are the new barometer for Huge Food. Average plates weigh in at a scale-shattering 3-4 pounds, and that's just the appetizer.
This is called, appropriately enough, The Widowmaker.
This is one thing I will call uniquely American. Like the internet, phone, and everything else in God's field of omniscience, we are the supreme leader in innovation, and Huge Food is here to conquer the world, or at least the industrial world. While in other parts of the world people are scampering around in the arid climate, scraping their hands and knees on dead ground for a dung beetle or poisonous weed to chew on, we here in the Land of Gluttonous Indulgence complain if the side bucket of ranch dressing wasn't filled to the rim.
Behold vast arrays of Infinite Justice Whole Fried Onion with distilled La Brea Tar-Honey dipping sauce. Marvel at Capt'n Pike's Whole Boneless Buffalo Chicken with side troughs of fractional Roquefort bleu cheese bowling balls. These are the things we have come to expect from our dining out experience.
Gradient Approximation is a physical theory dealing with the angular spin, and its correlation of magnetic fields on the atomic level. I also use the term Theory of Gradient Approximation to describe attitude shift, such that if you have an agreed upon Truth that you want to change, you can slowly pull people over by nudging the absurd conclusion further away from the accepted norm. For instance, if people are used to paying 99 cents for a gallon of gas, the best way to get them to accept paying $1.50 is to make the gas $2.50 for the summer. Then, when 'peak driving season' comes to an end, the price goes back down to $1.50, people forget they used to pay 99 cents, and gladly accept the new, lower-threshold of gas prices. Sounds familiar, right? It's also the same principle governing the economics behind budgeting $50 for a pair of jeans, then seeing all the incremental upgrades at Bloomingdales. With each successive jean you see a slightly higher price, until you talk yourself into buying the $350 pair of Chip and Pepper's because the riveting and stiching are so ginchy.
The same is true for almost everything else in life. In this case, Gradient Approximation has reversed itself. People demand more bang (or lard, trans-fat, lad na, urchin) for their dollar, or in this case, the 99 cent menu at fast food restaurants. 99 cents can get you a whole baked potato with all the free toppings you can balance on top. 99 cents can get you a junior version of the fully-loaded gargantuan burger. The only thing 99 cents cannot get you is a gallon of gas or movie ticket.
This viscious circle started in the early 80's, given the respectless and accurate title 'Decade of Greed.' Product tie-ins with movie promotions, product placement, fierce competition and bad blood, bred an all-out war between fast food companies that trickled over to restaurant chains.
It may, indeed, have its genesis in the Coke-Pepsi battle, where the only other hostility rivaling that long standing feud would have been between the US and USSR. Their version of the Cuban Missile Crisis manifested itself in two ways: first, both released clothing lines and second, Pepsi snatched up fast food restaurants like they were playing jacks, on five-sees.
Whether or not you think Coke Clothes or Pepsi Apparel was a dumb idea or not, it was the singular earmark of the mid-eighties until the rumor that wearing a Coke shirt meant you were looking for gay sex killed the fad almost overnight. It was most likely started by a Pepsi employee. On the second note, by Pepsi funding Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell, allowed those chains to offer more food at less cost. McDonalds, which has always had a long-standing affair with Coke, retaliated by lowering the cost of its already human-inedible industrial grade beef by-product to lows that even an unemployed Somali could afford.
Then the expansion began. The Soviet Union Crumbled and, like the AIDS virus, with no defenses to fend it off, both McDonalds and Pizza Hut infected Moskba. For 600 rubles you could wait hours for a Big Mac. Expedient, by Russian standards.
Back here in the States, it was clear the only way to win the hearts and minds of the consuming public wasn't to offer better food, just gobs more of it. 2 for $2 Tuesdays came in vogue, and that's not referring to the local Irish-Mexican cantina that leverages its name to attract St. Patrick's day and Cinco de Mayo crowds, that's talking about McDonald's cheeseburgers and Egg McMuffins. Slowly, and some say insidiously, fast food joints with an undeniable lower-income family in its crosshairs, started to market Huge Food at low prices to that very audience.
