Tim Byers, MD, MPH, is the assistant dean of the Colorado School of Public Health. His blog, “Tuesdays with Tim,” is posted frequently on the school’s website.
I feel a little greasy.
An hour ago, in preparation for this blog, I drove to a KFC and bought a “Double Down,” their new creation of two pieces of fried chicken surrounding bacon, cheese and special sauce.
From a distance of 20 yards, it looks like a sandwich, but it is not. This new KFC creation is now being marketed on college campuses by paying girls $500 to wear clothes featuring the bun-less concoction on their buns. Clever.
As I agreed to blog on this particular topic, I thought it best to write this from whatever postprandial state the Double Down might induce. It was far from the worst thing I have ever eaten, but it has been an hour now and I still feel very full. And a little greasy.
I confess to loving the taste of KFC. I even love the mechanics involved in eating chicken wings, and KFC’s brown gravy is fabulous. The Double Down is not a quantum leap forward in unhealthy fast food cuisine. Its 540 calories represents only a third of what I should eat in a day and its 1,380 milligrams of sodium is just under the total I should have for today. Other fast food items are far worse. I hear there is another sandwich concoction that replaces the hamburger bun with Krispy Kream donuts. Interesting.
Nonetheless, this particular creation is novel enough to cause me to contemplate the end (not the end of life), but what might spark the end of the obesity epidemic and, once and for all, end our lust for bad fast foods. Food creations like these are so devilishly awful that they make me wonder when the food industry might just accidentally go a bit too far and create the ultimate “tipping point” food. As we work toward the tipping point of reversal of the obesity epidemic, I wonder whether the food industry might someday create a concoction that is so terrifically and deliciously outrageous that it will cause us to jump up, clear our heads and see that we have gone too far.
I do not think the Double Down is quite awful enough to be the “tipping point” food. Yes, I have a heavy feeling in my stomach, and no, I will not ever eat another one, but I doubt the Double Down is outrageous enough to be the savior “tipping point” food we await. Maybe deep-fried Twinkies would serve that purpose if we could figure out how to sell them outside of county fairs.
Or maybe we need the big one – something like the Fried Onion Oreo Tube – a bratwurst-sized plastic tube dispensing Oreo filling mixed with Oreo cookie crumbs surrounded by fried onion rings, marketed by a sexy Hollywood figure, and yes, easy to eat in the car.
Excuse me. I need to visit the bathroom.
Has America “hit the bottom” with bad food? Post your comments.
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