A man in his 40s this week died of a heart attack while eating a 6,000-calorie Triple Bypass burger at an aptly named chain that serves up massive burgers and allows grossly obese individuals to eat for free. We previously looked at Heart Attack Grill when its overweight spokesman died at 29. The question is whether a restaurant can be sued for knowingly serving food that comes with a higher risk of death or serious bodily injury — a risk that is openly advertised by the restaurant and assumed by the customer.
With the recommended caloric intake of an adult male set at 2500 calories, diners at the Heart Attack Grill can easily consume roughly 400 percent of the daily calories in a single artery-clogging, heart-stopping meal.
On Saturday, a customer in Las Vegas suffered a cardiac arrest at the table as other customers reportedly jockeyed to take pictures of him. The Triple Bypass Burger contains three slabs of meat, 12 rashes of bacon and cheese as well as a “unique special sauce.”
The owner, John Basso, was aghast at the behavior of the other customers (who may have believed this was a stunt). A former nutritionist and manager of a Jenny Craig weight loss diet center, Basso insisted that “[e]ven with our own morbid sense of humor, we would never pull a stunt like that.”
They would, however, keep serving heart attacks on a bun with “Flatline Fries.”
While I find the restaurant perfectly disgusting, I would have problems with a torts lawsuit when customers clearly understand the risks. Indeed, a sign at the front of the restaurant proudly proclaims “Go away. If you come in this place, it’s going to kill you.” There are a wide array of foods that are bad for you. However, courts have never said that serving up such dishes is akin to a food version of a dram shop violation.
In our previously discussion, we saw how the restaurant enlisted Blair River (a 572-pound obese man) as their spokesman. River, 29, died from pneumonia — a death connected to his obesity by critics.
The Heart Attack Grill food posts a warning that eating at the restaurant “may include sudden weight gain, repeated increase of wardrobe size, back pain, male breast growth, loss of sexual partners, lung cancer, tooth decay and liver sclerosis stroke. In some cases mild death may occur.” This death does not appear quite mild for the tourist but the food was certainly served as advertised.
Source: Daily Mail
you’ll get my burger when you pry it from my cold dead hhhnnnn
Perhaps this place should be given a public service award for emphasizing the problems of high calorie diets. They could subtitle the place “A Fool’s Paradise!”
People will do things that are bad for them and, truth to tell, we all end up dead for one reason or another often caused in part by our behavior over a lifetime.
To me, the issue is that the vendor is taking a profit from dangerous behavior, while society gets the tab for emergency room care and all the other health costs that accompany obesity. The owner wins, the rest of us lose even if we don’t buy his products.
Surely the public don’t pick up the tab in the land of no public health care? Funny how the fitter counries seem to be the ones with a public health care system.
That said, the same countries tend to try to be more controlling on choice.
Informed choice, eat [bad] heartily and die happy or eat rabbit food and get run over by someone driving an SUV?
Not to tell the knowing, but…..
several temporary factors will buy you a heart attack. Try Russian Roulette instead.
!) Smoking.
2) Sudden temperature chill
3) Wind chill
4) Sudden (even mild) exertion
5) Alcohol
6) Eating more than a very small meal (it pulls blood away from the heart)
There’s more, but someone mentioned anger and stress also
Boring I know, but if you survive your first one, only 50 percent do, this is what you will be told. And if you leave the hospital with angina pectoris; you’ll experience these factors. Good luck all.
and they serve cigarettes there too. unfiltered cigarettes, actually. Evil genius at work there.
Overheard at the moment of chest-clutching, “Hey Buddy, you gonna finish that?”
What OS and anon nurse said. Take a pill and relax Prowebuser.
I can see the law suit now, but, as I’m sure any reasonable person would agree, I thought it was a health food spa with an ironic name and the burger was part of the Atkins Plus Super Fat diet I’m on.
Prowebuser,
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=101492&page=2
“Cardiac arrest equals death and the vast majority of individuals who suffer a sudden cardiac arrest remain dead, even if the stars are aligned and bystanders, paramedics, doctors, and nurses did the right thing at the right time.
Nobody said that cheating death was easy.”
And to follow others, you seem like a prince of a guy.
P.S.
Anger and stress are killers, too…
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2009/02/24/Anger-stress-can-kill-you/UPI-92181235496424/
Prowebuser1,
…you seem like a gracious, thoughtful, level headed guy….can I buy you lunch? 🙂
Prowebuser, I you had been thinking of getting a job as a State Department diplomat, I think you should know your career is over before it began.
In LA they have “suicide by cop”, now Las Vegas has “suicide by burger”.
What is next, suicide by gummit?
Fat people are always going to over eat and for fatsos to go to this place is like speeders going to the freeway. Fatso was probably a smoker too.
A heart attack at 40 is probably not from his diet anyway. Still there is something deliciously ironic about the story – “What, you thought we were kidding?” The CEO of McDonalds (I believe it was) died from a heart attack after he returned to the job, a couple of the actors who provided the voice over for the American Beef’s “Its whats for dinner” ads had attacks after starting the work.
“A former nutritionist and manager of a Jenny Craig weight loss diet center…..”
wow, that’s a serious sell out.
Fundamental/Universal truth;
After Cain had murdered his brother Abel, God asked him where his brother was. Cain answered, “I know not; am I my brother’s keeper?…I GAVE him a burger…..”
The guy did not die you fool, he was in his forties, not overweight and is alive and recuperating. Where do you get your facts from? The National Enquirer? Do a little more research before you publish you idiot.
If people overeat, I don’t know how they can blame anyone but themselves. The Heart Attack Grill, to my knowledge, doesn’t hijack passersby and force feed them.
It would be unlikely that one meal would prove fatal on the basis of fat content, unless it had been preceded by many such meals in the past.
mespo….. lol….
Assumption of risk comes to mide as an Affirmative Defense..
Other than that…. whats the address of this grill…
Surely if they inform the customers of the risks there isn’t a problem? You can’t say it plainer than what they have and the publicity of their over weight spokesman dying from obesity only serves to emphasise the point.
At least they’re not trying to hide the risks like the tobacco industry did no so many decades ago.
I call it the Jack Kevorkian of restaurants.
I don’t think he died.
http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/02/15/man-suffers-heart-attack-while-eating-triple-bypass-burger-at-heart-attack-grill/?hpt=hp_c2