Not that college educated people don't eat at fast food places. In fact, the majority of college students recovering from a weekend bender of Sports-Bar hopping, Strip Jointing, Face-Down-in-the-Quad-From-Ice-Shot-Vodka-Bonging and Pretending-To-Be-Refined-Wine-Tasting, need some sort of fatty bulk to absorb the alcoholic poison racing around their cardiovascular system faster than a tricked-out Lancer Evolution from Fast and the Furious IV, Tokyo Drift II: Tokyo Drifter (filmed at the same time as Fast and the Furious V: Bangkok Rickshaw Jam)
Whether or not fast food destroys the fat lives of rednecks and their loved ones is beyond the scope of this article. It merely serves as the example of how that marketing mentality overflowed into the mainstream mall-restaurants the rest of us enjoy (and middle class rednecks, as well).
Pre-1980s, restaurant chains were few and far between, having started from one-off local restaurants that enjoyed the dubious expansion of culinary manifest destiny, spurred on by a symbiotic relationship with the eating public wanting more varied and tasty meals of greater quantity at Depression-Era prices. This had a positive, and simultaneously pernicious effect. Applying what I said above about reverse Gradient Approximation, the more we ate out, the more we wanted, the more they shoveled our way...like fueling a coal fired steam engine.
A basket of bread and a couple pats of butter were no longer adequate, we now demand three types of bread: banana, poppy seed cumin rolls, parmesan crisp, pats of real butter, semi-soft room temperature butter, unsalted tin, cup of margarine, honey butter and apple-mango chutney. Now bread products don't even cut it as middle tier amuse bouche. The latest wave of altered breadbasket items are bite sized samosas, riblets, Navajo fry-bread, saltlick statuettes of Lot's wife, the list is endless.
And who can finish all that food? Andre the Giant? He's dead. The days of heroes and giants have dissolved into the mist of failed memory. The only one capable of this pointless feat is Takeru Kobayashi. As we demand larger portions for less money, we invariably assist in the evolution to the absurd natural conclusion of our mislaid wishes: Claim Jumper.
All other concerns aside, methamphetamine...Jihadist terrorism...gout, there is a very real residual erosion of our health due to overconsumption. Not erosion in terms of weight -that skyrockets- but erosion in overall wellness of the population. Claim Jumper has come to represent the silly implications of unfettered demands to be fed enormous quantities of food.
I'm scapegoating Claim Jumper because of the complete absurdity of their portion size. Bennigan's, Ruby Tuesday, Olive Garden [ed note: blech], Buca di Beppo, Maggiano's are all guilty of overfeeding us. A single plate of Six Pound Meatloaf Taco Salad Pasta Party could feed an African village of 1000...which I think happened last year in a well orchestrated press junket.
Mons Olympus of Hot Wings Saves Senegalese Population - The National Republican Shrill Voice.
Bucket of Ahi Ginger Burritos the Size of Ayres Rock lands on African Village in Senegal, Saves 1000 From Starvation, Kills 1,000,000 From Impact. - World Village Democatic Screamer.
American Conspiracy to Inflict Destructive Influence on Defenseless Starving Blacks in a Racist Plot to Destroy and Possibly Fatten Poor Africans Confirmed - Federal Guardian Independent Foreign Press
Ok, so a million people will have a million different stories, I can't control them all. The fact is, while starvation inflicts its ugly fangs on the rest of the developing world, we enjoy unrestrained access to every consumable good on the planet.
If the trend doesn't stave itself, we will soon be confronted with a public health crisis of immeasurable consequences. The mere fact that a person's waistline couldn't be gauged with a standard tape measure for starters. If you don't care about the fattening of Middle America, think about the financial burden with which it will saddle us. Childhood obiesety immediately sets up that person for a lifetime of health problems, and since Huge Food is targeted at lower-income earners, guess who will be supplementing that bill when Dad loses his job at the marital prosthetics warehouse and subsequently his insurance. Fat dad, two fat boys and their fat daughter will all be sucking -a lot- off of welfare and foodstamps. Fat mom has already been doing that since the divorce, and her tax supplemented rehab at the methadone clinic has already cost each taxpayer so much, they could have had their own heroin addiction for years if they had wanted. At least she was thin while she was using.
"Aww, but Steve, it's not the restaurant industry's fault. It's the people's fault for not being able to control their uncontrollable desires." True, true. But I didn't ask for Huge Food, and when confronted with a pile of fries the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro, my guilty Jewish upbringing comes into play, and I feel compelled to finish what is put before me, or at least take it in a doggy bag (hereafter referred to as horsie bag).
