Carl’s Jr. has finally done it. They’ve created a Foot-long Cheeseburger. Available for $6.50 as a value meal or $4 for the plain cheeseburger, this new creation allows Americans to get even more greasy bang for their strained buck.

Disappointingly enough, the creators were not able to also create a foot-long hamburger patty. Rather, the hoagie is loaded with three separate patties along with the other regular toppings. Don’t expect to see it locally anytime soon. Carl’s Jr. hasn’t even taken the time to add it to their online Nutritional Database. For a sampling, you’ll have to fly to Orange County, Calif.

A little over a week ago, First Lady Michelle Obama shared a few of her concerns at the NAACP National Convention in Kansas City, Mo. “Right now in America, one in three children is overweight or obese, putting them at greater risk of obesity-related conditions like diabetes and cancer, heart disease, asthma...We are living today in a time where we’re decades beyond slavery, we are decades beyond Jim Crow; when one of the greatest risks to our children’s future is their own health.”

Well Michelle, the US isn’t alone in liking it big. Mexico City holds the Guinness Book of World Record for the largest sandwich ever made. The sandwich weighs in at 6,991lbs. From looking at the pictures, I’ll have to admit, it’s a little heavy on bread.

Then there’s Troy Landwehr, a Champion cheese sculptor, who recently transformed a 1200-pound block of cheddar cheese into the Statue of Liberty. Landwehr started sculpting cheese at age 12, after learning about the art at the Great Wisconsin Cheese Festival. Some of his other notable creations include a 640 pound Mount Rushmore, a detailed recreation of John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence, and a seven foot tall Abraham Lincoln.

Granted, it’s more difficult and much less appetizing to eat 1200 pounds of cheese in comparison to a foot-long trifle, but the gargantuan point still stands.

Further cementing our society’s love for the edible large is the Travel Channel’s show, Man vs. Food. Based entirely around the challenge of consuming if not the best at least the biggest foods the US has to offer, host Adam Richman “squares off against the best of the best.”

I’ve watched Man vs. Food twice, both times in the company of my father. The experience was memorable, with both of us unable to hold back the shameful sounds of guttural pleasure in response to the prospect of eating till we explode.

My own personal Woman vs. Food occurred seven years ago at a Denny’s on a dietary dark night in Kansas. The incident is still referenced as “Gena and the Pork Bowl.” The details have been almost entirely obscured in digestional discontent, but I know it involved several order mess-ups, half-baked waitresses, and an endless supply of “sorry, we forgot to bring you this” plates.

What of this Foot-long Cheeseburger and Michelle Obama’s pleas for a nation-wide nutritional overhaul? It comes to this, nationally not much will change without an economic motivation. One of the first columns I wrote was about using taxes as a health care tool. I focused particularly on the possible taxation of items containing High Fructose Corn Syrup. After visiting www.supersizedmeals.com, its clear hitting on HFCS’s isn’t enough.

Foot-long cheeseburgers should be priced at more than $4. Kids need the option of purchasing fast food taken away from them in schools. Though different, what if we could societally think about fast food chains like we do BP? For 86 days, oil gushed at an estimated rate of 60,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico. Every day, during my lifetime, fat has gushed out fast food chains and food corporations across the nation plugging our arteries and fattening our children for dietary slaughter. Who pays for this? Our economic and agricultural systems are set up that as a whole, we pay almost nothing.

Gena Akers can be contacted at gena.leneigh@gmail.com.