Tema

This Is Why You’re Fat
Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks

Jessica Amason & Richard Blakeley

Contents
Foreword Joe Garden, features editor for The Onion Introduction Breakfasts of Champions Bacon Gone Wild Souped-up Sandwiches Big-time Burgers Acknowledgments Contributor Index Credits Copyright About the Publisher

Foreword

I am not fat. Yes, I have cellulite. Yes, my thighsjiggle. Yes, I have love
handles. But by today’s ample standards, I am not fat. This is not for lack of trying. I have fried banana bread in butter and eaten it. One trip to Ben & Jerry’s saw me get a waffle cone with three scoops of ice cream and, because it was there, a brownie on top of it. Bacon is not a breakfast side dish so much as it is breakfast, and I’ve been known to save the grease tocook or bake with later. I’ve even improved on the low-calorie blandness of popcorn by popping it in said grease. Thanks to a Price Club membership, my freezer is full of ice cream bars, mini quiches, and meat. Lots and lots of meat. This is all my right as a Wisconsin native, a state that once led the nation in obesity, but has since fallen to an embarrassing number twentyfive. It is also my rightas someone who worked at the Illinois State Fair for twelve years and, while there, ate more fried and stick-based foods than anyone should consume in a lifetime. With this pedigree, you would think I had seen it all, foodwise. I thought I had seen it all. This Is Why You’re Fat quickly dissuaded me of that notion. Day after day after day, Jessica and Richard posted new images of edibles thatleft grease marks from inside the screen. Some of the items were simply novelty-size versions of existing snacks, some were meat-and cheese-based, some were fried. All of them sent a shudder through my body. All of them made me question the existence of God. At a certain point, I had to hold my head in dismay and scream to an uncaring universe, “Why?!” As a nation, we could have stopped atbreakfast-sausage links

wrapped in pancakes, aka pigs in a blanket, and been plenty satisfied. We had it all right there; a perfect vehicle for delivering meat, salt, starches, and syrup to the mouth, along with the forbidden thrill of Foodstuffs That Should Not Be Combined. But we kept right on going, and This Is Why You’re Fat shows us the evidence, allowing us to wallow in the pornographic temptationwithout actually consuming anything we’d regret in the morning and, for that matter, for the rest of our lives. Like you’d ever be tempted. You have it under control. You have “ironic distance” from this cholesterol parade. I dare you to gaze upon the Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheddar Cheeseburger. I’d list the ingredients, except I already did. There’s not a component that makes up one of these caloricmasterpieces that doesn’t glisten with sugar glaze or grease. It’s revolting. It’s disgusting. As a savvy and sophisticated Internet user, you should be appalled by the thought that such a thing exists. You should laugh at the poor rube who would even come up with such a thing, let alone follow through with the idea and serve it to another human being. For some reason, you don’t. On a second lookat the picture, the cheese looks nearly perfectly melted. The bacon peeks out seductively from beneath the top of the donut. How clever to use a donut instead of a bun! Clever?! Where did that come from? Surely you don’t admire this sort of culinary behavior. Like Pete Townshend, you’re just looking at these pictures for research! Soon enough, you find yourself craving what’s in that picture. Andjust like any good pornography, you feel guilty for wanting it. Try to get it out of your head. Sure, you’ll see things that are just plain revolting (for me, it’s anything with a fried egg on top), but you’re just as likely to land on something you find just as appealing and, before you know it, you’ll be running out the door to the nearest convenience store to gorge on anything spinning in a...