"Worst Foods" news and stories

Move over Outback Steakhouse bacon and ranch cheese fries - the Baskin Robbins large chocolate Oreo shake is the new Worst Food in America, according to Men's Health. This diabetes-bomb has 2,600 calories, 135 grams of fat (59 of them saturated), 263 grams of sugar and 1,700 mgs of sodium.

Check out the link to see a full list of "worst" sandwiches, "worst" Mexican foods, "worst" pizzas, etc. The "worst" burger, Chili's Smokehouse Bacon Triple-The Cheese Big Mouth Burger with Jalapeno Ranch, has more than 150 grams of fat, the equivalent of eight 6-ounce steaks. While anyone can probably guess that massive milkshakes and burgers with more than more than three adjectives in their names are probably not great for you, Men's Health also uncovers a few presumably healthy foods that are actually not much better than sucking down melted margarine with a straw. The "worst" salad is T.G.I. Friday's Pecan Crusted Chicken Salad, which has 1,370 calories (more than half most people's daily need) and an undetermined amount of fat - T.G.I. Friday's refuses to disclose full nutritional information for their foods.

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Bored at work? High tolerance for grossness? Check out this B3TA (a juvenile, crude and quite hilarious British "arts" site) message board on "the worst thing you've ever cooked or eaten." The board is closed for posting, but there are 20 pages worth of responses. Some are almost certainly made-up, many are obscene, others so British they may be nearly meaningless to American readers (Bovril? Walkers crisps? Fry-ups?). But a lot of them are pretty darn funny.

Outstanding responses include turkey-wrapped sheep brain, roadkill badger, maggots meant for fishing bait and a chunk of cigar.

As for me, I'm going to have to pick the soggy tripe stew I ate in Argentina. Tripe is fine when all the stomach-y flavor is well cooked out, but this tasted of wet dog and gym socks and old burps, with the texture of snot-slicked rubber tubing. You?

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We all know the jokes that are made every year when it comes to fruitcake. The same one has been going around the globe, passed from person to person, for the past 40 years, nobody likes fruitcake, fruitcake is a bad gift, etc. But let's talk about food beyond that cliche. What are some of the usual Christmas foods that you don't like or are overrated? What food does your family serve when you go back home and you dread it, even though you don't want to tell the person who cooked it that you've never liked it?

MSN's report on the Worst Foods to Eat got us to thinking about what our list might be. MSN has nothing on us here at Slashfood. While we think that living a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle is a great choice, unlike MSN “health” advisors, we don’t think it’s the only way to live. We put on our Slash Foodie un-scientifical research hats and here are our picks for 8 of the worst foods you can eat:

• Deep fried Snickers or Mars bars - This "snack" packs over 450 calories and about 30 grams of fat, and a king size will deliver more than 700 calories and 44 grams of fat. What's more disturbing is that some pubs plate them with a side of fries and call them lunch.
• Shelf stable “creamers” – Water, sugar or corn syrup solids and partially hydrogenated oils make up this shelf-stable faux cream. Need we say more?
• Pasteurized, processed cheese food - No, we don’t care how well they melt. These melty, spreadable, day-glo orange “cheeses” have to be labeled as “cheese food” because of the addition of preservatives and liquids. Yum.

MSN Health published an article about the 10 worst foods you can eat. It's an appealing concept, though the article was poorly constructed. The author wrote that she wanted to select "food categories" rather than brands, but she ended up selecting individual food additives and ingredients anyway, with a few rather narrow categories thrown in. She also failed to identify the criteria she used to compile the list. The MSN list is as follows, along with their description as given in the article, though paraphrased here:

• Hydrogenated fats - These might contain trans-fats, but it depends on the company's use of the term vs. partially hydrogenated.
• Olestra - You could be eating fruits and non-"junk food" instead of anything with this fat substitute.
• Nitrates - Used as a preservative, they could turn into nitrite, which has been deemed safe by the FDA.
• Alcohol - Only acceptable in the form of a fine glass of wine with dinner.
• Raw Oysters - Can carry deadly bacteria and should be cooked well.

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