- November 12, 2010 • 10:30 am PST
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Adam Richman is engaged in a perpetual stunt to bag the biggest, grossest food. He takes on five-pound nachos, 72-oz. steaks, and overstuffed burritos. It’s an epic battle pitting Man v. Food. And he doesn’t always win. (Which may be why he’s also a spokesman for the stomach antacid Zantac.) While Richman’s high-profile show on the Travel Channel has captivated thousands, he’s hardly alone when it comes to stunts involving the stomach.
Dozens of writers and bloggers are courageously following Richman and the pioneering lead of George Orwell (who went down and out in the kitchens of Paris and the hop fields of Kent) and Ted Conover (who rode the rails with undocumented farm workers), spawning a whole genre of diet stunting from the confines of their homes. Call it the new immersion food journalism, which offers the curious fusion of shock jock and Jackass.
Why do these experiments appeal to people? Are we just trying to make sense of over-abundance, so much so that we’ve turned to food as cheap entertainment? Or is there something legitimate at stake? If so, what exactly are they trying to prove?
Here are a couple recent stunts worth thinking about:
