The hottest new hamburger at Hardee's is an unabashedly unhealthful mountain of meat called the Monster Thickburger.
Loaded with two 1/3-pound Angus beef patties, four strips of bacon and three slices of cheese, slathered with a generous glob of mayonnaise and encased in a buttered bun, it's not exactly a celebration of calorie counting.
Who's counting? When the 1,420-calorie, 107-fat-gram behemoth was unleashed, people gobbled it up.
"Sales results for this politically incorrect burger have been encouraging," Andrew Puzder, chief executive of Hardee's parent CKE Restaurants Inc., told Wall Street analysts after the big burger's introduction in mid- November. On Wednesday, when CKE reported that December sales at Hardee's were up 5.8% year over year, Puzder credited the burger and "its audacity."
The Monster has been singled out -- the Center for Science in the Public Interest called it the "fast-food equivalent of a snuff film" -- but the $5.49 4-inch-tall sandwich is just the latest in a heart-clogging trend.
Big is nothing new at fast-food restaurants. McDonald's, for instance, famously offered Super Size fries and drinks until it overhauled its menu to promote a "balanced lifestyle" in March -- coincidentally, or perhaps not, after the gross-me-out documentary "Super Size Me" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
But the newest trend isn't just about size or value. It's about thumbing your nose at the food police.
Hardee's has received fan mail from people grateful for the guilty pleasure of the Monster Thickburger (about the equivalent in calories of two Big Macs and a strawberry sundae at McDonald's) and offended that health watchdogs would want to take it away from them.
"While other restaurants were a bunch of Nancy-boys and became low-carb cowards in the face of moronic 'they made me fat' lawsuits, you did the AMERICAN thing," John Frensley, a 22-year-old college student from Texas, wrote in an e-mail, "by spitting in the face of lawyers, nutritionists and food-nazi types and offering a monument to Americanism."
Not to be outdone, Carl's Jr., also owned by Carpinteria, Calif.-based CKE, is peddling a 1-pound Double Six Dollar burger, with as many calories as the Monster Thickburger, albeit with 6 fewer grams of fat. (Hardee's does not operate in California; there are 688 Carl's Jr. restaurants in the state.)
For its part, Pizza Hut is flaunting a Full House XL Pizza, a "family-sized" pie promising 30% more sheer mass than a traditional large. And Burger King is testing an Enormous Omelet Sandwich filled with eggs, sausage and cheese.
Some of the gargantuan offerings aren't going down very well with health experts.
"The Hardee's Monster Thickburger is up there in the restaurant hall of shame," said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which accused Hardee's of engaging in "sinister marketing efforts" with its promotions for the burger.
Amy Lanou, director of the nutrition department at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, doesn't fault only the restaurants.
"Humans have an innate desire to harm themselves through indulgence, through pleasure and excess," she said. "I think it's unfortunate."
The heaviest consumers of fast food tend to be young men who are less concerned than others about calorie intake and nutrition. "Since these people are fast-food chains' best customers," said Bob Sandelman, a Villa Park restaurant consultant, "it's in the chains' best interest to appeal to them."
That's exactly what they do. At Del Taco, the top-selling menu items are Macho burritos -- each weighing more than 1 pound.
"The Macho line is clearly a guy-food thing," said Joe Senger, vice president of marketing for Lake Forest-based Del Taco Inc. "It's not for everyone."
The menu monstrosities are in stark contrast to the deli sandwiches, fruit cups and bottled water that chains in recent years began adding to menus in response to demand from customers -- and no doubt to blunt public relations body blows: lawsuits filed by obese teenagers who blamed fast food for their plights and the publication in 2001 of "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" by Eric Schlosser.
Even now, Pizza Hut has a Fit 'N Delicious line of pies. Wendy's is letting customers substitute French fries included in combo meals with a small chili, baked potato or one of two salads at no extra charge. And Hardee's just rolled out a charbroiled barbecue chicken sandwich with 4 grams of fat.
"Maybe after the first of the year people will say, 'I've had my fun. I need to go back to low-carb or low-fat,' " said Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing for Hardee's and Carl's Jr.
Maybe. Meanwhile, really big, really fattening offerings are spoofing the trend toward healthier eating.
