Man V. Food

I hate to admit it, but I spend an inordinate amount of my very little free time watching the the Travel Channel and in particular the Man V. Food series which one would think would more appropriately be shown on the Food Network. I suppose, Adam Richman, the star of Man V. Food does travel around the country in his search for disgustingly large portions of food to consume, so there is a travel angle. And if you are a traveler who likes to go to new cities and discover where you can get the world's largest hamburger, omelet or pancakes, the show is a must see.

I am not sure why I am obsessed with watching Adam (I was going to call him Mr. Richman, but after watching him consume a five pound jumbo Stomboli (sort of an inverted Calzone) in Butte, Montana, I feel as though we should be on a first name basis) eat amounts of food that would choke a horse. Maybe since I have lost 50 pounds, I am living vicariously through his self-indulgence. This is not to say that I have eaten a pizza the size of New Hampshire or a steak dinner that pretty much encompasses the whole cow. But I kind of enjoy watching Adam act as though he is not going to be able to choke down 500 oysters and then pulling it out in the last minute.

I truly worry about how long Adam can keep his prodigious eating talents on the air. I do notice that most of the programs I see are reruns. And I ashamed to say that I don't change the channel even though it is the same program I've seen ten times before about a hamburger joint in Boise (the city of my birth) that serves hamburgers the size of frisbees.

I suppose it is the same compulsion that draws people to sideshows in carnivals to stare at two-headed calve fetuses in a jar. I watch with horror as Adam, a seemingly normal sized man, eats a 72-ounce steak and all of the trimmings with no thought to the consequences to what all of this will have on his body. And other than what I assume is a healthy salary he gets from the Travel Channel, the only other reward Adam seems to get from eating a 12-egg omelet is a t-shirt and his picture on the wall of the restaurant.

As morbidly fascinated as I am by watching Adam eat, I am equally as fascinated in a more disgusting way at the people in the restaurants who watch him live while he confronts hostile food products. On last nights program about the Jumbo Stromboli, one belligerent red neck berated Adam to "put on his man pants" and finished the "bleeping" Stromboli. Being a man in Butte apparently means you can consume things larger than your head. And judging from the red neck's belly he consume lots of things larger than his head and definitely many things larger than his brain.

Adam is, however, only 36 years old. If he keeps this up his over indulgence until he is 40, we'll be seeing him on the Biggest Loser, a show I've also watched. It isn't nearly as entertaining watching people lose weight as it is watching them pack it on.

I suppose the beauty of watching Man V. Food is that it does let me consume mass quantities of food without gaining a pound. So for that, god bless you Adam Richman!