Fun Facts About Gross Food

Before I begin, check out these FUN FACTS that I gleaned from The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, vol. 2:

FUN FACT: During the colonial period, the elite of Mexico preferred mutton, and only poor people ate beef.

FUN FACT: Jell-O was invented in 1897 by a certain Pearle Bixby Wait. His wife, May, coined the name. "Flavored gelatin" now comes in 23 flavors. The number one consuming city is (why is this so predictable?) Salt Lake City.

FUN FACT: A century ago, a popular dish was "perfection salad," which incorporated cabbage, celery and red peppers in tomato Jell-O.

Actually, maybe that wasn't as much fun as advertised.

(Reminds me of the time I had a "Fun Size" Milky Way bar and nearly sued the company because it wasn't even mildly amusing.)

Onward: As you may know, I'm a big fan of Taco Bell's "Fourth Meal" concept -- that run to the Bell at midnight for the gut-bomb that ensures you will not starve to death in the middle of the night. I've heard that gluttony is a sin; that's probably why I like it so much.

That said, perhaps there's something wrong with a country that, faced with an obesity epidemic, responds by making portions larger and more groteseque and more thoroughly drenched in fatty gloppy buttery sauce. And no one serves cabbage Jell-O anymore! It's a travesty. (Don't even get me started on how we've turned our backs on turnips.)

In any case, we applaud this carefully reported article in the Times by ,Andrew Martin, on TGI Friday's anxious experiment with smaller portions.

' Many restaurants are still marketing the enormousness of their servings: Denny's Megabreakfasts, Hardee's Thickburgers and Ruby Tuesday's Colossal burger, to name a few. Chipotle advertises its 1 1/4-pound burritos with this description: "The first half is fun. The second half is masochism."

'Perhaps no restaurant chain has flaunted its portions more than Burger King. In the last two years, it has introduced a Triple Whopper, the BK Stacker with four beef patties, and an Enormous Omelet sandwich, which is a sausage, bacon and cheese omelet on a bun. But that seems small compared with its Meat 'Normous, a breakfast sandwich that the company pitches with the slogan: "A full pound of sausage, bacon and ham. Have a meaty morning."

'Burger King's advertising turns its eat-more menu into a basic tenet of manhood. In a recent ad campaign for its Whoppers, a man ditches his date at a fancy restaurant, complaining that he is "too hungry to settle for chick food." Pumped up on Whoppers, a swelling mob of men pump their fists, punch one another, toss a van off a bridge and sing, "I will eat this meat until my innie turns into an outie," and, later, "I am hungry. I am incorrigible. I am man."

'Americans are eating about 12 percent more calories a day than they did in the mid-1980s, according to government statistics. The percentage of Americans who are overweight, meanwhile, increased to 66 percent in 2004 from 47 percent in the late 1970s.

...etc. etc...

'...Since that time, 7-Eleven has offered an even bigger Big Gulp, the Super Big Gulp (at 46 ounces) as well as bigger coffee portions, bigger hot dogs, bigger bags of chips and bigger candy bars, and customers have snatched them all up, said Mr. Potts, whose last position before retiring was vice president for merchandising. "There is nothing magic about it," he said. "The customer gets a good value, and the retailer makes more money on a per-sale basis." '

You call it an obesity epidemic, I call it capitalism.

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