Features

When the Double Down landed in little old New Zealand, Julia, our editor-in-chief, was inspired by the beauty of such a creation and came up with a fantastic idea for a feature: someone should eat only Double Downs for a week and see what happens. Obviously, anyone stupid enough to volunteer for such a high-risk challenge would have to be fairly disposable, should anything go wrong. Due to this, it was a very simple decision that said volunteer would come from Critic’s disgraced news team. After this had been determined, who better to undertake such a challenge than the news team’s very own fat-fascist, yours truly? Seeing as how I am often heard abusing fat people and complaining in the office about how they ruin everything (if you don’t believe me, what the fuck happened to 1kg Easter eggs?), it seemed suitable that I should put myself in the enemy’s shoes and live life as a fat whore for a week.
The concept was discussed and the final rules were as follows:
 
 
1. The participant must consume three Double Down regular sized combos (Pepsi as the drink) per day for seven days.
2. No other food or beverage can be consumed during the time period, with the one exception of alcohol.
3. The participant may not consume water unless they begin to hallucinate or show serious signs of illness that may get Critic in trouble.
 
This would mean an intake of 13000 KJ per day (3108 calories), including 143.4g of fat, 40g of that being saturated fat. According to my age and size my daily needs are significantly less, especially in the fat department. On a more positive note, however, I would be shovelling down 185.4g of protein per day, more than the recommended amount for a bodybuilder.
 
Anyway, after 45 minutes of lecturing from Julia about not spending Critic money at Liquorland or Lucky 7, I was off to the PE department to get measured up by the living legend himself: long-term professional scarfie, Chris Harvey. I was weighed by fancy machines as well as having skinfolds taken and my body fat and lean muscle mass were measured. At 1.85m tall and 81.2kg, I am considered a healthy weight with a BMI of 23.7. My body fat percentage was measured at 11.9% and I apparently have a high level of lean muscle mass. Stoked.
 

Unfortunately due to the spontaneity and time constraints of this cutting-edge scientific research project, I was unable to get blood tests done to measure my cholesterol. Which is a shame, but maybe there are some things you just don’t want to find out.
 
 
 
Night beforehand: I helped myself to a bag of mandarins and three bananas before bed in an attempt to load up on vitamins before the torture began. I’m not going to lie, I was pretty nervous about what I had gotten myself into. But news editor-cum-nutritional expert, Gregor Whyte, had reassured me that nothing could possibly go wrong drinking just Pepsi for a week. Sweet.
 
 
Day 1: The first hurdle I faced was the fact that KFC doesn’t actually open until 10am. However, being such a scarfie, this wasn’t a big deal and it actually worked well with my sleep-ins. Fuck going to lectures in the morning, especially when it’s a 10am Human Nutrition lecture. What on earth would I learn there?
 
 
I jumped into my car and drove to North Dunedin KFC, an illustrious tourist attraction that us locals take for granted. It is officially the slowest fast food outlet in the southern hemisphere. Fact. So distracted I was with the terrible service that I nearly missed another gem. Believe it or not, I was about to be served by the world’s most unattractive woman. Wow. My excitement drained after about 10 minutes of waiting for my burger (I was the only person there) and pondering where the shit KFC finds these chimps. Finally, the woman-thing handed me my first ever Double Down combo.
 
 
After discovering the hard way that the dumb bitch didn’t know how to put the lid on my Pepsi properly, I stormed into the lounge and opened up the first wee devil. Like a newborn baby still covered in amniotic sac, it was hideous. The chicken was greasy and the bacon had the texture of Jeremy Clarkson’s neck. Not wanting to look at it much longer, I bit right into it. It tasted okay, but I wouldn’t toy with words like “good” or “nice”. I struggled to get it all down; being more a cereal and toast man when it comes to breakfast, eating this was hard. Overall I would give the burger a 6/10 and, given the choice, I wouldn’t eat one again. It was going to be a long week.
 
 
Being a genius, I had purchased two at once to save having to line up as much, so I reheated lunch which was equally disappointing and by now I was gagging for water.
An adventure though the drive-through that evening took 40 minutes to get my food. I could have slaughtered and cooked the animals myself in that time. At least this time, the girl that served me was hot and appeared to have the correct number of chromosomes. The burger was just as shit as the last two and by late evening my kidneys were beginning to ache. I was so thirsty. But Gregor had said it would be fine.
 
 
Day 2: At 1am I still couldn’t sleep, my head was thudding like a fat girl in high heels and my back was now very painful. I got up and sculled half a litre of water. It was amazing. I hadn’t hallucinated but the thought of passing kidney stones in later life was enough to give up the “no water” rule. Fuck you Gregor.
 
 
I had chucked a Double Down in the fridge overnight to reheat for breakfast. Bad idea. The chicken had dried out and the cheese had turned solid. I retched my way through it and decided never to do that again. I would rather catch salmonella than eat that skanky cheese again.
 
 
Lunchtime rolled around and it was about now that I realised I hadn’t shat yet. Usually a three-a-day man, this definitely wasn’t normal. Ignoring this, I decided to try out Roslyn KFC for lunch. I arrived and was served my meal in about 30 seconds, it was incredible. The burger was a lot nicer as well. Thumbs up Roslyn.
 
