Man goes into cardiac arrest after eating 'Triple Bypass Burger' from Las Vegas restaurant 'Heart Attack Grill'

Saturday, February 18, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: cardiac arrest, Heart Attack Grill, food

(NaturalNews) A 6,000 calorie stack of three beef patties, three slices of processed American cheese, and 12 strips of bacon -- oh, and a couple veggies -- known as the "Triple Bypass Burger" recently lived up to its name at the Las Vegas restaurant "Heart Attack Grill" where it is served. Complete with "Flatline Fries" and a large soft drink, the facetious meal became a living embodiment of diet-induced illness when a customer suffered cardiac arrest while consuming the meal, upon which he was wheeled away on a stretcher and taken to the emergency room.

The UK's Daily Mail reports that, because of the irony of the situation, many of the other customers and onlookers present at the time of the incident believed it to be some kind of publicity stunt. But the restaurant's owner, Jon Basso, a former nutritionist, insists the heart attack was very real, and that as "morbid" as the company's sense of humor is, it would never "pull a stunt like that."

"The gentleman could barely talk. He was sweating, suffering," Basso is quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. "I actually felt horrible for him because the tourists were taking photos of him as if it were some type of stunt."

One onlooker actually captured video footage of the incident as it occurred, which he later uploaded to YouTube. You can view that video footage here:
http://youtu.be/s2JVfAoyG4o

The Heart Attack Grill is obviously designed as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of the diseases and health conditions commonly attributed to eating excessive amounts of junk food. Besides employing a wait staff that dresses as doctors and nurses, Basso has reportedly gone so far as to create an advertising campaign that offered to pay for the meals of all customers who weighed at least 350 pounds, and even hired a more than 600 pound man to be the commercial spokesman for the campaign.

However, during a recent interview on FOX News' Fox and Friends, Basso told viewers that his restaurant is not really about causing people to develop health problems, but rather about being "a place where you can live the way our Founding Fathers intended us to live." In other words, the real reason George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the others sought independence from England was apparently to establish a processed "foodocracy" where individuals were free to eat themselves to death.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

http://www.foxnews.com