![]() It has been about what sustainability actually means, and the need to revolutionise the way we make food or, as it's known, the supply side. But it's also something much bigger: a rallying point for those talking seriously about the challenges of food security in the 21st century.įor years the debate has been solely around improvements to agriculture about ways to increase yield and productivity while reducing impact on the environment. It's easy to dismiss the wretched cheeseburger crust pizza as a mere food curio, a tragic example of the terrible things done to perfectly innocent ingredients by those operating at the bottom end of the market. However, between deep, weary sighs, she did say that "if we are going to support people in making changes to their diets then the food choices they are offered are a crucial and critical element". She declined to comment on Pizza Hut's gastronomic delights, having not had them inflicted upon her. The head of the food industry division of the Responsibility Deal is the nutrition expert, Dr Susan Jebb. One of the core pledges to which Pizza Hut signed up was: "We will encourage and enable people to adopt a healthier diet." And yet here they are, two years later, introducing to their menu an item that looks like it could clog an artery at 20 paces. What's most peculiar about all this is that in March 2011, Pizza Hut, along with many other big players in food retail, signed up to the British government's Responsibility Deal, an attempt to co-ordinate efforts by the food and drink industry to encourage healthier lifestyle choices by the public. That could be mitigated only if the person who desperately wanted the cheeseburger crust pizza could find a friend with whom to share it. Extrapolating from figures for that BBQ meat feast stuffed crust monstrosity, the cheeseburger crust has north of 120 grams of fat the recommended daily limit for men is 95 grams. That was the BBQ meat feast stuffed crust, its doughy edges suppurating with cheap cheese, at 2,872 calories. Pizza Hut UK admits that the cheeseburger crust pizza is 288 calories a slice, or 2,880 for the whole thing, well above an adult male's recommended daily calorie intake and above the previous Pizza Hut big dog. There is the fat-soaked dough, the wretched insult of the cheese sputum, and a general air of desperation and regret. ![]() Surely they could have reached a more dignified end, perhaps by cutting out the trip to Pizza Hut altogether and going straight to landfill?Īs I bite down on the meat, hot salty water leaks into my mouth. Do I need to tell you that the burger is a sweaty, grey orb of deathly protein? It is advertised as 100% British beef, but origin is irrelevant after this has been done to it. When I prise out one of the mini burgers, the greasy, insipid dough beneath looks like the white flesh of an open wound that's been hidden under a plaster. It looks like a fairground carousel realised in food. Each of the 10 slices has a loop of crisped dough and in the circular fold made by that loop there is a tiny puck of burger, four or so centimetres across and smeared with more cheese. There is a scab of waxy cheese and flaps of pink salami the colour, worryingly, of a three-year-old girl's party dress. The middle is standard Pizza Hut: a soft doughy base as sodden and limp as a baby's nappy after it's been worn for 10 hours. ![]() I am doing this to shine a light on the way a deformed model of nutrition has come, in the past year, to play a key part in the debate around global food security. ![]() I am consigning myself to my very own grease-stained, cheese-slicked gastronomic hell. I am ordering a large double pepperoni pizza with cheeseburger crust. Most of the diners here today are going for the £6.99 all-you-can-eat buffet deal. I am doing this so others do not have to. Pizza Hut UK has just launched a new product an item so terrifying, so nightmarish, so clearly the product of a warped and twisted mind in matters edible, that I feel I have no choice but to try it. I feel like some Bible-bashing Republican senator who's been caught strapping himself to the wall bars in a secret torture garden, my appalling morals revealed. I fear my carefully honed reputation as a paragon of good taste is about to be destroyed. Quickly someone tweets that they have spotted me. Sitting in a public place inconspicuously is not part of my skill set. I am well over six foot, have a chest so big there are plans to build a high-speed rail link between my nipples, and have hair like an unlit bonfire. I turn my body away from the glass, but it makes no difference. I wanted a table towards the back but they directed me instead to one here, in the window. A chilly late autumn day in 2013 and I am sitting in a central London branch of Pizza Hut trying not to be noticed.
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