Category Archives: America’s Culinary Treats

Did you know that the average American woman weighs 163 pounds, while the average American man weighs 190? It’s true. What does that tell us? Clearly some of you are holding us back, you skinny bastards. That’s why we at AFFotD present you with this list of foods which are delicious, American, and amazingly unhealthy. If we all work together, we can bring the average weight of an American above the Mendoza line! Get to reading, get to eating.

The (Terrifying) Black-Bun Burgers of the World

Nope nope nope nope nope nope.”

~AFFotD Food Critic, John Goodman

black burgers oh no

Depending on what non-affotd corners of the internet you choose to spend your free time perusing, you might have heard recently about Burger King ramping up the gross factor on their food by offering a black bun, black cheese burger called the Kuro, or Black burger.  This burger re-issue (yes, they tried it before, more on that later) used squid ink and bamboo charcoal to create an all-black burger.  Black cheese, black ketchup, black soul are combined for fast food connoisseurs in Japan (because of course this is happening in Japan), leading to a whole slew of internet chatter of “lol, Japan is crazy” (which, duh) and “ew, this looks gross so I tried it oh by the way I’m also a white 24-year-old living in Japan currently while maintaining a blog about my travels.”

What we find most surprising about this burger has nothing to do with its mere existence.  When talking about Japan, nothing surprises us anymore.  No, upon doing some digging, we discovered that Japan’s Burger King does not have a monopoly on this particular brand of culinary insanity.  So, get ready to see a lot of unappetizing pictures of a type of food you once loved, because we’re going to delve into…

The (Terrifying) Black-Bun Burgers of the World

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The Best Potato Chip Flavors You’ve Probably Never Tasted

“No, dammit, I said weird things we’d WANT to eat.  Yes, we’re going positive this time round.  No, I’m not drunker than normal.  Just get it done.”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief Johnny Roosevelt

sour cream and onion

When we talk about food here, outside of the general “fried?  Gimmegimmegimme” context, we have a tendency to focus on strange flavors or, God forbid, Japan.  That also applies to our discussion of potato chip flavors—generally, when we take the time to describe potato chips to you, the reader, we talk about flavors that other countries like to use, and why those countries are wrong and bad.  We mention potato chips that you haven’t heard of because you live a good life and avoid bad things, and most other countries like to hawk terrible potato chip flavors, and they can go to hell and take their ketchup flavored potato shavings with them, those sons of a bitches.

But we’ve decided that today, just this once, we should try to be positive with our guidance.  So we’re not going to talk about awful potato chip flavors you didn’t know existed.  Instead, we will discuss underrepresented potato chip flavors out there, and let you know what you’re missing.

No, we’re not being sarcastic, why do you keep assuming we’re being sarcastic when we try to say nice things?

The Best Potato Chip Flavors You’ve Probably Never Tasted

 cajun squirrel

This is not on the list.

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Swerve: Coca-Cola’s Almost Alcoholic Milk Product For School Lunches

Make it alcoholic!  No wait, make it milk for school lunches!  Fuck it, we’re drunk, do whatever.”

~Coca-Cola Executives

coca cola

We recently waxed the-opposite-of-poetic about Coca-Cola produced beverages that we found, to put it politely, shitty as shit.  In doing our research for that article, we stumbled across a single product, available from 2003 to 2005, that we felt belonged on our list, until a quick look at its history let us know that, no, this drink is wonderful, and the most American thing we can think of, and we wish we had it today.

That drink is Swerve.

Swerve is a milk drink, but it’s so much more.  It’s a microcosm of the product development process of modern day American consumerism.  It’s an opportunistic combination of bad ideas and impractical dreams.  It’s beautiful and it’s ugly and it’s everything about America, all mixed together into a sweetened milk drink.

Let’s talk about Swerve.

Swerve:  Coca-Cola’s Almost Alcoholic Milk Product For School Lunches

 swerve Continue reading

The Worst Coca-Cola Products in the World

“This is by far the worst idea you’ve had, and you used to put cocaine in your drink and try to sell it to kids.”

