Do you ever watch TV and see an advertisement for some food item that conjures the worst feelings in your normally placid yum-place, but really you just want to know why? Why does this particular thing exist? Who buys it? And just who is in the food laboratory wearing their “find something weird” hat and thinking up the most excessive, noxious thing ever slapped between two pieces of bread and making the decision that, “Yup, a veritable horde of people will eat this!” All you really know is that guy should be slapped with a heaping KFC slop bowl.
Will we eat anything? Sure, this country has a bit of an issue with portion control and our motto has long been “more, more, bigger, BIGGEST!” but is just anything fit for consumption? It sure seems like it. Supreme tacos wrapped in cheesy tortillas, sandwiches made from fried chicken and slathered with chipotle sauce and stuffed with bacon in the middle, and meals that consist entirely of cheese. Calories, Smalories. Forget about calories as a deterrent. Sure, yes, the bigger fast food franchises have started putting nutritional facts on their menu boards or on their food wrappers, but invariably, food manufacturers believe that we all ignore the factual stuff and really we just want loads and loads of processed meat, cheese, and other unidentifiable food-like substances, and in staggeringly large quantities. So they set about creating items that exist in the “food world” that are just too ridiculous to be consumed. Not just from a health standpoint, even though that’s hugely important when evaluating these foods, but just from a WTF standpoint! The fact of the matter is some items should be discontinued before they get a further foothold in our society. I’m going to introduce you to five.
5. The IHOP Never-Ending Pancakes Promotion
I get it…pancakes. What’s not to love? It’s literally dessert for breakfast. It’s cake cooked in a pan and served with a sweet syrup, sauce, or otherwise ooze-a-goo topping. It’s the best kept breakfast lie! It’s not healthy. It’s…cake. Now, there’s no need to begrudge anyone the occasional pancake. Flapjacks are a tradition. The Great Pancake Breakfast and all that…but never-ending pancakes? Have you had an IHOP pancake? These are not like the wimpy ones you make at home that burn on one side. No, sir. Not at all. IHOP pancakes could be used to plaster a wall, or as a mattress, or a shammy for your car…and at maximum, maybe you’ll consume about two or three of these suckers before you’re ready to be tucked in until dinner, since they’re not going anywhere. They basically build a house in your stomach and move in. So what’s the plan behind the never-ending pancakes? Full diabetic coma? A grand tour of the emergency room? Completely occluded arteries? IHOP just literally wants you to die a horrible cake suffocating death. Why would anyone do this to themselves?
A Viable Food Option With Some Adjustments: Pancakes on the whole aren’t bad. Endless is insanity.
Go Back to the Drawing Board Completely
Ban Forever
Question Humanity
4. Pizza Hut’s Ultimate Stuffed Crust Pizza
We can fool ourselves into thinking that pizza has some health benefit. After all, all four major food groups are represented, right? It’s like a little self-contained food pyramid exists in the pizza pie. Surely, there’s been much said in admiration of the functionality of the pizza. Some have even gone so far as to put it in the realm of “gourmet” and “trendy” when it comes to adding things like goat cheese and figs. Okay. But what if you’re not trying to get your pizza into a hipster NYC guide? You’re going to Pizza Hut, amirite? And look what Pizza Hut has spent time and research to determine about you. Yes, you. They’ve decided you really want meat and cheese not just as a pizza topping, but also in the crust itself. You with your inferior pizza taste buds didn’t know what you were missing by not having your crust stuffed ultimately. Now that the decision has been made, don’t you feel lucky, or minimally nauseated? Wait. That’s not what you should be feeling. You should be thrilled if not disgusted by the thought of quickly cooling, rubbery, cheesy meat hardening inside your pizza crust. This is what you asked for, yes?
A Viable Food Option With Some Adjustments
Go Back to the Drawing Board Completely: There’s really no need to improve upon this. Pizza is best left alone.
