Somehow, we neglected to mark the passing of a giant. Not that we knew him, but he was literally a giant. Blair River, spokesman for The Heart Attack Grill in Phoenix, was, as you can see, 570 pounds of man, and as such he ate for free at the restaurant (folks over 350 lbs eat free).

This gives television news people the opportunity to do some “responsible” journalism. As absurd as the Heart Attack Grill is — if you are unfamiliar, diners wear hospital gowns are waited on by servers dressed as sexy nurses and the owner, Jon Basso, dresses as a doctor (not the sexy kind) — the newspeople act as if they are completely without guile, handwringing for more than six minutes over how the owner of The Heart Attack Grill has no moral compunction. Sure the good doctor is a little smug when he points out that he’s the only junk food purveyor who honestly labels his food and warns his customers — but he’s right, of course.

How on earth did they do that whole story and never acknowledge that McDonald’s et al are equally complicit? A typically finger-wagging Marion Nestle, author of “Food Politics”, typically takes the bait.  ”He’s deliberately trying to get people to eat more than they need,” she cries. Well, guess what, lady, so does Jamba Juice.

Nobody ever points this out. Though Basso tries.

When asked if he shoulders any share of the responsibility for River’s death, Basso replies: “An equal share with anybody who provided junk food to him.”

By the end of the piece Nightline lets us know they are in on the joke though (even after a whole, “Have you no conscience, sir” bit of grandstanding). They let the puns roll at the close, noting that the Basso is opening a location in Dallas, they quip “to spread his morbid message to an even bigger audience.” Ha, Nightline, you kill us.

Finally, here’s a musical tribute to River (who died of pneumonia, no doubt complicated by his weight):

Beastie Boys – Heart Attack Man (Live at SNL) by spike_a_157

According to a report from American Express the wealthiest Americans are gorging on more processed meat patties than ever. What the company refers to as the “ultra-affluent” spent nearly 25 percent more on fast food than they had the year before. Am-Ex defines the “ultra-affluent” as those who charge more than $7,000 a month on their credit cards. What? Did you expect the credit card company to call its best customers “bourgeois climbers”?

My vision is blurred, I am sweating and on the verge of vomiting.  I have just experienced KFC’s Double Down.  Not just one (or is that two?) But more. Many more. I begged to ask the question, how many times can you double down?  My nose is running, the smell of anything at all is too much to bear and there are black dots in my line of sight.

KFC has decided to unleash upon the world their Double Down, which comes both fried and grilled. As you’ve doubtless heard, the Double Down features two boneless white meat chicken fillets, which surround two microwaved pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and the Colonel’s Sauce.  The chicken when fried is dried and mangled beyond recognition and when grilled is seasoned and wet, a less daunting and seemingly healthier option for this culinary roller coaster ride.  Fried comes in at a meager 540 calories while grilled weighs in at 460 calories.  These numbers seem low, but when you factor in the sodium (1,380 and 1,430 respectively), it’s a modern marvel sure to bloat us all beyond recognition.

And just in time for summer to boot.

The women at KFC assured me that these were manageable sandwiches and ten shouldn’t be hard for me to finish, but these hulking sandwiches came in cardboard boxes big enough to fit Big Macs or Whoppers.  The original giddiness of trying to swallow ten of these was immediately smashed when the price tag rang out at over $60.  I ordered eleven so I could pass ten and have one victory sandwich.

Excitement was squashed a second time when I was handed two large shopping bags filled with sandwiches.  With that and my large Diet Coke (because I have to watch my figure) I walked back up the hill to my house and spread the concoctions out on the kitchen table.  The sandwich did indeed keep one promise: “This product is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun.”

I started with a fried sandwich.  Perfect to hold in two hands and slash into like a proper carnivore. Elation was the first reaction, I am really doing this and the pepper jack cheese, melted, processed and sticky runs down the gullet slowly, crawling down the sides as it is chased by dry fried chicken and then elastic bacon in some drunken noir from the early fifties.

I knew right away that ten was too many, but I stayed optimistic.  Something in the final bite of the first sandwich told me that nothing good could come from this experiment.  Once the first one was down my spirits were still high.  I went straight for a grilled DD and the moist chicken combined with melted cheese and bacon-y deliciousness was much better than the fried version.  I told my spectators that if I were eating these I could do ten.  The second sandwich was simple, plowed through it, savored the smoky cheese, and the lightly seasoned meat.

