The World Series of Gastronomy, Part I

New York, October 17 -

Back in the San Francisco days, I dated a woman named Emily. It was one of those aromatic May-December things - she was 21, I was 26, and the enormous gulf of our years tore us apart. It was awful.

We had two things in common, though, and both sustained us through viewing the world from almost completely different lenses. The first was jazz. We loved the music but differed heavily on artists. She as a Wynton Marsalis/Jazz Messengers kind of person. I was a John Coltrane man.

That bears repeating: I was a Coltrane man.

Coltrane now.
Coltrane tomorrow.
Coltrane forever.

We came together where it counted _ at the intersections of Wayne Shorter and Stan Getz _ as well as with Trane overlaps. Lee Morgan _before he was shot to death in between sets by his common-law wife (ironically at an East Village club named Slugs) was a Jazz Messenger but played as a 19-year old on Coltrane's seminal Blue Train) and it was Emily who introduced me to Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto. I may have, yes, called her a "Southern California brat" to her face, but you have to give her credit for that...

But where Emily made  the most important imprint on my life was with a single sentence. Oakland, California, it was, Piedmont Ave...
"Food," she said. "Food brings people together."

The first year I began covering baseball was 1998, the Oakland Athletics for the San Jose Mercury News. Obesity statistics in America have clearly reached pandemic proportions and sportswriters around the country have certainly done their part. That year, not only did I track how many baseball games I covered for the Mercury that year (112 of 162) but I also counted how many hot dogs I ate across the American League (144, I believe. I will consult my 1998 scorebook).

144 hot dogs in 112 games.

America has grown, both in education and waist size since those innocent days. And NO, I do not regret asking the sales clerk at the Macy's Westshore in Tampa a month earlier "What is happening to this country?" when it was easier to find size 38x30 jeans instead of my size (33x32).

 The citizens of the great city of New York - without being asked their permission - paid out $1.3 billion in taxpayer money for new Yankee Stadium and one of the touches of the new yard is a calorie chart next to each item along the stadium concourses and food court. When the Yankees and Texas Rangers met for Game 3 of the American League Championship Series I had resolved that this would be the season I would avoid the nightmarish box lunches that are the  annual fare for the press during the postseason: Roast beef suffocated by plastic, a withered pear, some Lay's potato chips and maybe a brownie.

Hadn't I graduated from this? Didn't I have a more inspired culinary destiny for myself?

It was  time to eat healthier, time to stake my claim as an evolved gastronomist.
It was time to renounce, McGwire-like, the year 1998, when I ate 144 hot dogs. (in 112 games).
It was time to order the Nathan's cheese fries at 1341 calories...

In other words, with one basket of cheese fries, I was eating the equivalent of 4 1/2 Nathan's hot dogs (Kobayashi would be proud!)

At that moment I decided it was time to rethink the Golden Arches...Maybe they were good for the world.


After all, one Quarter Pounder with Cheese (510 calories) + a Big Mac (540 calories) + 6-piece Chicken McNugget (280 calories) = 1330 calories combined.

(source: http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutritionfacts.pdf)


"You rely on us to deliver quality food, and we take that responsibility seriously. From our team of registered dietitians to our trusted suppliers, we’re dedicated to making you feel good about choosing McDonald's foods and beverages."  -- From the McDonald's company web site.