You see, it is because there are starving people in Africa dodging huge bags of fatal food falling from the sky that I -and many others- force ourselves to eat much more than we otherwise would have. Food that can be seen, must be eaten.
There are also cultural influences at play here. In many cultures, it is vilely offensive to leave food on the plate, it means you either didn't like the food, or you are dying of cancer. They would rather eat until their stomachs explode all over the rest of the table rather than suffer the shame of wasting food. Even then, if your stomach explodes all over your guests, you've just wasted your food, but it might be interpreted as a very generous act.
What does this all mean? Nothing. The trend is irreversible. We will get fatter as a nation and revert back to obiesety becoming a status symbol. The tribal King being the largest, because he has the most. All parts of America are being crushed by the epidemic of obiesety (myself included). As portion size continues to grow unchecked, and we lead increasingly sedintary lifestyles stuck in front of a TV or behind a joystick (or for some other outcasts, on top of one), there will be nothing to combat the assimilation of the new attitude that fat is acceptable.
Never trust our government to do anything except maintain a military and levy taxes, so there is no reason another nutritional guideline or federal sponsored program will help us in the least. Pamphlets the fed publishes are as interesting as congressional budget reports: they are unintelligible and excrutiatingly dull. Public service announcements have as much effect on changing someone's mind as a religious bumper sticker.
But advertising, slick, well produced advertising soundtracked with hip-hop and big boobs will sell burgers. Lots of burgers. The general public cannot compete with the onslaught of images of chipper cooks tapping away with their stainless steel tongs like a barbershop quartet: "I want my babyback babyback babyback" while some big-assed ho is swinging her crack in the camera. Or near hardcore-lesbian hot tub commercials that make even Coors look appealing.
It has to start in the home. It can only be combated by parents who give a damn, raising their children with healthy food and shunning fast food and chain restaurants. Believe me, I'm right there in the madness, but I've oft heard tales that once people geek out and drink only diet Coke, regular Coke seems oversweetened and intolerable to drink. Would I suffer this sort of deprivation? It's hard to say. Like a drug addict, they never see the harmful effects until they've been off the crank for a while. During the binge, everything seems great, colorful, they couldn't imagine everyone not shooting up bliss into their armpit. Not until they stand back and get clean, does the stark horror of what they were doing to their body come into focus.
So yes, while I am a Coke addict, I can project myself into a future where Diet Coke is preferable, and through the fog of unreason I can see where knocking out 160 calories at a time would do me some good. I don't go to places like Claim Jumper right now, and when I do end up at a Cape Disappointment Booze 'n' Food McStravaganza, I get the chicken sandwich and tell them to hold the hickory-honey sauce, chipotle remuloude, extra crispy fried avocado, thick cut butter sauteed bacon, four slices of imported processed cheese, and Crisco dipping sauce. I ask for a side salad instead of fried yucca wedges with triple-cream ranch spread. I never eat dessert, just not my thing.
For now, listen to the reports of American Obiesety and despair. Huge Food is here, and its here to stay. It will be very interesting to see to what brink it takes us.
For those who aren't familiar with the mastodonic portions of Claim Jumper, they are the new barometer for Huge Food. Average plates weigh in at a scale-shattering 3-4 pounds, and that's just the appetizer.
This is called, appropriately enough, The Widowmaker.
This is one thing I will call uniquely American. Like the internet, phone, and everything else in God's field of omniscience, we are the supreme leader in innovation, and Huge Food is here to conquer the world, or at least the industrial world. While in other parts of the world people are scampering around in the arid climate, scraping their hands and knees on dead ground for a dung beetle or poisonous weed to chew on, we here in the Land of Gluttonous Indulgence complain if the side bucket of ranch dressing wasn't filled to the rim.
Behold vast arrays of Infinite Justice Whole Fried Onion with distilled La Brea Tar-Honey dipping sauce. Marvel at Capt'n Pike's Whole Boneless Buffalo Chicken with side troughs of fractional Roquefort bleu cheese bowling balls. These are the things we have come to expect from our dining out experience.
