This Is Why You're Fat: Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks

by Jessica Amason, Richard Blakeley

Food was once the providence of celebrated chefs and critical connoisseurs. Cooking shows featured all gourmet creations and web sites displayed artfully photographed delights. Then something changed. Perhaps it was the desensitizing of web culture or perhaps it was a cry for help from the food-loving public. But by God - there came a day when fancy vegetable towers came crashing down and $50 mushrooms were no longer acceptable. Amason and Blakley wanted see the old stand-bys, the carnival foods of their childhoods, the sticky mess of a deep-fried candy bar, the indulgence of a greasy burger with all the fixins. It was the birth of the nasty food web-trend. And it was delicious. The website This is Why You′re Fat is an ode to this trend - whether seen as a commentary on North American dietary habits or a celebration of the deliciously bad - Amason and Blakey are devoted to the world′s newfound obsession with over-the-top food. Within its first month the site pulled in over ten million eye balls, and attracted major nation media including CNN. The world cooked, they listened. www.thisiswhyyourefat.com

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Humor, Cooking, Health, Ebooks, Fitness

144 pages, Paperback

First published October 13, 2009

Reviews

[karen]

yes yes yes yes yes! food orgasm. so this book is everything that is me - it is disgusting and mismatched and confuses a lot of people, but if you just sit down with it, you might understand it better. fact - cadbury creme eggs are the height of human invention. fact2 - if you deep fry them, they get even better. i still have to verify that last fact, but i'm inclined to trust in it. this book is all about taking what is great and making it better. do you like cinnamon rolls?? how about when you are making them, you roll bacon into the roll-cravasse? wouldn't that be much better? i say hell yeah! would you like to have a meatloaf that when you cut it open, macaroni and cheese bleeds out?? hell yeah!! would you like a grilled cheese sandwich made with pound cake and cheesecake?? hell yeah!! i must have all of these. some are recipes, some are served at fearless restaurants, and some are just homemade food killing machines. the cover image, in case you can't tell, is a cheeseburger made on 2 krispy kreme donuts. i mean - what do i have to do to get this in my mouth right now?? everything in here delights me - it is all massive and unhealthy and everything has cheese or bacon or both. there is french toast that when you cut into it, oozes melted cheese. there is a four foot long sandwich that is comprised of every meal of the day, at intervals...there is an apple pie, whose lattice crust is made of bacon (which i have since made, and YUM). i swear it's like i have discovered my higher power and it is speaking to me through this book. i await your instructions.

okay, i decided to add my fourth of july grilled cheeseburger picture to this review, because it is everything this book stands for: it is america, and it is excessive and messy and delicious. quake in fear...



i ate that. and it felt like patriotism.

come to my blog!

[Don Gillette]

If a book can be both disgusting AND food porn, it's this one.

[Lauren]

Hilarious.

[Gaby]

This Is Why You're Fat: Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks by Jessica Amason and Richard Blakeley is a funny and frightening compilation of some of the most decadent, fattening, artery blocking dishes in the United States today and the restaurants and towns that created them.

Here are a few of featured dishes:

the McNugettini - which combines vodka, a chocolate shake, bbq sauce and McDonald's McNuggets;
Twinkie Weiner Sandwich - inspired by a Weird Al Yankovic film, combines a hotdog with a Twinkee with Cheez Whiz;
Turducken - a chicken stuffed into a duck, stuffed into a turkey;
Deep-Fried Coke - do you really need a description?!;
The Elvis Donut - peanut butter-glazed donut topped with bananas and bacon; and
The 29,559 Calorie Sandwich

Many of these dishes are accompanied by their recipes. There are a great deal more mind-boggling dishes and recipes.

Needless to say, none of the dishes have their calories listed, but we can safely assume that any one of them likely surpasses the daily recommended calories for most adult males.

This Is Why You're Fat: Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks is a crazy compilation and a sure conversation starter. It's sure to take away your appetite!

ISBN-10: 0061936634
Publisher: HarperStudio; 1 Original edition (October 27, 2009), 144 pages.
Review copy provided by the publisher.

