“If you have an 8,000-calorie meal, thats equivalent to five days worth of food for most people,” said Laura Kruskall, director of nutrition sciences for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
I tried a few of those calories. The french fries cooked in lard were extremely salty, but tasty. The shake was thick and gooey and impossible to drink through a straw, and the burger meat was nicely done over an open flame. But there was no way I could put my mouth around the whole four-patty creation.
“Give people what they want,” Basso told me. “But tell them the truth. And thats what were doing here.”
Anyone who walks into the Heart Attack Grill weighing in at more than 350 pounds gets to eat free of charge. Basso has been widely criticized for this policy, but he laughs it off. “Hey, were all dysfunctional.”
Basso had similar restaurants in the Dallas and Phoenix area but closed them in the face of protests and community pressure. A spokesperson for one of his previous restaurants, 575-pound Blair River, died in March of obesity-related illness.