Today I want to introduce a strange TV show that’s airing on the America Travel channel—Man vs. Food. Adam Richman, a self-educated food “expert,” is the narrator. He travels all over America, introducing famous restaurants and unusual foods. He mostly visits restaurants that specialize in large portions, and he accepts challenges to eat at all of them.
A friend introduced me to this program, so I watched a few episodes. The episode that I watched today features Adam visiting Mallie’s in Detroit, Michigan, where an amazing hamburger is on the menu. This restaurant usually makes 10-pound burgers, but Adam went there to eat a 190-pound burger. It took three men to handle the 210 pounds of meat and put it into a 30-inch pot. The size of the meat was almost the same as a car tire! Then they put the pot into the oven and cooked the meat for 16 hours. Next, a 20-pound hamburger bun was made to hold the meat, and it was topped with 10 pounds of cheese, 15 pounds of mixed vegetables, 4 pounds of crispy bacon, 3 entire heads of lettuce. It was unbelievably huge!
Watching a few episodes of this program really surprised me. Most of the food that is featured is greasy and unhealthy and contains an exorbitant number of calories. I couldn’t help worrying that Adam would suffer from heart disease. I’m a Korean, and we usually eat light and non-greasy food. We often refer to greasy foods like pizza and hamburger as American food. In the past, we ate American food occasionally, but now we eat it often. Therefore, obesity is not only an American problem—it’s a worldwide problem. Obesity is spreading much like an infectious disease. Today we know that many diseases are caused by obesity, such as heart disease and diabetes. It’s time to recognize this problem and work to change it. I hope that we can turn to programs that find healthy and fresh food that nourishes us instead of greasy and high-calorie food that sickens us.
Holy smokes, what a burger!! I had to really stare at the pictures you included to see if it was real. 190 lbs??? Really?? What a great episode to share, as it captures, to such an exaggerated degree, the overindulgences of Americans. I found your connection to Korean culture informative as well (how sad that "greasy" food is considered American, but based on these pictures, I think it's an apt title). Because you've experienced the influence of American food on your own society, you have a unique insight into My Year of Meats as well. Do you think that shows like Man v. Food would have the same impact as the fictional My American Wife!?
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