Gradient Approximation is a physical theory dealing with the angular spin, and its correlation of magnetic fields on the atomic level. I also use the term Theory of Gradient Approximation to describe attitude shift, such that if you have an agreed upon Truth that you want to change, you can slowly pull people over by nudging the absurd conclusion further away from the accepted norm. For instance, if people are used to paying 99 cents for a gallon of gas, the best way to get them to accept paying $1.50 is to make the gas $2.50 for the summer. Then, when 'peak driving season' comes to an end, the price goes back down to $1.50, people forget they used to pay 99 cents, and gladly accept the new, lower-threshold of gas prices. Sounds familiar, right? It's also the same principle governing the economics behind budgeting $50 for a pair of jeans, then seeing all the incremental upgrades at Bloomingdales. With each successive jean you see a slightly higher price, until you talk yourself into buying the $350 pair of Chip and Pepper's because the riveting and stiching are so ginchy.
The same is true for almost everything else in life. In this case, Gradient Approximation has reversed itself. People demand more bang (or lard, trans-fat, lad na, urchin) for their dollar, or in this case, the 99 cent menu at fast food restaurants. 99 cents can get you a whole baked potato with all the free toppings you can balance on top. 99 cents can get you a junior version of the fully-loaded gargantuan burger. The only thing 99 cents cannot get you is a gallon of gas or movie ticket.
This viscious circle started in the early 80's, given the respectless and accurate title 'Decade of Greed.' Product tie-ins with movie promotions, product placement, fierce competition and bad blood, bred an all-out war between fast food companies that trickled over to restaurant chains.
It may, indeed, have its genesis in the Coke-Pepsi battle, where the only other hostility rivaling that long standing feud would have been between the US and USSR. Their version of the Cuban Missile Crisis manifested itself in two ways: first, both released clothing lines and second, Pepsi snatched up fast food restaurants like they were playing jacks, on five-sees.
Whether or not you think Coke Clothes or Pepsi Apparel was a dumb idea or not, it was the singular earmark of the mid-eighties until the rumor that wearing a Coke shirt meant you were looking for gay sex killed the fad almost overnight. It was most likely started by a Pepsi employee. On the second note, by Pepsi funding Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell, allowed those chains to offer more food at less cost. McDonalds, which has always had a long-standing affair with Coke, retaliated by lowering the cost of its already human-inedible industrial grade beef by-product to lows that even an unemployed Somali could afford.
Then the expansion began. The Soviet Union Crumbled and, like the AIDS virus, with no defenses to fend it off, both McDonalds and Pizza Hut infected Moskba. For 600 rubles you could wait hours for a Big Mac. Expedient, by Russian standards.
Back here in the States, it was clear the only way to win the hearts and minds of the consuming public wasn't to offer better food, just gobs more of it. 2 for $2 Tuesdays came in vogue, and that's not referring to the local Irish-Mexican cantina that leverages its name to attract St. Patrick's day and Cinco de Mayo crowds, that's talking about McDonald's cheeseburgers and Egg McMuffins. Slowly, and some say insidiously, fast food joints with an undeniable lower-income family in its crosshairs, started to market Huge Food at low prices to that very audience.
Not that college educated people don't eat at fast food places. In fact, the majority of college students recovering from a weekend bender of Sports-Bar hopping, Strip Jointing, Face-Down-in-the-Quad-From-Ice-Shot-Vodka-Bonging and Pretending-To-Be-Refined-Wine-Tasting, need some sort of fatty bulk to absorb the alcoholic poison racing around their cardiovascular system faster than a tricked-out Lancer Evolution from Fast and the Furious IV, Tokyo Drift II: Tokyo Drifter (filmed at the same time as Fast and the Furious V: Bangkok Rickshaw Jam)
Whether or not fast food destroys the fat lives of rednecks and their loved ones is beyond the scope of this article. It merely serves as the example of how that marketing mentality overflowed into the mainstream mall-restaurants the rest of us enjoy (and middle class rednecks, as well).
Pre-1980s, restaurant chains were few and far between, having started from one-off local restaurants that enjoyed the dubious expansion of culinary manifest destiny, spurred on by a symbiotic relationship with the eating public wanting more varied and tasty meals of greater quantity at Depression-Era prices. This had a positive, and simultaneously pernicious effect. Applying what I said above about reverse Gradient Approximation, the more we ate out, the more we wanted, the more they shoveled our way...like fueling a coal fired steam engine.
