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.
