42 Ways to Die Full and Happy

If I were alone on this planet—truly alone, no one watching, no one to judge—I’d sit naked in a meadow with a pile of fast food large enough to block out the sun and eat until my body simply refused to continue. Cheeseburgers stacked to impractical heights, pizza slices the size of road signs, sushi that someone had the good sense to deep-fry. I’d go out with sauce on my face and the absolute conviction that I’d made the right call.

The reason this doesn’t happen in real life is threefold: people are merciless about this kind of thing and My 600-lb Life does not look like a fun time; I’d like to keep fitting in a single airplane seat without buying two; and I refuse to be the story that circulates online—the one where emergency services have to dismantle a wall to extract what used to be a person. That’s not the legacy I’m going for.

But on a quiet Tuesday afternoon I can still watch a video. 42 Foods You Need To Eat Before You Die, produced by Food Insider, is exactly what it promises: forty-two dishes that are obscenely, defiantly good—cheeseburgers dunked in cheese broth, ice cream portions that qualify as furniture, pizza that makes you feel like a geological formation. Don’t watch it hungry. You will immediately spend money you don’t have and feel terrible about yourself afterward. Watch it after a meal, from a safe distance, with the full knowledge that you’re never actually going to make it to all forty-two. That’s the dream, and the dream is enough.