~Coca-Cola Product Consultants Shortly Before Being Shouted Down

daft punk coke

Coca-Cola holds an important place in America’s heart, and its economy.  Ever since their humble beginnings as a non-alcoholic version of the poorly named John Pemberton’s French Wine Cola nerve tonic in Atlanta in 1886, originally-addictive-as-shit and still-technically-addictive beverage has grown to become the most valuable brand in the world, raking in over 45 billion dollars a year, with the power to do anything they want, from brushing aside antitrust legislation proposed by Pepsi to allegedly getting Colombian union leaders assassinated.  The point being, Coca-Cola is an ingrained cultural and economic powerhouse, with dozens, if not hundreds, of brands and varieties across America and the globe.

Naturally, a very large part of Coca-Cola’s whole “made enough money in 2014 to surpass the GDP of 83 different countries” popularity comes from the fact that they make a delicious, American product.  Coca-Cola is wonderful, and anyone who says otherwise is a Pepsi executive who contractually has to say that he hates Coke, even though we all know that Coke and Pepsi are the most interchangeable beverages imaginable.  The taste preference in Cola brands generally falls between “the sweet one” and “the slightly sweeter one” with a handful of outliers saying, “I prefer the organic cola from Whole Foods because ouch stop that why are you flicking my ear that’s extremely annoying okay you know what you clearly don’t want a dialogue so I’ll just leave, you assholes.”  But, Coke came first, and Coke is the world leader, and even if we might prefer the slightly sweeter one, Coca-Cola can do no wrong.

Well, okay that’s not true.  They can do a lot of wrong.  The following is wrong.

The Worst Coca-Cola Products in the World

guys come on this garlic coke thing is a scam

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Jog N’ Vom: America’s Official Food and Drink Races

“Chug chug chug chug chew chew chew chew run run run run!”

~Only the Most American of Runners

pizza run

Americans either love or hate exercising.  Sure, you can find some middle ground of, people that guess they should go for a jog today, but generally speaking, you have two camps of American exercisers—the kind of person that gets really into their workout journal, and the kind of person who actively brags that they go out of the way to limit their day to day physical exertions as much as possible.  The stereotypes are in place—you have the cross-fit trainer on a Paleo diet, or you have the overweight American chugging a beer while eating a ChipoHut Taco (that’s where you take a Chipotle burrito, put it inside a full Pizza Hut pizza, and fold the whole thing into a massive taco).

Naturally, the latter is the more American option.  However, in the past few years, people who “exercise” and “take care of their bodies” and “can go up a flight of stairs without running out of breath” have seemingly taken a hard look at themselves and said, “Yes, I should still exercise, but maybe I can find a way to do it while also being a little unhealthy, which sounds a lot more fun.”

We’ve coined a term for this kind of slightly unhealthy, exponentially more fun exercise—the Jog N’ Vom.  Basically, dozens of races have sprung up across America that don’t want you to just run an arbitrary distance while they time you—they want you to incorporate drinking or eating something super unhealthy into your run, turning your 5K into an eating or drinking competition, which is a wonderful thing.

So, for you health nuts out there that still want to be the best American you can be, we present with you a (fairly) comprehensive list of the races that let you be bad while being good.

Jog N’ Vom:  America’s Official Food and Drink Races

beer run      

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The Worst Mountain Dew Flavors of All Time

“I am AMPED I am AMPED woah what if they made an energy called AMP and…wait I think my heart stopped, or…MOUNTAIN DEW WOO!”

~Mountain Dew Drinker (aged 12)

 mountain dew

Mountain Dew has one of the more unique rises to popularity of any beverage that can be poured out of a tap without someone checking your ID first.  Originally invented in 1940 in Tennessee with the we’re-honestly-not-kidding-here’s-a-commercial-for-it slogan of “Ya-Hoo!  Mountain Dew.  It’ll tickle yore innards” and advertising itself to Hillbillies, it’s since gone on to be extremely popular among gamers, extreme sports fanatics, and sixth grade kids who view it as a caffeine-rich forbidden fruit, like speed that you can buy at the gas station on the way to tweeking out throughout your school day.

Mountain Dew was first developed by Barney and Ally Hartman, who made it as a mixer and named it after a Scottish and Irish slang for “moonshine.”  It was eventually bought out by PepsiCo in 1964, and the “hillbilly angle” was removed not too long after.  While you know it as a “citrus” flavored soft drink, and it lists concentrated orange juice as one of its flavors, it’s basically just sugar and caffeine with a hint of “dorm cafeteria OJ” flavor to it.