[V Dixon]

Oh my goodness!! If the cover is not enough to make you want to re-evaluate your eating the recipes should. No I am not a healthy eating guru by no stretch of the imagination. I like Krispy Kream and burgers just not combined in a Krispy Kreme Burger. Sadly this is the recipe that made me want to barf the least. The auhtor gives us gravy pizza. hanburger and coen dog pizzas, hotdogs with twinkie buns and if that was not enough there are the fried treats. Fried treats include deep fried moon pies, deep fried cadbury eggs and deep fried oreos. After completing this book, I was feeling the need to clean out my pantry, freezer and refrigerator simply because I felt ill by the excess in this book.
I am guessing this one will not make the American Heart Association list of recommendations.

[James]

This is a book that will make you feel peculiarly nostalgic for the Great Recession years. While the memetic website “This Is Why You’re Fat” has gone the way of “Iz Can Have Cheeseburger” and “Chocolate Rain” jokes, this compedium of gross-out/mega-calorie-dense recipes will have you feeling like Obama got inaugurated all over again. Yes, it certainly shows its age at times (there’s an entire section dedicated to mammoth-sized, bacon-centric foodstuffs … why not toss in a Charlie Sheen reference or two while you’re at it?) but for the most part it’s still a fascinating — and occasionally terrifying — look at American overconsumption at its grandest. The same way Bataille and De Sade blurred the line between erotica and body horror, this book pretty much toes the same line between indulgent food p*rn and stomach-churning excess. Just don’t read it on an empty stomach … or a full stomach, for that matter.

[Aimee]

A compendium of the biggest, most ridiculous food creations ever to grace a plate (or an entire table top in some cases). Reading this book is somewhat like watching a train wreck in slow motion, except the cars are food. Many of which should never be combined. Let alone deep fried. I felt greasy just looking at some of these. *shudders*

There is one that I feel drawn, nay, compelled to try: the grilled cheesecake sandwich. Two buttered (!) slices of poundcake with a thin slice of cheescake in the middle grilled golden brown. I can hear the screeching of the train derailing even as I type...

[Kate]

This is Why You're Fat: Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks is the most disgustingly refreshing novel that I have ever read. The short novel is packed with pages of mouth watering recipes and pictures of items such as Grilled Cheesecake Sandwich and my personal favorite, Deep-Fried Moonpie Burger. While there is not much commentary on the items featured, the tongue-in-cheek novel kept me entertained for hours. This is a book I would definitely recommend if you are in need of a good laugh, even if it is at our own society's expense.

[Heather]

Crazy pictures of outrageous foods and recipes too. The cover features a bacon cheeseburger with Krispy Creme doughnuts for the bun. Also featured are the Juicy Lucy as seen on Man VS. Food, and a Frito Pie that looks a lot like the "Walking Taco" that our Band sells at the Food Faire each year. There is also a website:

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

[Tina]

A lot of the stuff in here is just plain gross. Made me think of Guy Fieri and Man vs. Food. Now I don't feel so bad for ordering a regular size cheeseburger w/ fries. Child's play compared to this stuff.

[Kara]

This is the very definition of “food porn” - desire and shame mixed together in pictures of the basic primal need for substance taken to levels of caloric kink that leaves everyone looking bad, in every way possible, and yet the rapid desire for more cannot be stopped…

[Vinh Ngo]

Food Porn at it's best!!!! It comes from a great website... Off-beat, exploitative and so grotesque you can help but feast your eyes

[Elsa]

Any book that has gross amounts of bacon in it can't be all bad!

[Kevin]

A culinary train wreck that features the Krispy Kreme burger on the cover. A Happy Meal pizza? really?

[Emma]

glad to see that Poutin and others (Scotch Eggs) made it in.

[Lisa]

2.5 Again..I never know what to give these books...but I did feel a bit bad because this just made me hungry...a little bit sick, but hungry nonetheless.

[Julie Rowse]

Excellent photos, and excellent reminders to me that I actually do eat pretty healthy. I can't believe some of this food is actually sold to Americans. It's embarrassing.

[Martin]

Holy crap these pictures are at once hilarious and horrifying! Not much reading to be found here, just staring in disbelief (and occasionally drooling). haha

[Eduarda]

Por vezes comestível, mas maioritariamente perturbador.

Para a história fica o Bacone.

[Doroti]

Gross! Simply gross.

[Eliatan]

More information about the stories behind these creations would have made this a much better book.

[Tara Sherman]

Is this reading? It feels like the internet in book form. Which I guess is the point.

I'm nauseated. Which I guess is the point.

[Andre Hermanto]

Good:
* Filled with many absurd recipes, such as: bacon apple pie.

Bad:
* I can't (and don't want to) cook any of them.