Pinnacles of Unhealthiness

Two recent news stories I came across served as interesting examples of the limits people push in filling their bodies with unhealthy foods, either in quality or quantity (or both).

The first comes from Allentown, Pennsylvania, which hosted the annual "Donut Derby" during the Labor Day weekend. This event combines competitive bicycle racing with competitive donut eating by placing participants according to their "DAT" or Donut Adjusted Time, which is essentially the amount of time it takes to finish the course minus 3 minutes for each donut the participant consumes. It sounds like the winners should expect to consumer over 20 donuts during the course of the race. The hope was to level the playing field between competitive cyclists who usually don't have the stomach for such indulgent foods, and leisurely riders who think a trip to the donut shop is the ideal cycling destination. While I admire the creativity and humor of the event, I doubt I'll ever seek to participate.
http://www.onlyagame.org/2009/09/the-labor-day-donut-derby/

The second story comes from Dallas, Texas, where the annual State Fair of Texas will be judging, among many categories, the Big Tex Choice Award for best new fried food. While past winners include fried coke and fried cookie dough, this year the award went to fried butter. Again, I appreciate that most people probably wouldn't have come up with the idea of frying butter into little bite-size balls (and there's probably a good, logical reason why no one has dared to try it before), but I don't think I'll ever stand in line to try such a dish.
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/1578877.html