Every couple of months, a prank e-mail about Michelangelo's David sculpture makes the rounds. After a two-year loan to the U.S., it jokes, the iconic sculpture is returning to Italy. The embedded images show both the "original" David, that idealized vision of the male form, and a Photoshopped "after" shot in which David has a bulging belly, "man boobs," and jiggly-looking thighs. It's no wonder David is fat now, the e-mail suggests: his "sponsors" were McDonald's, KFC and Starbucks.

Some stereotypes are based on reality. The lore of ancient Rome is replete with tales of decadence, of Lucullan feasts that included dozens of courses, and some early historians blamed those very excesses for the decline of the empire. Given that the rest of the world might now envision the average American as tubby and intemperate, I wonder whether they're also starting to see the U.S. as "the new Rome." Or maybe I've just been watching too much TV.

Take, for example, the Travel Channel series Man v. Food. Host Adam Richman visits cities across the country, sampling "big foods" and indulging in "eating challenges." In Boston, he attempts to consume a "Challenge Burger" — five pounds of beef, 20 slices of cheese, and 20 pieces of bacon on a bun, accompanied by five pounds of fries. The tray of food weighs 12 pounds, and if Richman fails to polish it all off, what's left presumably ends up in the trash. Then the proprietors hang his mug shot on their "wall of shame."

During its annual "Hell Night," a Bean Town grill serves a pasta dish containing three "ghost chiles" (the bhut jolokia pepper), the hottest chile in the world — so fiery military scientists intend to use it in the development of antiterrorism weapons. Most diners can eat only a few bites of the dish before succumbing to a cooling remedy. What's left on the plate, we assume, will be tossed out. In another episode, Richman and a fellow diner try — and "shamefully" fail — to consume a 30-inch pizza topped with five pounds of meat. Richman's colleague tosses his back up before they finish.

A suspiciously macho, aggressive tone characterizes the show — heck, its very name suggests an adversarial relationship. Richman regularly uses terms like conquer and defeat when talking about the food he intends to consume. Spectators commonly shout "Go big or go home!" In one episode, a woman taunts, "Man up, Adam! It's not 'Boy v. Food'!"

Something is terribly wrong with this picture. Why would you want to eat so much pizza that you can't keep it down? What chef deliberately cooks something diners can't eat, the bulk of which will end up in the trash? That kind of eating isn't about satisfying hunger or enjoying food, and it certainly isn't about nutrition.

Nevertheless, restaurants across America — enough to form the basis of an entire television series — concoct dishes that are ridiculously, disturbingly huge or inedible in some other way. (Editor's note: A six-pound-burger challenge called the "Blast Resort" can be undertaken by up to six people at Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino, right here in enchanted New Mexico. The state dropped from 28th place in 2008 to 31st place in 2009 in the American Health Foundation's most recent rankings for overall healthfulness by state.) As they "challenge" us to eat obscene amounts of food, obesity and diabetes plague our population on an unprecedented level. Nearly one-tenth of our national health care costs are related to obesity, and this generation of American children may have shorter life expectancies than their parents.

In the face of these statistics, chef Jamie Oliver is trying to improve some of our ideas about eating. On Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, which recently debuted on ABC, he documents efforts to educate the people of Huntington, W.Va. — statistically one of the unhealthiest cities in the U.S. — about diet, nutrition, and cooking with fresh, healthy ingredients. In particular, he focuses on school cafeterias, which serve predominantly processed, additive-heavy foods.

Yet when interviewing Oliver for a radio show, a local DJ snarls, "We don't want to sit around and eat lettuce all day ... I just don't think you should come in here and tell us what to do. I mean, who made you the king?"

Why are we so aggressively resistant to change? What's wrong with putting aside our chicken nuggets and eating fruits and vegetables once in a while? Or with listening to someone, like Oliver, who volunteers to help us tackle a dangerous problem we've been ignoring? Is our "deliberately risky behavior" of "conquering" a Bloomin' Onion or a 30-inch pizza a way of giving an antiauthoritarian finger to those who just might have our best interests at heart? Or are we just being childish?

"Humans are animals of habit," says Oliver. "People don't want to change until the pain of staying the way they are gets worse than change." For our own sake, I hope we can abandon that ignorance-is-bliss attitude and be more conscious about what we stuff in our mouths and toss in the trash. Considering the alternative, the words of a young Abraham Lincoln come to mind: "I see a very dark cloud on America's horizon, and that cloud is coming from Rome."

Laurel Gladden is a freelance writer and editor living in Santa Fe. Contact her at the.ethical.epicure@gmail.com.