15 June 2010

Krusty Burger

“Puts the ‘die’ in diet”

 

Krusty Burgers are the Simpson family’s favorite meal.

Krusty Burgers are the Simpson family’s favorite meal.

By Chester Pach

This essay is excerpted from Pop Culture versus Real America, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. A profile of a real farmers market appears here.

There’s no place like Krusty Burger, the fast-food restaurant on The Simpsons, for a quick meal that’s just a little bit different. On the menu is the signature Krusty Burger, “which is deep-fried with love.” Also available is the Clogger, a pork sandwich that got its name from the effects of its greasy contents on stomachs and arteries. Diners can also enjoy a Partially Gelatinated Nondairy Gum-Based Beverage, which tastes like a milkshake but probably doesn’t contain a drop of milk, or of anything natural.

Bart and Lisa Simpson enjoy eating at Krusty Burger because they’re big fans of Krusty the Clown, the star of a popular children’s television show. Krusty has shocking blue hair and a huge smile, but he’s anything but hilarious off camera. He has gambling debts, alimony payments, and an addiction to a prescription painkiller. He’ll sell almost anything under the Krusty brand name to make money, and he couldn’t care less about product safety. His home pregnancy tests produced so many false positives that he pulled them off the market and repackaged them as coffee stirrers. He put a jagged metal Krusty O in each box of his breakfast cereal. After eating one of the metal O’s, Bart needed surgery to remove his appendix.

Krusty also relies on dubious business practices in his chain of fast-food restaurants. His only interest in recycling is using the uneaten portions of old Krusty Burgers to make new ones. When studies revealed that the Krusty Burger was “the unhealthiest fast-food item in the world,” Krusty created a new Mother Earth Burger, made from barley and packaged in a green wrapper. “I’m saving the Earth,” Homer Simpson exclaimed as he bit into his “eco-licious” burger. He soon had a different reaction. Like everybody in Springfield who ate a Mother Earth Burger, he got sick from tainted barley. As usual, Krusty avoided the consequences of another bad product. Instead, the farmers and grain processors who supplied the bad barley went out of business.

Chester Pach teaches history at Ohio University, where he holds the title of Outstanding Graduate Faculty Member. He is the author of three books on U.S. politics and foreign policy. His next book, which will soon be published by the University Press of Kansas, is The Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)