2019 Food Porn Awards

 

More than two out of three American adults are either overweight or obese. There is no mystery to this. We simply eat too much and do too little. And the restaurant industry is right there to support us by supersizing their menu offerings right along with our waistlines. In the 1960s, the average fast food meal of a burger, fries and a 12oz drink was 590 calories. The same meal today would clock in at over 1,500 calories. And nearly all of the increase comes from more fat, carbs and sugar.

I came across Nutrition Action newsletter's Extreme Eating Awards for 2019. To put all this in perspective, let's remind ourselves what we really should be eating over an entire day.

         Calories - about 2,000                                Sodium - 2,300mg

Saturated Fat - about 20g                           Added Sugar - 50g

With that as a yardstick, lets take a look at the winners from two years ago, keeping in mind that the numbers have grown a bit since.

Gold Medalist - Dave & Buster's Chicken and Waffle Sliders

2,340 calories of white flour, sugar and starchy carbohydrates. It is the equivalent of eating 8 Eggo waffles with 8 Jimmy Dean sausage patties slathered in half a cup of maple syrup. In addition to 1.3 days worth of calories, you'll waddle away with almost 2 days worth of saturated fat, a day and half's worth of sodium and about 2 days worth of added sugar. Well played, Dave and Buster! Well played.

Silver Medalist - Jimmy John's 16" Gargantuan

"The only thing better than a sandwich is a sandwich twice as large!" Enter the 16-inch Giant Gargantuan, loaded with nitrates, saturated fat, white flour and sugar. It clocks in at 2,190 calories but it puts Dave and Buster to shame with 29g of saturated fat and 7,720mg of sodium (I'll save you crunching the numbers, that's over three days worth). Rumor is their next innovation will be a triple. Triple bypass that is. You'd have to eat three Subway foot long coldcut subs to match it.

Bronze Medalist -  The Cheesecake Factory's Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

Perennial medalist The Cheescake Factory take a bronze in 2019 by figuring out how to squeeze 2,040 calories into just three pancakes. Combining all that white flour, brown sugar, butter and syrup into just 3 pancakes is a culinary marvel indeed. Complete with 51g of saturated fat, 2,950mg of sodium and 137g of added sugar. Don't care for pancakes? Eating 11 Krispy Kreme Original glazes doughnuts will give you about the same "nutrition".

Runner Up - Chili's The Boss Burger

So what if 70% of us are already overweight or obese, Chili's has burgers to sell. This one contains 5 meats, cheese and ranch dressing and, just in case its not enough for you, it also comes with fries. At 2,020 calories it was just barely edged out by Cheesecake Factory. But its 47g of saturated fat and 3,900g of sodium is nothing to feel ashamed of. No Chili's near you? You can get the same "nutrition" from 3 McDonald's Triple Cheese burgers with a large fries.

 

I don't even know what to say.