Sunday, May 07, 2006

Yuck.

I just saw Burger King's commercial for their ridiculous artery clogging "Texas Double Whopper." It's basically in the style of a musical -- one man decides he can't eat "chick food" (apparently "chick food" includes everything healthy and not "meaty") and decides to head to Burger King. En route, he picks up a bunch more beefy guys and they all head to fill their stomachs with, literally, sh*t.* Guess they don't call them meatheads for nothing (play the bu-bum bum sound effect for corny jokes). What's with this trend of equating meat/fast food with "manly" eating habits? If "manly" = unhealthy, overweight, and sure to die early, then fine. But that's sure as hell not attractive or intelligent. The feminist blogosphere seems abuzz with such examples, I hear Friday's has got a similarly offensive commercial playing.

Conveniently for BK, their website doesn't yet list this new Whopper incarnation on its nutrtional info. page. But let's just assume it's AT LEAST as bad as the regular Double Whopper. OK. So that has a "whopping" 900 calories, OVER HALF of which come from fat (510). So you've got half your caloric intake in one sandwich, with a percentage of fat that is truly difficult to achieve. Oh, and some of that fat is trans fat -- good luck with that. And you're getting your recommended protein allotment for the day (Americans typically eat WAY more protein than is necessary, or, as some suspect, healthy). Why on earth would anyone eat this crap?

All I can say is, thank God for Andrew. (Happy birthday, honey!) Tonight I had Jill, Jess, & her beau over for dinner, and we followed Andrew's recipe for the yummy (and relatively healthy) mango fried rice.

*By the by, if you haven't read Fast Food Nation, do. You'll never look at meat the same again. The meat industry in this country depends upon agribusiness that treats its workers poorly, and its animals inhumanely. And, as Schlosser puts it, "there's sh*t in the meat." It's no accident that the country that eats so much of this meat is so unhealthy. Not surprising that vegetarians live longer. Oh, and beef production is one of the worst things we could be doing environmentally. Their -- ahem -- gas is incredibly polluting, not to mention their waste products. It takes a lot of water, grain, and energy to produce beef, and its nutritional "payoff" is a negative.

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