On the third sandwich I decided to stay with grilled.  But the experience wasn’t nearly as fun.  The meat was wet and dripping with sauce, cheese, seasoning and the nauseating smoky taste of the bacon.  By the end I was noticeably sweating, my eyes had filled with tears and my heart was racing uncontrollably.  I began to laugh hysterically at the situation and myself.  I swallowed two big gulps of Diet Coke and finished the slimy white meat slab.

Announcing that I was done at three my two spectators refused to let me off the hook.  “You have to get to five.”  I dug into a second fried DD and halfway through, the proverbial wall of defeat came up to meet me and shake my stuttering hands.  Refusing to stop halfway, I continued to work my through the complete unpleasantness of, and let me just list this again, two pieces of fried chicken fillets, two slices of Monterrey and two of pepper jack cheese melted and enveloping bacon, which is then smothered in the Colonel’s sauce.  I finished number four and stared at the unholy stack of seven DD’s that still lay before me.

I was finished.  But, ten was the original goal and I wanted to at lease half that number.  I started on my fifth, the grilled variety and after one bite my body gave out and I almost threw up.  I stopped, surrounded by laughter, sipped diet coke, stared at the sandwich and tried to will myself another bite.  I wanted to make it to five, I felt that anything less would be a failure, but alas, “Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn,” as Dickens would say.

What did I learn?  While the Double Down is a funny idea, it’s a terrible reality.  If you must buy one, buy just one, taste it and then throw it away.  A man cannot sustain on such endeavors, he must move back toward the fresh foods and the portions that were beset upon him by the harvest.  Or at least not be a total schmuck and try to eat ten Double Downs from KFC.

Photography by DJ Goldberg, Tara Smyth and Craig A. Platt

In one of the more revolting meat related developments, McDonald’s seems to be planning to launch its revolting Angus Burger nationally. The fast food giant has been serving the Angus burger at select locations (such as New York, where it couldn’t be less called for) since 2007, but today’s Chicago Tribune cites reports that, just in time for the Monopoly promotion, (see, because “Angus = Rich“) the burger will darken the rest of the country.

Well, what’s the problem? you might ask. The Angus is better, right? Probably not. The $4 Angus weighs in at one-third pound, and is the largest of so-called premium burgers being offered by fast-food chains, if you can fathom such monstrosities. But an Angus steer is a big animal. There’s a lot of meat on that guy. And a lot of places that meat can come from. McDonald’s says its burgers are made of Angus ground beef, which is the lowest grade cut, of course. After plain ground beef, there is ground chuck, ground sirloin, and ground round, which all come from particular places on the steer. The main difference is the amount of fat in the beef, with ground beef coming in at 27 percent. This in and of itself isn’t bad. Ground round comes in at about 10 percent fat, which is really too little for a burger. But the main point here is the misnomer of McDonald’s presenting slaughterhouse scraps as gourmet fare.

A handy Angus Beef chart courtesy of the American Angus Association after the jump

We stand corrected. A rep from McDonald’s has informed us:

It’s important to remember that this is just one component of our overall
PR program. To connect with our AACM consumers, we tapped into a prominent
McNuggets lover. McDonald’s has an overall public relations program that celebrates the
people who are passionate about their Chicken McNuggets, which includes a
Facebook page and a web site, NuggNuts.com.

And it’s true. They, for some crazy reason, thought NuggNuts would be a good name. As Gurgling Cod points out, this sounds like something to store your weed in. Among the more disturbing elements of the Facebook group (which, it should be noted, astoundingly, has more than 1,500 members) is an album of pictures of McNuggets that look like other things. Abe Lincoln takes the cake. Or compressed chicken ass. Or whatever a NuggNut prize would entail.

Not content with having merely embarrassed Keith Sweat, McDonald’s PR agency also trolled Times Square and apparently gave the tourists, mentally disturbed homeless people and escapees from Bellevue (see above and note the scar running across the forehead and through both eyebrows) a nifty hat and T-shirt if they’d smile manically for the camera.