A few days back, the West Michigan Whitecaps announced they'd be serving a 4,800 calorie hamburger (equal in calories to about 9 Big Macs - or when broken down to joules of energy, equal to about 1/6 of a gallon of gasoline) at their ballpark. The minor league baseball team claimed the burger would weigh in at nearly 4 pounds, containing 5 burger patties, 5 slices of cheese, and a cup of chili among other elements.

Giant burgers are nothing new, and the Travel Channel's "Man V. Food" has featured some bigger burgers in its hard-not-to-watch orgy of gluttony, but I guess this is the first time such a huge burger has been offered at a ballpark. Presumably added to the menu to get some press about its novelty, it did just that, making the wire services and getting stories in newspapers nationwide.

That attracted the attention of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Although dated April 1st, the open letter from dietitian Susan Levin was released to press sources yesterday and another round of press for the Whitecaps began almost immediately.

Levin asked for the following warning label: "WARNING – Eating meat is associated with increased risk of heart disease, cancer, and death."

I like a different quote from her letter that many of the press outlets ignored: "I venture to guess that your monster burger harbors more synthetic hormones than most professional baseball players."

Woo-hoo, the humorless killjoy tries to make a steroid joke, and almost pulls it off. Most of the letter, though, is about how too much meat and cheese causes most of society's medical ills and riffs on "what kind of example are we setting for the children?"

Honestly, I think this is just bandwagon PR. Look at how much mileage the PCRM got out of one little press release. Just like the story on the burger, it got on the wire services, got picked up by lots of outlets, and it's provoking a reaction. Used to be that the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) was the best known food-issue grandstander. One of their more memorable campaigns was trying to expose all the dangers of movie theater popcorn. More recently, they've been suing beer makers over making caffeinated alcoholic beverages they're calling "alcospeed."

Still, good intentions aside, mercenary attempts to ride on the coattails of someone else's publicity aside, the claim that the burger needs a warning label is just insulting on so many levels, and that's probably what's made people take notice. It's not so much that the "food nazis" are at it again, but they're calling Joe the Plumber an idiot again. And people are getting pissed off at the arrogant, humorless twaddle coming out of activistville yet again.

Susan, this is why people hate you. You talk down to them. You think they're not capable of making their own decisions and need or want you to interfere. So here's my proposed warning label.

WARNING: There are some people in this country who believe you're potentially stupid enough to mistake a 4-pound burger with cheese, chili, and corn chips on it for health food. Humorless blowhards like this are known causes of irritation and stress. Please use extreme caution when listening to these pompous twits.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Cooking & Recipes, Medicine, Society, Stupid Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.