Balance of Food

New 'largest hamburger' at 123 pounds

Can't pass up a chance to show and write about a large hamburger...

A pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania wants in the record books with its 123-pound hamburger.

Denny Leigey, owner of Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, said his burger has 80 pounds of ground beef, 30 pounds of buns and 1 pound each of lettuce, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise along with five sliced onions.

The burger costs $379.

More huge freakin' snacks

I can't get enough of these huge snacks offered in restaurants.

The Uno Chicago Grill chain has a Pizza Skins appetizer that is a fusion of pizza, mashed potatoes, bacon, cheddar cheese, and sour cream that packs 2,050 calories, 48 grams of saturated fat and 3,140 milligrams of sodium.

On average, people are supposed to get about 2,000 calories a day and about 2,300 mgs of sodium. In the article, Uno Chicago Grill defends its menu, noting that the Pizza Skins appetizer should be shared.

The article also shows us the KFC bowl of chicken, potatoes, gravy, corn, and cheese, and says it's not as bad as the Pizza Skins appetizer. That is saying something. This article is great because you see pictures of the "offending" products.

I love the extremes of food, and I have another one to imagine eating — the Pizza Skins appetizer.

Vitamins story

Hi. Besides bringing you the wonderful world of Balance of Food, I also write for Content That Works, a newspaper syndicate.

Here is a story about vitamins that I wrote that appeared in the Green Bay Press-Gazette and the Missoulian (Montana).

Enjoy!!

Evils of Archer Daniels Midland spread to Mexico

This was a poignant article of the reaches of Archer Daniels Midland in Mexico.

ADM is driving up the price of tortillas in Mexico, which threatens to disrupt a healthier way of life for the Mexicans.

The company has spread its evil in the U.S. with the support it gets to ruin our diets with high-fructose corn syrup. This is a company that actually got caught price-fixing lysine. It's really hard to get caught doing something like that, and they did.

This sentence from the article really bothered me:

After years of pressure from the U.S. Trade Representative's Office, Mexico recently revoked its tariff against high-fructose corn syrup, setting the stage for a gusher of ADM's vile sweetener into Mexico's soft-drink industry.

That is very disturbing news. So be careful when traveling in Mexico that you are not ingesting HFCS.

The green can of Parmesan cheese: updated

For those who grew up on the green can of Parmesan cheese with the yellow K on the top, you may have burst out in laughter like I did at the grocery store recently.

Kraft has a new product called Kraft's Grate-It-Fresh Natural Parmesan Cheese. The familiar green can shape is still there but it comes with a block of cheese and a grater inside the can. The product is difficult to describe, so follow this link to the product.

While I have nostalgia for the green can, I have long since switched to fresher forms of Parmesan and its cousins Romano and Asiago. Even in my early 20s, I searched out a deli in the relatively small city where I lived to find a higher quality form of cheese.

If you are glued to the concept of the green can, or you work for Kraft, this may be a wonderful idea. This food author loved it. Since I'm not going to try it, I offer this other point of view.

I could almost imagine trying this product with the Organic Ragu, which I reviewed here. If I needed that level of updated nostalgia, the new green can would have worked out perfectly.

Happy Fat Tuesday 2007

Theoretically, if you're not Catholic or within 50 miles of New Orleans, this doesn't really apply to you. This isn't permission just to go nuts. Well, one punchki, perhaps.

The tradition of Fat Tuesday is geared toward sacrifice on Ash Wednesday, and the subsequent 40 days of Lent. So if you want to keep in the spirit, have some fun today but be really good tomorrow.

So make it a large Tuesday instead of a Fat one.

What your grocery store cart says about you

We've all seen the stereotypical shopping carts. We think we can read a person based on the contents of their cart.

I overheard a conversation about the new spray-on salad dressings. I have ragged on this Wish-Bone product because high-fructose corn syrup is high on the ingredient list. The concept is not too bad, but you do need fat in your diet.

I looked up and saw two young women talking about the product. The one who was praising the product was a bit on the heavy side. Not fat, but sizable. I didn't think much of it until I looked down at her cart.

It had several packages of these "100-calorie" snack packs. I'm not crazy about these products as well. They are reduced-quality versions of popular snacks designed to give a comfort zone of "well, it's only 100 calories." There are healthier ways to get 100 calories. And if you are going to eat the "offending" product, eat fewer pieces of the original instead of a inferior version.

She also had a bunch of grapes, the only sensible item in the cart. But I wondered, "Is this the way large women think they are supposed to grocery shop?"

It got even worse later: I saw them again a few aisles later. There were several Weight Watchers products added to the cart. I shook my head. Wow!!

If this was honestly working for you, fine. But it seemed like she was shopping this way because she felt like she had to, and I don't think it would be an effective way to lose weight, if that is what she was trying to do.

I don't say this to be judgmental. I just thought that it was sad that this woman, who wasn't that big, felt like she had to eat this way because she didn't fit into some homogenized mentality.

Should Valentine's Day be about food?

Flowers are calorie-free. So are pink and red hearts, at least the candy-free version.

And even if you are cooking dinner, make it healthy — for your heart.

OK, I'm not really trying to ruin Valentine's Day. And I am the king of obsessively eating for holidays. I just think that we work way too hard to show our love through food on one particular day.

Romance is having someone cook for you on a day when you are really tired. Waiting for a day where everyone is also obsessed with lobster and steak isn't always romantic.

And if chocolate is involved these days, just don't eat it all in one day. Share some with your co-workers who are Valentine-challenged.

It's a day about love — for yourself and for others, not necessarily food.

Bonding over McD's hamburgers

I am not proud of my story, but it is true...

It is difficult to be a person that eats well in an office with some people who don't eat well. You feel like the odd duck, especially since you used to be on the other side.

McDonald's offers a chance every so often to purchase 49¢ hamburgers and 59¢ cheeseburgers. I did not realize my new co-workers had a competition to see who could eat the most cheeseburgers.

I wanted to compete even as they were tossing out numbers beyond where I would have been back in my heyday. The number 10 was the benchmark from last time. I've never eaten 10 or 8 or even 6 before.

I wanted to participate, but I decided early on to limit myself to 3. The number 3 was large to me now, but was dwarfed by my co-workers. I felt good with 3 and I hadn't been to McDonald's in a while.

The staggering numbers were even more impressive since I thought there was a limit of 5 per customer. Apparently, at the location where we went, their approach was "if you want to buy them, we will sell them to you."

My hamburgers were a little dry, not enough ketchup and mustard and way too much onion. They did feel heavy at 3, so I imagine 10 plus cheese would have been a strain. Of the three other guys in the competition, two finished at 10 and one went a bit further, perhaps aided by peer pressure; his final total: 11 cheeseburgers, a medium fry, and two Cokes. I just hope he didn't have dinner.

I felt good to be a part of the fun, even though they told me that given my total, they would laugh at me behind my back. Then again, they told me this to my face. So I was included. That felt good; it felt better doing so at a price my body could handle.

Exercise story

Hi. Besides bringing you the wonderful world of Balance of Food, I also write for Content That Works, a newspaper syndicate.

Here is a story about exercise that I wrote that appeared in the Green Bay Press-Gazette and the Ravalli Republic (Montana).

Enjoy!!