Ban Forever
Question Humanity
3. 7-Eleven’s Hot Food Menu
I don’t know about you, but when I need to pick up some ice for my mother-in-law’s 4th of July party, and I pass the hot dogs on those 7-Eleven rollers, something about them just speaks to me. I look at their sad, gray, decaying meat bodies, and just want to mash them with my teeth. Er, holy hopscotch! No, not ever. Which is why the news that they’ve released a new line of hot menu items makes me want to grab a shotgun and hide in the bathtub. I can’t imagine what fine food items 7-Eleven has found for the masses. And more importantly, who’s going to be preparing these foods? I got the impression 7-Eleven was a kind of grab and go sort of place. I guess fret not, because for your dining pleasure, 7-Eleven will now serve chicken wings, a pretzel/croissant breakfast sandwich with egg and ham, and Angus beef hot dogs, and since you asked nicely, buffalo chicken rollers (pictured), which if I’m to guess, will remain under whatever chosen warming lamp it began its life until purchased by that guy who works in accounting and smells like cheese, or until the apocalypse.
A Viable Food Option With Some Adjustments
Go Back to the Drawing Board Completely
Ban Forever: No one will ever remove these items and throw them away. It’s best to not even open the door to a lawsuit.
Question Humanity
2. Dunkin Donuts’ Tuna Sandwich
Dunkin Donuts plans to bring to you a three course meal. We were okay with donuts, though, weren’t we? The donut giant has not just proliferated itself onto nearly every street corner in all of the world, but they got into the coffee biz. Okay. Then the bagel and muffin biz. Sure. And then ever so slightly without many of us realizing it, there were eggs, sausage, and then bacon on the menu. Not the end of the world. Donuts are really about breakfast, right? And honestly when you can get twelve donuts for a buffalo nickel at Dunkin Donuts, it just makes sense that they would branch out and try to get at least a whole dollar from their patrons with their breakfast options. We’re still all good, D&D. And then, well then, they created the little detestable greasy meat globules that they plopped into the middle of a pancake, which look frighteningly like cake covered turds to all of our monstrous fears! There’s just no way it could get any worse than that. We were safe…until tuna salad sandwiches from Dunkin Donuts popped up across America! I can’t wrap my head around glazed donuts and tuna being served in the same establishment. Just knowing that someone has been rubbing wet fish and then touching your pastries is enough to require a voluntary mind scrubbing. I can’t be the only one appalled by Dunkin Donut tuna ads.
A Viable Food Option With Some Adjustments
Go Back to the Drawing Board Completely
Ban Forever: There are just some things we’d rather not think about.
Question Humanity
1. Burger King’s Cheese & Jalapeno-Stuffed Burger
I’m starting to get the impression that if we can’t stuff something full of something else than just what’s the point? Our food is the equivalent of a small Russian matryoshka where inside each babushka you’ll find another and then another until even the smallest kernel of American food will have another kernel inside it. This is strange because it’s not as if we can somehow store the extra. It would be different if for survival’s sake we could store stuffed foods like an additional energy reserve. Like right after we come from the gym, or in America’s case, after a particularly strenuous Law & Order marathon. So this thing is just chock full of random food chunks. Cheese and jalapenos…wait, is that a tire gauge? There is just so much going on here. It’s like Burger King emptied a refrigerator and mashed the contents into a giant meatball and then put a burger wrapper on it, and instead of calling it “Crap with Spores” they went with a stuffed burger. There’s no way you can eat this and not feel your body seize with unnamed toxins. Just look at it! Your high school cafeteria couldn’t serve this with a straight face. And honestly, if I worked at Burger King as a teenager I’d be a little frightened of who would be ordering this sandwich and what could happen if we ever ran out. If you’re eating this atrocity on bread, you’re no disgusting sandwich amateur; you’ve had the McRib — and you like it.
A Viable Food Option With Some Adjustments
Go Back to the Drawing Board Completely
Ban Forever
Question Humanity: If we can create something like this we are all well and truly doomed.
