This seems to be a typically American indulgence. As if the American diet isn't bad enough, people find ways to make it worse, citing, "Everything in moderation" as their mantra. Except what they don't tell you, is that they eat stuff like this for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner.

That was my point exactly. But, I'd also like to see moderation within the context of a single meal. How about JUST having a doughnut once in a while? How about for dessert, having a nice slice of cheesecake? Topping off a meal of deep fried onions, french fries, and pork sausages with a battered and fried Twinkie is nauseating.

I hypothesize that this and other similar examples are a reaction to the calls to use the nanny state for food policing that seem to be going on more and more these days.

What does that mean?

I think what Kirsten means is that this is a cultural backlash against extreme attempts by certain organizations and the government to demonize particular food choices. One such example would be Center for Science in the Public Interest who, despite their name, often enages in the very same hyperbole, distortion and abuse of science as the Bush administration. They have very laudable goals, but when you indulge in exageration such as saying that eating pizza is equivalent to "performing reverse liposuction on yourself" you have to expect most rational people to react negatively. They *know* that the couple slices of pizza and 3 or 4 beers they have every weekend probably isn't the best diet for them, but they also know that as long as that's not their whole diet and they work out every now and then it isn't going to cause them to weigh 500 pounds. On top of this, you have more than a few far right organizations telling them that everything CSPI says is BS (not true), that the scientists can't be trusted (they're all liberals anyway), and it's all part of some secular-humanist conspiracy anyway.

So what do you think the average person is going to think? They're going to decide that it's all BS and their going to eat whatever the hell they feel like, and if that happens to be a deep fried twinkie stuffed with a snickers bar, then so what? And what the hey, we all die sometime.

It's very similar to the backlash we've seen concerning attitudes toward drug use among teens and young adults. Both the left and the right have have engaged in wars of propaganda, and what we're finding out is that propaganda doesn't work so well in an information rich society. Those with the skills to filter out the propaganda from the facts do what they've always done, which is to use their knowledge and reasoning to come to an informed decision on a topic. Those without those skills are made all the poorer for it because they no longer have an information stream that is more signal than noise.

Note: Kirsten, I don't mean that you're repeating far right propaganda.

I use porn as an analogy. In a sexually repressive society, the glorification of sex is a natural outgrowth.

Then, there's the glorification of the perfect body. Instead of focusing on enjoying life, food, drink, conversation, etc., we've become collectively obsessed with celebrity, beauty, and acquiring status. The diet-fad industry feeds off of this, and nasty, deep-fried food porn is a symptom.

What it means is that I am speculating that it's not necessarily a reaction to the expansion of healthy food choices as John has speculated, but perhaps more of a reaction to food police who wish to ban or otherwise curtail food choices that they don't approve of. When I say food police, I am talking about people trying to to ban transfats, proposing sin taxes on certain foods, pushing to zone fast food restaurants out of their towns, trying to establish a national "food czar" to regulate people's choices to their liking, absolving individuals of the choices they make for putting excessive amounts of certain substances in their mouths and instead trying to sue those who sold it to them, etc... I think people are getting weary of the hyperactive food scaremongering and reacting to that. And I think vendors are finding a niche market with those people for over-the-top products like this one or deep-fried Twinkies or other similar items.

And yes, CSPI is up near the top of the food police list in my mind.

Well, I don't know any food police, but the simple fact of the matter is that some foods are bad for you. Having one and citing "everthing in moderation" is fine. But citing that same mantra after your 10th bowl of deep fried, chocolate coated sugard bombs is simply self delusion. Just like with most aspects of information dissemination (in the US), good nutrition information isn't readily available. And by "readily available" I mean either on TV (americans favorite pasttime), or on the front page of the newspaper.

It might be delusional behavior Rich, but nevertheless, groups like CSPI are fueling the delusion with fear-mongering rhetoric and stances that smack of moral superiority to the average person. They often distort and misrepresent science in an attempt to present argument from authority. And even worse, there are those who would wish to pass and enforce laws based on that same faulty use of science and propaganda. To paraphrase what ahistoricality said recently on another, but similar subject, "it's alchemy when what we need is chemistry... but we've legislated the alchemy."

I think John's on the right track with the porn analogy. You get sex denying and sex obsession at the same time, schizophrenically. Don't put nudity on tv but you can have the whole show full of violence and every actor looks like a runway model and wears tight clothes.

Same way you get body obsession and body denying simultaneously. In our restaurant we constantly got people who would have skinny milk in their coffee (except we didn't serve that stuff) and order cheesecake. People who obsess lose their sense of perspective, and they lose touch with their bodies because they punish themselves as a way of "externalising" their hang-up's.

Anyway there's my Lucy 5c psychoanalysis for you :)

Just saw an example of what I'm talking about yesterday on my local PBS station. (Why do the weirdos always get airplay on PBS during pledge periods?) Anyway, the program was Kiss Your Fat Goodbye or something like that with Gary Null. The claim that made me think of this blog was that nobody should consume any alcohol in any amount ever because it is a carcinogen. He also says that sugar is "white poison" and that pizza because looks and smells like vomit and nobody should ever consume any amount (not even in moderation) of either of these items either. I didn't watch much after these little gems.

Well, avoiding white flour and white sugar is a good idea. :-)

That's true, but that wasn't what he was saying. He made it very explicitly clear that nobody should ever consume either of those items (along with a whole table full of other items) or alcohol in ANY quantity EVER even in moderation.