A basket of bread and a couple pats of butter were no longer adequate, we now demand three types of bread: banana, poppy seed cumin rolls, parmesan crisp, pats of real butter, semi-soft room temperature butter, unsalted tin, cup of margarine, honey butter and apple-mango chutney. Now bread products don't even cut it as middle tier amuse bouche. The latest wave of altered breadbasket items are bite sized samosas, riblets, Navajo fry-bread, saltlick statuettes of Lot's wife, the list is endless.
And who can finish all that food? Andre the Giant? He's dead. The days of heroes and giants have dissolved into the mist of failed memory. The only one capable of this pointless feat is Takeru Kobayashi. As we demand larger portions for less money, we invariably assist in the evolution to the absurd natural conclusion of our mislaid wishes: Claim Jumper.
All other concerns aside, methamphetamine...Jihadist terrorism...gout, there is a very real residual erosion of our health due to overconsumption. Not erosion in terms of weight -that skyrockets- but erosion in overall wellness of the population. Claim Jumper has come to represent the silly implications of unfettered demands to be fed enormous quantities of food.
I'm scapegoating Claim Jumper because of the complete absurdity of their portion size. Bennigan's, Ruby Tuesday, Olive Garden [ed note: blech], Buca di Beppo, Maggiano's are all guilty of overfeeding us. A single plate of Six Pound Meatloaf Taco Salad Pasta Party could feed an African village of 1000...which I think happened last year in a well orchestrated press junket.
Mons Olympus of Hot Wings Saves Senegalese Population - The National Republican Shrill Voice.
Bucket of Ahi Ginger Burritos the Size of Ayres Rock lands on African Village in Senegal, Saves 1000 From Starvation, Kills 1,000,000 From Impact. - World Village Democatic Screamer.
American Conspiracy to Inflict Destructive Influence on Defenseless Starving Blacks in a Racist Plot to Destroy and Possibly Fatten Poor Africans Confirmed - Federal Guardian Independent Foreign Press
Ok, so a million people will have a million different stories, I can't control them all. The fact is, while starvation inflicts its ugly fangs on the rest of the developing world, we enjoy unrestrained access to every consumable good on the planet.
If the trend doesn't stave itself, we will soon be confronted with a public health crisis of immeasurable consequences. The mere fact that a person's waistline couldn't be gauged with a standard tape measure for starters. If you don't care about the fattening of Middle America, think about the financial burden with which it will saddle us. Childhood obiesety immediately sets up that person for a lifetime of health problems, and since Huge Food is targeted at lower-income earners, guess who will be supplementing that bill when Dad loses his job at the marital prosthetics warehouse and subsequently his insurance. Fat dad, two fat boys and their fat daughter will all be sucking -a lot- off of welfare and foodstamps. Fat mom has already been doing that since the divorce, and her tax supplemented rehab at the methadone clinic has already cost each taxpayer so much, they could have had their own heroin addiction for years if they had wanted. At least she was thin while she was using.
"Aww, but Steve, it's not the restaurant industry's fault. It's the people's fault for not being able to control their uncontrollable desires." True, true. But I didn't ask for Huge Food, and when confronted with a pile of fries the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro, my guilty Jewish upbringing comes into play, and I feel compelled to finish what is put before me, or at least take it in a doggy bag (hereafter referred to as horsie bag).
You see, it is because there are starving people in Africa dodging huge bags of fatal food falling from the sky that I -and many others- force ourselves to eat much more than we otherwise would have. Food that can be seen, must be eaten.
There are also cultural influences at play here. In many cultures, it is vilely offensive to leave food on the plate, it means you either didn't like the food, or you are dying of cancer. They would rather eat until their stomachs explode all over the rest of the table rather than suffer the shame of wasting food. Even then, if your stomach explodes all over your guests, you've just wasted your food, but it might be interpreted as a very generous act.
What does this all mean? Nothing. The trend is irreversible. We will get fatter as a nation and revert back to obiesety becoming a status symbol. The tribal King being the largest, because he has the most. All parts of America are being crushed by the epidemic of obiesety (myself included). As portion size continues to grow unchecked, and we lead increasingly sedintary lifestyles stuck in front of a TV or behind a joystick (or for some other outcasts, on top of one), there will be nothing to combat the assimilation of the new attitude that fat is acceptable.
