In today's Times Magazine, former restaurant critic Frank Bruni vomits up a lot verbiage to describe how he'd purge his meals Roman-style in an effort to eat more, at the age of 1! Whoa, this is one bloated cover story.



Atmosphere
 Bruni, with nothing left to critique, critiques his childhood menu of stuffing his face full of every food known to man, from Quiche Lorraine to Snickers to sausage pizza to lamb chops to Big Macs to bacon-wrapped chicken liver to... BLAAAAH!!!

Recommended Dishes

The way Mom told the tale, I plowed through that second burger as quickly as I had the first. Then I looked up from my highchair with lips covered in hamburger juice, a chin flecked with hamburger bun and hamburger ecstasy in my wide brown eyes. I started banging my balled little fists on the highchair's tray.

I wanted a third.

Ladies and gents, to emphasize again: He. Was. One.

On momma denying him the third:

Up came the remnants of Burger No. 2, and up came the remnants of Burger No. 1.... It became a pattern. No fourth cookie? I threw up. No midafternoon meal between lunch and dinner? Same deal.

Whine List
 Less a savory meditation on the dangers of childhood obesity, the article is a tart and tangy, romanticized glorification of a disturbed kiddie psychosis, a sad personal portrait of America getting fatter by the second. He gives his distressing ode to gluttony four frickin' stars, self-indulgent in his childhood chomping. Admittedly, things perk up when he describes his college-aged secrets to being a successful bulimic: the best campus bathrooms, how to successfully purge after dinner with friends, all those savory details.

He found such a clever way to cope with his severe eating disorder:

...so many other extreme or warped weight-management regimens...took the place of bulimia as I struggled for decades to figure out how to answer my appetite without being undone by it and as I traced an unlikely route to the most implausible of destinations: professional eating.

Justify your destructive, traumatizing addictions by making them your life's profession! Hey, we've always cherished tearing other people apart for sport, so why can't we go and...

Oh, wait.