Potato Party Craze Arrives in China

                
                
Let’s have a potato party!
It sounds strange, I know, but it’s the latest craze sweeping Asia.
All it takes is enough french fries to feed – or possibly kill – a small army, and then dumping them on about half a dozen plastic trays that you’ve formed into a gigantic makeshift plate.
Oh, and the most important part: Take a picture of you and your friends eating through this mountain.
It’s already big in South Korea and Japan, and it seems the craze has finally landed in China.
Pictures shared on Sina Weibo at the weekend appear to show a potato party held at a KFC in Wenzhou, the industrial center of Zhejiang province.
One of the people involved was recently quoted by CNTV.com as saying that the fries fest was “to relieve the pressure” of daily life – apparently by putting massive pressure on their arteries instead.
Depending on which report you read, there were either five or six people and, possibly to crank up the danger of a heart attack, the event was more of an eating competition than the more sedate versions so far documented in South Korea, where the potato party appears to have originated, and Japan.
Of the 50 bags of french fries purchased, “we only got through half,” Zhao told CNTV.com. “We packed the rest to go.”
Surprisingly, the CNTV report goes on to quote Yang Jianhua, a research director at the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences, who suggests shoving fistfuls of fries into your mouth can be a good stress-buster. “Harmless, creative entertainment,” he calls it.
It’s strange that no one ever organizes salad-eating contests. It’s always burgers or hotdogs – and if a vegetable is involved it is deep-fried.Now I’m not saying eating fast food is wrong. But let’s just look at some nutrition facts, shall we. For example, a small bag of McDonald’s fries (71 grams) contains:
-- 230 calories
-- 11 grams of fat
-- 1.5 grams of saturated fat
That means one bag accounts for 17 percent of your recommended daily fat intake.
Plus, french fries contain high levels of acrylamide, a “probable human carcinogen,” according to the World Health Organization, which has called for more research in its effects.
Like all modern fads, potato parties are unlikely to last. Yet in the meantime staff at fast-food restaurants such KFC, McDonald’s and Burger King must be terrified of the prospect of one these groups coming in.
A branch of McDonald’s in South Korea reportedly kicked out one gang at the end of February as their massive order of 60 large fries (roughly 33,000 calories) led to complaints from other customers forced to wait for their food.
Another branch in Tokyo has even put a limit on number of bags a customer can order during peak periods, between 11am and 2pm, to prevent overcrowding, The Japan Daily Press reported.
The way things tend to escalate in China, how will it be before we have our first potato party-related conflict here?