Never trust our government to do anything except maintain a military and levy taxes, so there is no reason another nutritional guideline or federal sponsored program will help us in the least. Pamphlets the fed publishes are as interesting as congressional budget reports: they are unintelligible and excrutiatingly dull. Public service announcements have as much effect on changing someone's mind as a religious bumper sticker.
But advertising, slick, well produced advertising soundtracked with hip-hop and big boobs will sell burgers. Lots of burgers. The general public cannot compete with the onslaught of images of chipper cooks tapping away with their stainless steel tongs like a barbershop quartet: "I want my babyback babyback babyback" while some big-assed ho is swinging her crack in the camera. Or near hardcore-lesbian hot tub commercials that make even Coors look appealing.
It has to start in the home. It can only be combated by parents who give a damn, raising their children with healthy food and shunning fast food and chain restaurants. Believe me, I'm right there in the madness, but I've oft heard tales that once people geek out and drink only diet Coke, regular Coke seems oversweetened and intolerable to drink. Would I suffer this sort of deprivation? It's hard to say. Like a drug addict, they never see the harmful effects until they've been off the crank for a while. During the binge, everything seems great, colorful, they couldn't imagine everyone not shooting up bliss into their armpit. Not until they stand back and get clean, does the stark horror of what they were doing to their body come into focus.
So yes, while I am a Coke addict, I can project myself into a future where Diet Coke is preferable, and through the fog of unreason I can see where knocking out 160 calories at a time would do me some good. I don't go to places like Claim Jumper right now, and when I do end up at a Cape Disappointment Booze 'n' Food McStravaganza, I get the chicken sandwich and tell them to hold the hickory-honey sauce, chipotle remuloude, extra crispy fried avocado, thick cut butter sauteed bacon, four slices of imported processed cheese, and Crisco dipping sauce. I ask for a side salad instead of fried yucca wedges with triple-cream ranch spread. I never eat dessert, just not my thing.
For now, listen to the reports of American Obiesety and despair. Huge Food is here, and its here to stay. It will be very interesting to see to what brink it takes us.
5 Comments:
Typical American boys ideal of physical fitness is a beefy football player. Of course they didn't notice that most retired NLF players are in very bad shape (aside of injuries) due to overweight and in general died very early. In general most American is obsessed with size and the ideas of bigger is better, quantity over quality. Thus not only their belly, their butt are getting bigger due to gluttony, their taste of housing, car, furnitures are also based on size. One of the many reasons that SUV/big truck drivers defend their choice of vehicle (despite of the waste, the cost, the air polution) is they can not fit comfortably in regular cars. Most of the new cookie cutter houses (or McMansion) are very popular because of their size. The bedroom closet in those houses are bigger than the bedrooms of most old houses. New buyers also seems to obsess with the large master bathroom and huge kitchen (despite of the fact that most lady of the house nowaday is better in preparing meal from frozen microwave than knowing how the cook from raw materials). They're not fully awared that those super-sized items not only cost them more financially, but also physically. Here is the conspiracy theory (making it up in the moment just for fun): The pro-business government, large corporations, businessmen, laywers, and drug companies are actually wanting and loving to have more people commit gluttony, and excess because of profits. When people spend more, they borrow more (oooh the interests), and thus commit working more overtime, or several jobs (and thus more tamed, under control). Thus gluttony -> spending -> borrowing -> slaving are good for the "economy". When they are sick they will have to pay out of their own pocket. Perhaps that is the reason why there is no universal health coverage. The arguement that private business/competition is always better and cost less. Sure it costs little for them (the business) but a lot for a sick person.
By
Anonymous, at 8:42 AM
I think that huge food isn’t necessarily a bad thing in moderation. Every once in a while people like to pig out. The problem is that people in America rarely think of things in moderation. We have a steakhouse chain in Wisconsin that lets you grill your own steaks. It’s a ton of fun to stand around a huge indoor grill and swill 32 ounce ice cold beers while bullshitting with your friends. However they offer this thing called the beefeater. It’s an obnoxiously oversized 40 ounce sirloin and if you eat the entire steak, a baked potato, a slice of Texas Toast and a salad within an hour and 15 minutes you win a coupon for another free steak on your next visit. Forty ounces….that’s 2.5 pounds of meat! The guideline is that your meat serving should be about the size of a deck of cards, not a large-print edition of War and Peace.
