When we’re depressed, we often turn to comfort food—the foods we ate as a child—to help us feel better. Perhaps that explains why, with George Bush’s popularity plummeting, his chef, Cristeta Comerford, revealed at a gathering of chefs to world leaders that Bush’s favorite lunch is a peanut butter and honey sandwich with a side of homemade potato chips.
Understandable—that’s a lunch fit for a king (or at least The King, although he preferred his pb fried with banana).
More inexplicable in a time when, well, you know, there’s an obesity crisis and all, is Bush’s fave rave dinner: cheeseburger pizza, larded with cheese, ground beef, and bacon. The Guardian helpfully cooks up a pizza and analyzes the calorie content.
A large cheese and tomato base is 1,200, before you even start to heap upon it the glistening animal products. Minced beef, 500 calories, onion fried in oil, another 150, four tablespoons of ketchup, 60, four rashers of bacon, 224, more cheese, 240, and some gherkins. This pizza is a magnificent 2,374 calories …
Maybe the president is trying to evoke his predecessor, who had a bit of a love affair with junk food himself.
I think George is smart that he exercises so much. Especially with the ol’ numbers in the toilet.
But I’m not one to talk. My family’s comfort foods are Mac and Cheese (Kraft, I’m afraid… though dressed up with Worcestershire) or fried pork dumplings from a local Chinese joint.
“Minced beef, 500 calories, onion fried in oil, another 150, four tablespoons of ketchup, 60, four rashers of bacon, 224, more cheese, 240, and some gherkins.”
I am not arguing the amount of calories. Regardless of what you eat, if you are getting over 2300 kilocalories in one sitting, you are going to get fat.
However, I do balk at the idea that the “cheeseburger pizza, larded with cheese, ground beef, and bacon.” is bad for him.
Hear me out.
- Cheese: Great source of Protein, Vitamin D, Calcium, Phosphorus, Iodine and Selenium (and don’t forget all of the recent research on Calcium and Fat-Loss)
- Ground Beef: Protein, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Potassium, Iron, Zinc and Copper, Selenium, Vitamin E, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin and Niacin
- Bacon: Protein, Phosphorus, Selenium, B-Vitamins and the World’s second greatest source of Vitamin D (only Cod Liver Oil is better)
- “Fried in Oil” – If it was Lard, well, like I said, amazing source of Vitamin D. Butter? Vitamins A, D and K2 (Menaquinones, extremely healthy), Olive Oil (many have sung it’s praises)
Now, the pizza dough, well, that is basically devoid of any nutrients whatsoever.
But, again, ~2400 kcals is insane. Assuming that the implication is that he eats the whole thing.
Ian Lewis
I love how the article suggests that he eats the entire thing himself. Look on any major national pizza chain’s website at their nutrition facts, and show me a large pan pizza with toppings that doesn’t approach 2,000 calories, if you can. The point is, I doubt he sits down and eats the entire thing in one sitting.
You’re right, notgreg, and the Sun link reports that his chef went to great pains to say that GWB eats reasonable portions and exercises heavily. I think the Guardian article was just having a goof on the leader of the free world.