The seven deadly sins are GREED, ENVY, WRATH, SLOTH, GLUTTONY, LUST, and PRIDE.
Last night I heard about a restaurant called the "Heart Attack Grill" that I just couldn't believe. Actually the sad thing is that I could believe it; I just didn't want to. So, to learn more I went to their company website and after learning more, I am designating the "Heart Attack Grill" as the winner of my "Sin of Gluttony Award"...and I don't mean that in a good way.
OK, here's the deal. This restaurant caters to the BIG eater. The smallest sandwich you can get is the "Single Bypass Burger." It's got a 1/2 lb patty and all the fixings. While that's a killer burger itself, the King Kong of all burgers, the "Quadruple Bypass Burger", has four, yes FOUR 1/2 lb patties! And these burgers really do look like the photo below. Actually they don't. The ones they showed were dripping with grease! If that's not enough, you need to hear about their fries....
Actually, I think that a more accurate slogan would be "Taste you're dying from." Don't get me wrong...I eat meat, and I love junk food, but you have to have limits. Otherwise things could really get out of control.
Anyway, the "Heart Attack Grill's" "Flatliner Fries" are deep fried in pure LARD. They have enough grease in them to choke a horse! I can feel my arteries hardening just thinking about them!
The owner of the "Heart Attack Grill" said during the interview I watched that a meal consisting of a quadruple bypass burger, flatliner fries, and shake tallies a grand total of about 8,000 calories. You heard right! EIGHT THOUSAND CALORIES!!!! Let me break that down for you. That's about 3.5 days worth of calories for someone like me - early 50s, 175 lbs, 6'1" tall, and who exercises 3x/ week.
OK, what does 8000 calories mean in terms of adding fat? There are about 3500 calories in one pound of fat. Yep, one pound of fat stores 3500 calories. So every time you have a net surplus of 3500 calories, that's a pound of fat. This means that if you ate one of these 8000 calorie mega-meals, and then just went home and laid out, trying to recover, hoping you don't have a real heart attack because of the self-inflicted gluttonous attack on your body - because that's about all you could to after this ordeal - your body would be adding about 2.5 pounds of fat to your frame.
Let me break this down another way for you. Let's assume, for a minute, that you weigh about the same as me...175 lbs. Of course, a light-weight like me is not likely to be able to down one of these deadly meals - I couldn't even get close! But if I did, how far would I have to run to burn 8000 calories? I burn roughly 150 calories per mile. So, to burn all 8000 calories I would have to pound out 53.3 MILES. Yep, over 50 miles! That's longer than two full marathons, back-to-back! On the other hand, my wife, who's a small gal, would have to run 80 MILES to burn that many calories!
The "Heart Attack Grill's"owner jokingly quipped, "Like everything else you do in Vegas, the calories you eat in Vegas, stay in Vegas." The horrible truth is that you will be hauling those calories around with you until you burn them off! Frankly, that truth is that you are likely to be hauling at least some of those calories around with you for a long, long time!
So, with all of the negative health effects of obesity, what is it that draws people to a place like this - other than lack of self control? Well, biologically, humans have an affinity for foods that are rich in salt, fat, and sugar. The "Heart Attack Grill" lands firmly on all of those bases! Why do we have these affinities? Evolutionary theory suggests that because historically food sources were limited, that whenever we came across something that was rich in fat or sugar, we ate or stored as much as possible (in our bodies at first, and later in food caches) against lean times. Our bodies therefore are very stingy when it comes to energy. Our natural tendency is to eat as much food as possible whenever possible, and to store any excess energy available. The major downside in our modern, industrial society is that our big challenge now is not undernutrition or malnutrition, but overnutrition! This is why excess weight and obesity is such a common thing these days. We therefore have to control ourselves. If not, we can look forward to a future of being overweight and all of the health risks and challenges that go with that.
Get this, the Grill prides itself on letting fat people eat for free. No joke, if you weigh in at over 350 pounds you can eat all you want, whenever you want at the "Heart Attack Grill." That's a REALLY bad idea to do that if someone is already really overweight. All that's going to happen by eating this kind of food regularly is that someone who is already very heavy is that they are more likely to experience heart attacks, circulatory and heart disease issues, early onset diabetes, and insulin resistance, plus a myriad of other things. Sound like fun? Not to me.
So to sum up, the "Heart Attack Grill" and places like it caters to Gluttony; there is no other name for it. So, to you who decide to enter and feast, all I can say is, "Eat it and weep!"
(Originally posted 10-22-2011)
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