I’ll admit that I was hooked on Food Network for a while, and I still like shows like “Chopped” and “Best Thing I Ever Ate.” I even loved Tom Pizzica when he was a contestant for the Next Food Network Star, and I’d love to see him cooking with his weird, creative ways and his quirky sense of humor.
But now that he’s hosting Outrageous Food on the network, all I can do is turn my head and try not to barf. “Big Chef is back!” we’re told on the channel. However, he’s not really back and cooking in the kitchen; instead, he’s traveling the country, finding the most “outrageous” food—which really just translates to the biggest, most disgusting foods on the planet.
They’re not gourmet or special or cooked with a twist, something we can replicate at home. Instead, they’re just monstrously big—pounds and pounds of tacos or meat or whatever, made for eating contests or restaurant challenges and the grotesque American lifestyle.
Make no mistake; I love food. Food is my favorite, as I might say in Buddy the Elf-enese. But when it comes to this disgusting display of giant food, I’d much rather go sleep or have sex or mow the grass or gouge my eyes out with a dowel rod before eat. Not only are these foods gross, they’re also a gross display of how wasteful and privileged we Americans are. We don’t just eat a lot, we eat BIG, and we like to use a lot of FOOD for no reason at all but to be OUTRAGEOUS!
It’s disgusting and it’s even more disgusting to see it so glorified. And while I’m on that subject, I’m also disgusted with the whole meat and potatoes show, where “Vegetarians just don’t get it!” Yeah they do. They get that you like to be wasteful and deplete resources faster and showcase how you eat more than a child in Ethiopia eats in a year in one afternoon and that you don’t give a damn about it. And they don’t like seeing you do it on TV, either.
With the growing prices of gas and food—and the depletion of both these resources, in addition to water—I don’t know how much farther our obsession with OUTRAGEOUS! FOOD is going to go, but I’m also sure it’s not helping anything, either.