HARDEE’S ONE-HANDED HARA-KARI

On the one hand, I’d like to applaud Hardee’s for doing the right thing with its recent decision to cut back on caged eggs and crated pork. On the other hand—or, rather, in the other hand—is their new Country Breakfast Burrito, a stomach-splitting concoction that the Onion couldn’t top: two omelettes filled with bacon, sausage, ham, cheese, hash browns, and sausage gravy, wrapped in a flour tortilla.

And all for only $2.69. Plus, it’s portable! It’s a veritable one-handed wonder! With 920 calories and 60 grams of fat, the Country Breakfast Burrito provides half the daily recommended calories and all the saturated fat we’re supposed to get, and all before lunchtime!

Hardee’s created the Country Breakfast Burrito as a public service, a humanitarian gesture, if you will, to hungry Americans. As Brad Haley, Hardee’s marketing chief, told the AP:

And, further enhancing your quality of life, you can eat it in your car, where we reportedly eat about 20% of our meals these days.

Can you blame fast food chains for giving people what they want? Well, actually, yes, if you’re Jane Hurley, senior nutritionist for The Center for Science in the Public Interest. Hurley calls Hardee’s latest fat-laden fiasco the “Country Breakfast Bomb,” and “another lousy invention by a fast-food company.”

I won’t waste your time decrying how horribly unhealthy the Country Breakfast Burrito is. What I would ask you to consider, instead, is this: what kind of food system makes it possible to turn a profit on a product that contains eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, cheese, and potatoes, yet sells for only $2.69? What corners—or beaks and tails--are being cut?

If Hardee’s really wants to make the transition away from inhumane factory farm practices, it could start by weaning its customers off the notion that humongous portions of food filled with multiple kinds of meats should cost less than, say, a bag of carrots or a quart of milk.

That’s a move I’d applaud. With both hands.