Have you ever wondered what makes America so great?  Is it our imperialistic view of the world?  Is it our government giving free money to giant corporations with disfunctional business models?  Is it Paris Hilton?

No, it’s none of the above (although that all goes a long way towards making this great nation what it is).  Dear friends, THIS is what makes America great.  Our love for food.  This Is Why You’re Fat documents our love for food and our elevation of cuisine from merely a necessary tool in the battle for survival to a gluttonous art form.

Let’s strike up the chorus!  “O, beautiful for spacious skies…”

Michael J. Nelson, Gimorozo salutes you. You truly are a manly man.  For the entire month of February, Mr. Nelson has vowed to eat nothing but bacon, the food of the gods.

I once ate nothing but bacon for a month, then I died.  Luckily, aliens were able to reconstruct my body from spare robot parts and sorbothane, making me the most efficient assassin to walk the earth.  Too bad for them I’m lazy and pathologically terrified of dung beetles or I surely would have helped them take over the world by now.  Oh well, at least I make lawnmowers.  That’s pretty cool, too…right?

Tomatoes are the plant kingdom’s equivalent of the  uncle who only visits on holidays. 

Sure, they have all sorts of stories about hanging out in salads along with the carrots and broccolli and other vegetables; but deep down, everybody knows they’re a fruit.

Presentation: 0/10

Seriously?  I realize it’s a hamburger, you don’t really need to label it as such.  The real tragedy is that I just paid big money for this burger and it’s wrapped in a normal hamburger wrapper.  No box, no special wrapper, no holograms.  Boo.

Appearance: 5/10

Ok, definitely not as awesome looking in real life as in the commercials, but that’s to be expected.  Nothing special, nothing too nasty.  But I can already tell that this thing is gonna be decidedly messy.  And it kinda smells funny too…

Taste: 7/10

I like mushrooms just as much as the next guy.  I also realize that a hamburger called the “Gourmet Mushroom Swissburger” may have some amount of mushrooms on it.  But the mushrooms are overwhelming…along with the salt.  And honestly, if you can’t taste the ground up bovine, why bother?  In fact, why bother putting the bacon, swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato on it?  All those tasty extras wasted by a mushroom taste strong enough to peel the skin off your tongue.  Oh the humanity!  On top of that, the mushrooms ooze their mushroomy water all over the place.  It’s messy, and not a finger-licking-good kind of messy.

Overall: 5/10

Not that impressive, Wendy–and I’m really not that picky of an eater.  But if I’m going to shell out 4 bucks on a sandwich, it would help if it tasted better than a sponge soaked in old soy sauce.  It seems like Wendy needs to look up the word “gourmet.”

Apparently, salsa goes bad after about a year.  It tastes kinda like moldy feet mixed with battery acid and has a slightly fizzy zing to it.  It’s almost good…but mostly disgusting.

You have been warned.