Man vs Food

I am a huge foodie. For me, cooking has always been a great pleasure. I love to cook and I love to watch people cook. I think it’s because I’ve always had a keen interest in science, but not the mathematical inclination for it to really take hold. But what is cooking if not a simple science? A Medicinal chemist may devote his life’s work to finding a cure for aids, whereas I might take an hour to create something that could possibly give you a heart attack. It’s pretty much the same.
I have started to have in issue with cookery programmes on TV, though. I will watch almost any food programme just for the sheer joy of it. But these shows are no longer about cooking, they’re a lifestyle choice. You own a Bentley, live an idyllic rural cottage, read the Daily Telegraph and watch Delia. You own a sports car, live in minimalist flat in Soho, read GQ and watch Gordon. Obviously, this only accounts a very small proportion of people that actually lead this kind of life, but the chef you choose correlates to the life you aspire too.
So what life style are you alleging to aspire to if you watch ‘Man vs Food’? This isn’t technically a cookery program, as most of the show is driven by the competitive element in the title. You are guided by Adam Richman, a man that sees each meal as a challenge, rather than an enjoyable form of sustenance. He travels around Americas’ ‘pig out’ hot spots, kicking the ass of as much food as he can, and laying the ground work for a particularly vicious attack of colon cancer. Each episode he visits a town that is infamous for a meal so vulgar, that only a culture in the throes of capitalistic excess could look at it without feeling that somewhere along the line society took a serious wrong turn.
This really is the opposite end of the scale when it comes to food programs. Instead of pertaining to celebrate a certain life style, it just celebrates food. So you’d think I’d be more appreciative towards such a format, one that strips away all the pretention and posturing. Well, you’d be wrong. Although it does indeed just celebrate food in and of itself, it is based on the notion that you make something good even better by making it bigger. The only people that think like that are the stupid. So, in fact, all ‘Man vs Food’ really celebrates is stupidity.
There are no airs and graces in this program. There are no garnishes (unless you count chips), no thought to presentation, no allure. Only shot after shot of food piled so high it bends the fabric of space –time, being slathered in various gelatinous sauces and then liberally shoved into the gaping food holes of fat Americans, all being washed down with gallon jugs and beer and type 2 diabetes medication.
In the episode I watched, Richmans’ final test was the probably the most famous of American big foods. The Sasquatch burger from the Big Foot Lodge, Memphis Tennessee. An artery hardening burger that weighs in at seven pounds, four of which are meat alone. On route to his final battle though, he prepares by visiting Gus’ Fried Chicken, a diner filled with so many racial stereotypes I felt slightly racist just watching it, and a rib house, where we almost get a glimpse of our hosts own secret sauce, so enthralled is he by the taste of a rib. By the time we finally reached the big fight, I was already having chest pains and tingling sensations down my left arm.
When the burger arrived, it was so big, it didn’t even look like real food. My brain regarded it as so absurd that it told my eyes to make it look as though it was made from plastic, just so I didn’t lose my grip on reality. But what puzzled me most was that it came with chips. It was then I realised that this wasn’t food. It was a satirical installation, designed to poke fun at our western excesses. But the only time this object d’art was ever complete was when someone was eating it. This may or not be true. But it’s the only way I can actually deal with it. It might be delusional, but at least it stops me from relentlessly sobbing in the corner.
In the end, our food abuser only manages to eat ¾ of it in the allotted hour. He seems thoroughly depressed that his brain was receiving signals from his stomach that it was only a wafer thin mint from tearing in two. But, he lives to fight another day. Just how many more days are moot.
I did, however, enjoy his enjoyment of food. Before he gets into his fight to the death, and is only eating food at the rate of the average morbidly obese whale, you can see a genuine passion in his eyes when he’s eating. You can almost see the pleasure synapses lighting his entire head up when he takes a bite of fried chicken, and I can relate to that. Because I’m a desperately lonely person. I imagine the pleasure people get whilst being social is the same pleasure I get from a piece of fillet steak.
But I do feel as though ‘Man vs Food’ will be the epitaph to our cultural life as we know it. As the Romans tried to fit in as much shagging as they could before the ruins sprung up around them, I feel we are fitting in as much food as we can before we have to resort to eating the lame member of our pack. Sleep tight.