2009 is the year of the gross food movement

Making food ridiculously large and unhealthy has become an art form, reaching its zenith with the bacon explosion and the blog This Is Why You’re Fat. Finally, there’s a name for things like 10 pound BLTs. Gourmet Magazine has deemed this phenomenon the “gross-food movement.”

Defining what constitutes gross food is tricky. It’s almost always a Frankenstein-like combination of two foods that shouldn’t go together, say pizza and blueberry waffles, blown up to huge proportions. To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, you’ll know gross food when you see it. Like this deep-fried cheeseburger on a stick.

Gourmet describes gross food in slightly more eloquent terms.