Big Juicy Thick...oh, Burgers

According to the front page story on Yahoo! just now, the entire country is in an uproar over Hardee's knew Heat-Seeking Colonic Missile/sandwich, the Monster Thickburger. Mmm, it sounds delicious, folks, that's for sure.

But, an uproar? Over a fast food sandwich? Isn't a full-on uproar the sort of thing we reserve for dumb sketches that play in front of "Monday Night Football"? What's the beef, sir?

You see, the Thickburger contains 1,420 calories and 170 grams of fat, and apparently, that's way too much for you to eat in one sitting, according to scientists from the Center for Analyzing Really Obvious Statistics.

No, actually, it's the Center for Science in the Public Interest:

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocate for nutrition and health, dubbed the Thickburgers "food porn," the Monster "the fast-food equivalent of a snuff film."

"At a time of rampant heart disease and obesity, it is the height of corporate irresponsibility for a major chain to peddle a 1,420-calorie sandwich," the center said.

Well, if the Thickburgers are the fast food equivalent of a snuff film, what do you call the video I have of the Hamburgler stabbing Grimace repeatedly with a homemade shiv, huh? But I digress...

Basically, I don't think you can blame a fast food restaurant for offering its customers what they so clearly want. Americans are fat, and we pretend occasionally to be upset about that, when we see a movie like Super-Size Me or fail to fit into the seat of a commercial airliner, but no one wants to give up delights like fast food burgers or those new Reese's Peanut Butter Cups with the white chocolate on the outside...Oh, those are so freaking good...

Anyhoo, my point is, there's always yokels like this guy, quoted in the Yahoo! story:

Edwin Depke, 80, a retired box company worker who has long loved the Thickburgers, was won over by the Monster at a St. Louis Hardee's.

Calories schmalories, he said.

"They're big and thick, with all the trimmings," Depke said. "You don't have to worry about all bun and no meat."

"They're really good. Eat one, and you don't have to worry about another. It's a meal."

You heard it here first, folks. Eat just one Monster Thickburger from Hardee's, with its two 1/3-pound slabs of all-Angus beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese and mayonnaise on a buttered sesame seed bun, and you don't have to eat another one for the rest of the day. It's literally a whole meal! Why, that's practically a public service! Thanks, Hardee's!