And while “the potent combination of a sugar high with a caffeine buzz” is a good enough combination to help Mountain Dew corner 80% of the citrus-flavored pop market, in our age of American ingenuity and overzealous marketing, a company can only rest comfortably on your laurels for so long selling just one kind of middle-school wake up juice, and ever since the 1980s Mountain Dew has been experimenting with a variety of flavors.  Some of them are good (looking at you, Code Red).  Some of them…well, not so much.

The Worst Mountain Dew Flavors of All Time

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The Best Holiday Treats of Christmas

“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!”

~Santa Claus, probably, right?  Maybe?

santa cookie

Today is Christmas Eve, that day where you silently complain about the fact that you had to use a vacation day in order to travel back home for the holidays.  For some, it’s an important part of the Christmas tradition, and for others, it’s a day you anxiously power through waiting expectantly for Christmas to finally show up.  And for most of us, it’s a day where oh shit you totally forgot to wrap your presents didn’t you, okay well you should get that shit down and chuck it under the tree before someone notices.

Now, a few days ago we told you about the worst Christmas treats out there.  There was reindeer poop and fruitcake and oh God figgy pudding why as well as a bunch of other horrific British concoctions and it was pretty much awful.  But hey, Christmas is tomorrow, some of you are working a half day or some nonsense like that, so let’s just talk about some Christmas treats that you’d actually want to eat instead.  Because America does actually know a thing or twelve about making Christmas delicious.

The Best Holiday Treats of Christmas

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The Worst Holiday Treats of Christmas

“Oh no.  Fruit Cake.”

~You, on Christmas

christmas cake

This week, we’re anxiously counting down the days for Christmas, a holiday you either love unconditionally or complain about at every opportunity while getting more and more pissed off each time someone calls you a “Grinch.”  “Shut up, I’m not a Grinch, I just don’t see why we’re making such a big deal about…” you start to say to your coworkers before being interrupted by the spontaneous Christmas caroling that just started because, God people, we know Christmas is almost here, that doesn’t mean you need to sing Jingle Bells” all fucking day, this is a place of work for fuck’s sake.

However, despite its detractors, most of us love Christmas, a time for family, friends, togetherness, and general Christmas cheer.  Everyone has their traditions, and while some of those traditions are stupid and racist, most are wholesome and do wonders to take your mind off the harsh winter, no seriously this winter’s going to be really bad goddamn it what did we do to deserve this.  And many of these traditions involve delicious sugary treats.

Where Thanksgiving is a holiday centered around savory goodness and no shut up we’re not going to be healthy about it, Christmas is by and large sweets-focused.  It’s assumed that you’ll eat and drink too much during Christmas, but unlike Thanksgiving, there’s a little more leeway for dinner.  Ham?  Fine!  Turkey?   Sounds good!  A roast beef covered in cigarette butts?  Goddamn it, Uncle Bert, we told you no smoking in the house, why the fuck did you think that putting your spent cigs in the oven was the best way to cover your tracks?  But a Christmas without sweet candy treats is hardly a Christmas at all, unless you’re someone who happens to not be Christian, in which case you still celebrate Christmas because let’s be real this shit is pretty damn secular by this point, and you’re getting the day off of work for it, so quit your bellyaching.

While some of these treats are delightful and delicious (stay tuned for our Christmas Eve article) some are…well.  You know.  Bad.

The Worst Holiday Treats of Christmas

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The Most Expensive Hot Dogs in the World

“I like my hot dogs like I like my women—concrete physical proof that I lead a shallow, superficial existence.”

~Rich people who spend more than $100 on hot dogs

fancy hot dog

America, let’s take a moment to talk about hot dogs.  They’re great, right?  Pretty much anywhere you go, you’re going to find a great hot dog with its own unique flavor profile and style that hopefully doesn’t involve ketchup because if your hot dog involves ketchup then everyone involved in its preparation and consumption has the taste buds of a six-year-old, but we digress.

Hot dogs are wonderful.  They’re delicious, gloriously unhealthy, satisfying, and most of all…expensive?