 
That afternoon, I had a Human Nutrition lab and it was hard not to laugh when we had to do a 24hr diet recall, but it was very easy work for my partner. After class it was time to hit the gym and with one burger left for the day, I cut it in half and had one pre-workout and one post-workout. With 58g of protein per burger this is the ultimate protein shake replacement. Thanks to the water, I was feeling a lot better than yesterday, despite worrying that I still had not “dropped the kids off at the pool”.
 
 
Day 3: I had a rather large assignment due today but before I could run to the computer lab, my sphincter informed me it was time to get to a toilet, ASAP. I won’t go into details but let’s just say the sound of six Double Downs coming out in liquid form wasn’t nice.
I don’t know if it was the assignment, the KFC, or perhaps my destroyed bumhole but I was an angry man. My hair was greasy, my face was greasy and my girlfriend had informed me that I reeked of KFC, and not in a good way. I got the assignment done just in time and then our team won our indoor soccer match. I even nabbed two goals. That’s two more than usual. Afterwards, the team headed to KFC for a celebratory Double Down each. Despite being cheery after the game, I was on edge and when someone cut in front of us in the line I nearly smacked him. It was that same sensation as when you are drunk and someone pisses you off, like an uncontrollable rage. Not good. Plus apparently now even my breath and farts smelled like KFC.
 
 
Day 4: I awoke with a Hiroshima-like visit to the toilet followed by a foul mood. I was very irritable, easily agitated and quite possibly depressed. Let’s just say it’s lucky no Jehovah’s Witnesses came door knocking that day or I would be writing this from a cell in Milton. All I wanted was the taste of something other than a Double Down, chips or Pepsi so I decided to take advantage of the rules and get really drunk. The taste of cheap rosé wine against my lips was like my mouth had grown a penis and Samantha Hayes from 3 News was touching it. The night quickly got out of hand. I heated up a Double Down in the microwave and it was the best thing ever. It finally all clicked. The Double Down is the ultimate drunk man food. Better than cheeseburgers. I’m serious.
 
 
Day 5: After an extremely eventful night, I awoke moderately hungover but in a much better mood. I had cured my depression by tasting something else. I rolled out of bed, filled the loo with muck and waddled uncomfortably to a very bustling KFC. I was then horrified to find that after another 30-minute wait, the bacon in my Double Down was rancid. The smell was worse than my craps. I did my best to eat what I could but I ended up throwing out the bacon. What made it worse was that I had bought two. I would rather go down on Susan Boyle for several hours than ever having to eat that again.
 
 
Day 6: I had a lab at 9am so it was just chips I had saved from last night for breakfast. After looking at the insides of rats and deciding that I would rather eat that than another Double Down, it was off to KFC for a midday brekkie. I decided to try mayo in the burger instead of the normal sauce. Asking for a different sauce really confused the North Dunedin staff who took 10 minutes to work out how to do it. They then handed me a Double Down with normal sauce. What. The. Fuck. They had run out of Pepsi as well, however this meant I could drink Mirinda, which was a lovely change of scenery. By now my diarrhoea was getting out of hand. I was back to my 3-a-day but it now had the texture of soggy mash potato and was bright yellow.
 
 
I went out for a run and threw up chicken-Mirinda all over the Logan Park stairs.
I decided I had to try out South Dunedin before the end of this experiment. Despite not being able to understand the woman serving me, the overall experience was still far superior to North Dunedin.
 
 
Day 7: Thank fuck. The home straight. Another midday breakfast, this time I was served by Andy M. This guy was incredible, the speed and grace he displayed while putting my order together was outstanding. This guy could run the North Dunedin branch single-handedly and it would be a far superior establishment than what it is now. Give that man a pay rise. I trawled through my day waiting for it to end. Finally I chomped down the last Double Down I will ever eat and then cried myself to sleep.
 
 
Results
 
The KFC Double Down diet is not one I would recommend to anyone. I turned into an absolute cunt; I was irritable and angry. I think that was possibly more the fact that I was eating the same thing over and over more than the KFC itself.
 
 
My bowel movements became sporadic and unpleasant and my lips became crusty and dry from all the grease and salt. Or perhaps it was the first signs of scurvy.
As far is pimples go, there wasn’t any noticeable change. I honestly imagined myself ending up like a 15-year old elite World of Warcraft player, but this didn’t occur, despite the huge quantity of grease all over my skin.
 
 
The hilarious thing is that after eating 21 Double Down burgers, approximately 525 KFC chips and drinking 7.5 litres of fizzy, I now weighed 78.6kg meaning I lost 2.6kg. At first I thought this was quite a cool finding until further analysis revealed that my body fat percentage had actually increased to 12.2%, therefore everything I had lost was from lean muscle mass. Lame. I can’t really see this diet as anything useful unless you are a girl wanting to lose weight without your boobs shrinking and even then, it’s so not worth it.
 
 
I would like to thank Critic for funding the research, my flatmates for tolerating my vicious mood swings and my girlfriend for tolerating my KFC body odour, breath and gas. Also a massive thanks to Chris Harvey for helping me out with anthropometric data.
 
I would also like to kill Julia and Gregor.