I will disclose that once when I was about 23 I did partake in the beefeater and I did finish it. I felt sick to my stomach for the next 24 hours. If you go in to this place it is packed with severely overweight people who took time from making the rounds at the all-you can eat Old Country Buffet and Golden Corral to chow down on 40 ounces of meat and butter drenched Texas Toast. I am not talking about people who have are a little overweight and could stand to lose a few pounds (myself included) but the morbidly obese, those who haven’t seen their feet or genitalia in years. The same goes for many of these huge portion restaurants. You go into a nice restaurant with sensible portions and you really don’t see that type of clientele.
Go into somewhere like Applebee’s chain and the majority of people are huge…and they are lured in by things like “All you can eat ribs for 7.99, don’t forget to throw in an appetizer combo with deep fried everything. Cheap food and lots of it. Nevermind that it tastes like crap. I’d take 4 ribs from Speed Queen (a local bbq restaurant with the best smoky ribs and shoulder in the area) over all you can eat ribs from a chain any day. The problem is that most American eaters only care about quantity. How much bang can I get for my buck. The prevailing attitude is “Why should I pay 27 dollars for a small 6-8 ounce grass-fed filet mignon with a red wine-shallot reduction served with a sensible amount of real potatoes and some grilled asparagus when I can get a 25 ounce sirloin with a huge mound of “loaded” mashed potatoes (likely from a powdered mixture) with cheese, butter, sour cream, and bacon for 12 bucks? Oh and I can add a side of fried shrimp for 2.99!”
What I try to do with huge portions from places like PF Chang’s, The Cheesecake Factory, and other chains is to map out about ½ of the meal that I am going to eat now and save the rest for lunch/dinner the next day. Sometimes I take an extra bite or so out of my “saved” portion but for the most part I try and make two meals out of it.
By
Jeff, at 9:11 AM
Oh, it's not so far fetched a conspiracy theory as you might think, my friend. Not that there is a calculated policy to keep people unhealthy for the benefit of creditors and drug manufacturers (although a hippy friend of mine disagrees on that point), but enslavement in the form of credit-based indentured servitude is very real and very calculated. You can extend that to food, but it is a great stretch. They market more food because we want more food, and it is a nebulous chicken/egg situation, but it probably started with the industry offering more food and us snatching it up like starving anocondas.
You are correct that across the board we want more and bigger, probably because we actually have the room in this country to do it. While other countries have more land, they also have populations nearing a billion, versus our 300 million. 90 percent of our population is centered around metropolitan areas, leaving vast swaths of land underutilized. Give it 20 years, we'll be pushing maximum density. Also, start learning to speak Spanish.
By
Steve Wasser, at 9:13 AM
Jeff - Yeah, I've seen the same incredible deal in Denver and Texas. Only there, it is a 72 ounce steak in an hour. That's cool if its a once in a lifetime shot, but many people do it regularly. Like you said, the people you see in steak joints and Hometown Buffets are exactly the ones who should never step foot inside a restaurant, let alone one that allows you to eat everything you can for a set price.
I'm like you, I strategize how much I will eat given the portion size with the anticipation of having a snack or lunch the next day.
By
Steve Wasser, at 10:30 AM
Oh man, in a very um, regrettable period of my life, I went to Hometown Buffet a couple of times with my boyfriend (at the time). On probably our third visit we both kind of stopped and looked around at all of the people that were eating there, put our trays down and left and never came back.
I notice this with houses as well. My neighborhood is full of one story cottage/bungalow type houses and people are left and right tearing them down and building two story rectangle monsters that go right to the property line with no room for greenery or plant life. It's depressing. I love my neighborhood and I think I have to leave the city if it gets ruined.
On the topic of food, health, and low-income populations, Barbara Ehrenreich talks a little about this in her book "Nickel and Dimed in America." Not so much about the large portions, but about how crappy processed foods are the only foods accessible and affordable to minimum wage workers, which means that people working grueling jobs for long hours and living in cramped, often unsanitary conditions are also not getting the nutrition they need to help keep them healthy. And I think that the fact that she (an educated woman invested in her health and used to eating healthy foods) was forced to live on SPAM and cheetos shows that it not just a matter of convenience or personal choice, but really a matter of no other options.
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KT, at 6:58 PM
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