July 13, 2009

This Is Why You're Dead And Hard To Fit Into A Coffin

by Choire posted @1:40 PM

That is one big casketFrom today's New Yorker on why "we" are so fat (not you! You look greaaaat), comes word of Goliath Caskets, who make "triple-wide coffins with reinforced hinges that can hold up to eleven hundred pounds." The New Yorker describes the American passion for extreme (by which I mean, not the normal and perfectly acceptable bulking-up as one ages) weight gain, in a review of the current literature, as mysterious!

But is it really?

Before McDonald's discovered the power of re-portioning, it offered just a small bag of French fries, which contained two hundred calories. Today, a small order of fries has two hundred and thirty calories, and a large order five hundred. (Add fifteen calories for each package of ketchup.) Similarly, a McDonald's soda used to be eight ounces. Today, a small soda is sixteen ounces (a hundred and fifty calories), and a large soda is thirty-two ounces (three hundred calories).

As McDonald's is the number one customer for beef in the United States, and one of the top purchasers of potatoes, and it serves nearly 50 million people every day, I think maybe we could start looking around there?

Oh and also, you know, the constant stuffing of faces with corn syrup, but yeah.

 
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32 Comments / Post a new comment

  1. wiilliiaamm [#225]

    "Serving the needs of the oversized casket community for 20 years".

    Really…there's a "community"?

  2. brianvan [#149]

    Obesity is not the only use for these! I just ordered one for my huge cock. It will be interred separately. I have it all mapped out in my living will.

  3. KarenUhOh [#19]

    The Final Home of the Whopper.

  4. dado [#102]

    Q) Why do these coffins have reinforced hinges?

    A) Because people are dying to get in them.

  5. giovanni [#224]

    I'm getting one of those coffins and taking a couple of people with me.

  6. Krugmanic Depressive [#403]

    Oh, sure, the oversized casket may be embarrassing, but remember the Guinness Book's World's Fattest Man, Robert Earle Hughes, the 900+ pounder who was buried in a piano case?* Well, the big casket is less embarrassing than that.

    *Apparently, the piano case story is a myth. Who knew?

  7. WindowSeat [#180]

    Feh, bury the fatties in old refrigerators.

  8. Tuna Surprise [#573]

    The cemetary better make them buy two plots for this sucker. I'll be damned to hell before I let some dude's coffin spill over into my final resting place.

  9. Colonel Mustard [#183]

    The real problem is finding a pallbearer with a license to operate a forklift.

  10. CaptainFantastic [#534]

    At last, a way to be buried with two hookers.

  11. propertius [#361]

    Looks like the caskets have plenty or room for sacrificial burgers, fries and sodas to accompany the departed.

  12. bshep [#746]

    from the about us page:
    In 1985, Keith's father, Forrest Davis, (Pee Wee) quit his job as a welder in a casket factory and said, “Boys, I’m gonna go home and build oversize caskets that you would be proud to put your mother in.”

  13. missdelite [#625]

    A place for you AND your demons.

  14. alorsenfants [#139]

    Guessing that Federal Air Emission standards won't allow for the cremation of these people?

    Nice!

  15. My Number Is My Address [#237]

    NO LONGER WILL YOUR FAT CHILDREN BE HARD TO SHOP FOR EVEN IN DEATH! It is every American mother's saddest dream. No joke.

 

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