Heart-Stopping Cuisine - The Wave of the Future?

A few years ago, as most of the fast-food chains were working on offering healthier alternatives to their customers, Burger King made a big splash by going in the opposite direction. Rather than making smaller meals, they made larger ones; rather than cutting back on meat, salt, and lard, they packed on the fat and the flavor. At the time, I remember thinking that this might just be pure genius. After all, angry fat and carb junkies needed a place to visit, and Burger King quickly positioned itself as the go-to retailer for self-destructive food.

Since then, Burger King has been joined by a few other companies that boldly, proudly feature the worst cuisine imaginable. Chili's, for example, offers the Smokehouse Bacon Triple "the Cheese" Big Mouth Burger with Jalapeno Ranch Dressing. This one burger, with over 2,000 calories and almost 5,000 mg of sodium, contains the entire recommended daily caloric intake for the average person, combined with more than twice the recommended sodium. Similarly, Bob Evans' Stacked and Stuffed Caramel Banana Pecan Hotcakes have 1,543 calories, 77 grams of fat, and 2,259 mg of sodium in each order.


While most chains work to hide the caloric intake of their offerings, both Chili's and Bob Evans seem to proudly proclaim their gut-busting bona fides. Still, for pure, raw, unadulterated boldness, few restaurants come close to the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona. Between their burgers (aptly named the single bypass, double bypass, triple bypass, and quadruple bypass) and their "flatline fries," everything in the restaurant seems carefully designed to tell the customers exactly what they are doing to their bodies. What's more, with waitresses dressed as sleazy nurses, the Grill has effectively turned self-destruction into a fetish. While I have to admit that I am kind of intrigued, I am also somewhat disturbed. I can only wonder if this is the future of fast food: suicide repositioned as sex!