IN PRAISE OF GLUTTONY

It is not easy to be a “foodie” these days. I am one, and nothing will stop me watching the Food Channel for my daily fix. But something evil has crept in: gluttony. Lucullan indulgence. Gustatory hell. Madness in the kitchen.

I am visiting in Austin, Texas and spending more time than I should watching food on TV. Even at the Fitness Centre, where my son-in-law bought a month-long package for me and my wife, I watch Food Network while I walk off the pounds on the treadmill.

But this week food soared to new highs, or more correctly descended to new lows. Not on the Food Network, but on the Travel Channel, which seems to have plugged into America’s passion for eating. Notice – I didn’t say “fine dining” or “gourmet pleasures,” I said “eating” and I mean EATING!!

I was drawn to a new show called “101 Best Places to Chow Down,” naively believing I was in for gourmet foods in ascending order of quality from one hundred and one to number one. I was only partly right. It was in ascending order, but the climb to number one was defined by the size of the portions! They grew with every number.

It was a pig-out. It was the exemplification of what the U.S. Surgeon General and every health service in America cries out against: an epidemic of gluttony leading to an even more perilous epidemic of diabetes, heart disease and childhood obesity. Perhaps it is the recession that has triggered this praise of quantity, obscene, table-sagging, belly-bursting quantity. (Those who remember the Monty Python sketch where the man asks for “just one more tiny little mint” will understand.)

I watched, fascinated by the level of gluttony, as the program took us up the scale of heavy hitting to its ultimate number one. (I haven’t watched that yet.) I recall a few of the more gluttonous ones: a restaurant in New Orleans where thousands of clams are sold every week. There is a wall with the names of their food heroes, led by the first man to down fifteen dozen oysters at a sitting. Many more names have been added as other gourmands have matched and exceeded his record. There were others featuring one pound hot dogs in a huge bun laced with onions, chili, and a forgettable number of other “garnishes.” There were five pound tamales. There was one ice cream place that specialized in a 3 gallon sundae that was supposed to be shared by a group. I watched as they dug at huge mounds of ice cream topped with cascades of whipped cream, and as they ate the “sundae” melted, sending long streams of goo down the sides. There were four pound T bone steaks, There were one pound hamburgers that could be stacked four high. There were restaurants specializing in “sliders,” bite-sized burgers downed in quantities of dozens at a sitting. (The same night we had eaten in a restaurant where sliders were appetizers. Three dainty Moroccan lamb sliders. I ate two and was satisfied.) In many of these places, eating was turned into a kind of marathon where if you could finish, say a three foot diameter pizza you got it free. Or you dug into a five pound burrito stuffed with about ten Mexican ingredients.

Just to add a little zest to this gorge-a-thon, during the commercial breaks there were promos for a special two hour “Man vs Food” show that would take place in Miami during Super Bowl weekend. This guy, whom I have seen before, is a limited talent, except for his determination to out-eat any glutton in the world.

I could go off on a harangue, like the one I went on after visiting another of those all-you-can-eat places where the habitués seem to be almost all morbidly obese.
Watching these people gorge themselves is enough to put anyone off eating entirely. Do I forgive myself for watching because I am a real foodie who loves to see fine food, well made? You decide.