*Record scratch!*

No!  Of course they’re not!  If you’re spending more than five dollars for a hot dog, you’re a chump, and if you’re raising your eyebrows and saying, “Five?  Try two bucks, Rockefeller” in response to that five dollar figure, well, we wouldn’t argue with you on that point, we’d just point out that certain hot dogs of the jumbo and foot long variety at some of the best hot dog stands around can just about get away with charging that much.  But to your larger point, yes, we agree with you.  Hot dogs are supposed to be cheap, and delicious.  Cheap.  And delicious.

Unfortunately, well, you know.  Rich people exist.

leopard

Pictured above, a rich person with their pet oil tycoon.

We’re not talking about the standard kind of rich person, who has multiple mansions and cars and personal servants and, like, a McDonald’s in their house like that one scene we all remember from the Richie Rich movie.  No, we’re talking about the kind of rich people who either come from money so old they don’t understand how much things are supposed to actually cost in the real world, or people who are so amazed that they’re rich that they need to do everything in their power to let everyone know, “Hey, look at me, look at how much money I have!” like a seven-year-old boy who just learned how to back-flip into the pool.  “Why aren’t you guys looking I just bought a piece of JFK’s skull!”

We’ve talked about this specific type, and how they’re just, the worst, many times before.  We’ve seen $3.7 million bottles of vodka, whiskeys that cost as much as a house, hell, we’ve even run across all sorts of kinds of food covered in edible gold because fuck it, why not just devour ounce after ounce of pure gold at this point?  At this point we’ve basically accepted that we shouldn’t be surprised when notoriously cheap foods are made expensive for no particular reason.  Just as you’re sure to find someone willing to fork over $12,000 to get a pizza made in your house, you’re going to find thousand dollar hot dogs.

Now, admittedly, there are a lot of hot dogs that cost way more than they should, and a surprising amount of them sold at baseball stadiums.  But we’re not here to shame the people who spend $29 on a hot dog, or $50 on a hot dog.  No, we’re not going getting out of bed to write about any hot dog unless it costs more than $100, because we really want to drive home the absurdity of how much these people are paying for the right to brag about how much they are able to spend on a single goddamn hot dog.

The Most Expensive Hot Dogs in the World

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An AFFotD Thanksgiving: Wherein AFFotD Decries the Fiendish Practices of the Mother Nature Network, Who Have Actively Tried to Ruin Thanksgiving by Making it Healthier, While We Offer Methods to Make Thanksgiving Even More Un-Healthy to Spite These Malcontents

“Get.  That.  Healthy.  Shit.  Out. Of.  My.  Goddamn.  House.”

~Americans That Appreciate Thanksgiving

photo(78)

America, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means that all of us will be spending some quality time with our families, eating gobs of unhealthy food and washing it down with copious amounts of wine and waiting for that one family member to get a little too tipsy and start talking about “the things wrong with society” with a slightly racist tinge.  Or, if you don’t have a family member who does that, you’re probably that family member, so wait until your fifth glass of wine to talk about how Kim Kardashian was naked in Paper magazine, and how that makes you feel.

Of course, Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of the year.  It’s a day that basically is dedicated to making a bunch of delicious food, drinking with family, and watching football without having to leave the house.  It lacks the gift-giving pressure of Christmas, and the inevitable failure to meet expectations of New Year’s Eve.  Sure, a lot of food has to be made, but that tends to be more of a communal experience than anything else, while your dad gets half-jokingly ribbed for spending all of his time drinking beer on the damn couch watching the Dallas game.

The point being, we love Thanksgiving, and we love that people say it’s the one day a year where they really can “let themselves go” when they mean to say it’s like the 150th day this year that they’ve said “fuck it” and decided to really “let themselves go.”  That’s a beautiful thing.

And then you get websites that say stupid, bullheaded things like “9 Thankgiving Dishes Made Healthier.”  No.  We do not want our Thanksgiving to be healthier, Mother Nature Network.  We do not want that one bit.  Stop it.  We said stop.

Wherein AFFotD Decries the Fiendish Practices of the Mother Nature Network, Who Have Actively Tried to Ruin Thanksgiving by Making it Healthier, While We Offer Methods to Make Thanksgiving Even More Un-Healthy to Spite These Malcontents

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