NYT Creates ‘Fat Pack’ Phenomenon
Some people like to eat. Some of those people like to eat well. Some of those people are fat. Where I see, at best, a Venn diagram, the NYT sees a story.
If 1960s Las Vegas had its Rat Pack and 1980s cinema its Brat Pack, early 21st century food has its Fat Pack. [eGullet co-founder Jason] Perlow was a charter member. Now, like some of his fellow travelers, he is learning what happens when the Fat Pack’s philosophy of excess meets the body’s limits of endurance.
The journalists, bloggers, chefs and others who make up the Fat Pack combine an epicure’s appreciation for skillful cooking with a glutton’s bottomless-pit approach. Cramming more than three meals into a day, once the last resort of a food critic on deadline, has become a way of life. If the meals center on meat, so much the better.
Even to those who have been in the game long enough to have seen more than a few cycles of food and diet fads, the Fat Pack culture is a shock.
“Most of us who are in this profession are here as an excuse to eat,” said Mimi Sheraton, the food writer and former New York Times restaurant critic who has chronicled her own battle with weight loss. Still, she said, “I’ve never seen such an outward, in-your-face celebration of eating fat.”
Mr. Perlow, who has embarked on an aggressive diet and fitness overhaul, believes that his online colleagues will soon realize that the time has come for healthier eating.
“I do find it irresponsible that they have done nothing to address health issues,” he said of eGullet, which he left in 2006 after a dispute with another of the site’s founders, Steven Shaw.
“The whole foodie lifestyle and diet I used to participate in — I’m not going to say it is unhealthy, but it is excessive,” he said. “I think you can still keep the food very interesting, but do it in moderation. That’s what the food community of the future is going to have to be.”
To which many members of the Fat Pack say: Shut up and pass the pork butt.
While one blogger at Serious Eats claims to be part of the phenomenon, I’m going to rain on the whole damn parade.
There is no phenomenon. People who consume more calories than they burn off through exercise become fat. I could stand to lose some weight, and I know I can easily do so by consuming fewer calories and exercising more — not by claiming membership in some fictitious “Fat Pack”.
Why Does the Whopper Hate our Freedom?
Abominable fat-suit king John Banzhaf has some serious competition, in the form of Lawrence Gostin, who teaches law just up the road from where Banzhaf does the same. Gostin says we worry way too much, and so gives us… another thing to worry about.
“Ever since September 11, we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next, which has really frightened the public,” Gostin told AFP later.
“While we’ve been focusing so much attention on that, we’ve had this silent epidemic of obesity that’s killing millions of people around the world, and we’re devoting very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money.”
The excellent Center for Consumer Freedom takes Gostin to task. And in spite of his Osama bin Whopper headline, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Patrick McIlheran gets it, too.
If you generally eat healthy but make only an occasional trip to fast-food joints, the only junk-food related dangers you’ll face will happen when your friend gashes you with a samurai sword at BK.
