OK, This Is Getting Silly...

Supersizing Snack Foods For Fun & Profit

Anybody out there still eating Slim Jims?

I remember getting them occasionally as a kid. They'd go alongside the trail mix and granola bars for a protein hit on hiking trips. When I got to beer drinking age, you'd generally find a box of 'em on the bar counter next to the bags of pork rinds and the Fritos. Nothing like a nice salty-greasy snack when you're pounding down the suds.

Those Slim Jims were, well, slim. No bigger around than a pencil, and maybe 5 inches long.

Sometime since I was a kid, the Giant Slim was introduced. Now you had 12" of grease-slicked mystery meat to gnaw upon.

There's nothing like forgetting a Slim Jim in the front seat of your car, then rediscovering it on a hot day. You peel back the plastic, and hold it out the window to let the orange-red grease drip out, then snap off a bite of spicy carcinogen with your incisors. Mmmmmmmgood!

I was in the local Stop & Rob the other day, buying my daily dosage of Coke Zero and HoHos, when I spotted... the new Monster Slim Jim!

It's no longer slim, being as big around as a cigar, and easily a foot long. Naturally, I had to buy one. Check out the nutritional info for a 1.94 ounce serving size:

Calories - 290
Fat Calories - 240
Total Fat - 26 grams (40% rda)
Saturated Fat - 10 grams (51% rda)
Trans Fat - 1.5 grams
Cholesterol - 70 mg (23% rda)
Sodium - 840 mg (35% rda)
Total Carb - 4 Grams
Protein - 11 grams

Ingredients: Beef, mechanically separated chicken, water, corn syrup, salt, spices, dextrose, paprika and paprika extractives, flavoring, hydrolized soy, corn and wheat proteins, lactic acid starter culture, sodium nitrite.

Mechanically separated chicken?? Ye godz...

So, how's it taste? Like a bigger, greasier Slim Jim. I'm thinking I might need to stick close to the can tomorrow, just in case of that "leakage" problem that affected Olestra consumers...