A Fish and Chips shop in Greenock, Scotland, has set off a Twitter controversy with the disclosure on the message-sharing service that it’s offering what may be the ultimate take-away binge box. While offering great value for the money, the so-called Crunch Box also offers what some call dietary horrors…
The infamous Crunch Box: Not a meal for one. More like a Family Pack for 4!
What is it?
The Crunch Box comes in at a hefty 5,000 Calories and it’s all deep fried. If that isn’t enough, some of the treats offered therein are actually naturally-greasy foods, deep-fried.
Here’s the rundown on what you get:
- Deep-fried Fish
- Deep-fried Sausages
- Deep-fried Burger Patties
- Fried Potatoes
- Deep-fried Onion Rings, and
- two slices of battered Deep-fried Pizza (!)
…all served on a generous bed of chips, with a two-litre bottle of sugary, fizzy pop to wash it down.
And you get it all for under (UK)£10. / (U.S.)$13. / (C)$17.
Yah, it’s a great deal…
And that’s all sports journalist Russ McCaffery meant to highlight when he tweeted the photo reproduced above with the comment: “If you don’t think it looks like the most appetizing thing ever then there’s no hope for you.”
Normal, everyday folks had fun with the post, some hailing the Crunch Box a marvel, others labeling it ‘vile’ and ‘a heart attack in a box’.
But then the food police swooped in…
Food writer Joanna Blythman bitterly criticised the fatty foods being promoted:
“One of Scotland’s defects: celebrating crap food. No wonder so many Scots are fat and sick,” she wrote.
Her comments were pretty high-handed to say the least. And I don’t think it was necessary to smear the entire Scots race like that, in any case.
McCaffery bounced back: “The number of tweets about how awful and unhealthy it is have surprised me. I wasn’t recommending it as one of your five a day!”
Then the creator spoke out…
“I just thought it would be nice to combine the ideas and bring something which would appeal to everyone,” said Bahadur Sing, proprietor of the Chip shop in question. “We put the deal on and people seem to love it. Everything is cooked in fat but the dish is big enough for three or four people to share. It’s definitely for the family to eat. People think it’s a great deal.”
Which is what I thought in the first place, immediately on reading the Tweet train. Just add a Chef’s Salad and, as they say in the UK, ‘you’re away!’
My take…
Which beings me to my point in covering this crazy issue. Blythman, who bills herself as a pro journalist of some status, jumped to the conclusion that the Crunch Box was meant as a meal for one. Or so her lashing Tweet would suggest. Had she taken the time and effort to contact the owner of the chip shop, like other journalists did, she’d have learned that it’s a ‘Family Pack’ deal. And her irate comment would have been pretty much preempted. Not checking one’s sources and not talking to those directly involved is one of the worst sins a journalist can commit.
Which just goes to underline my point that services such as Twitter and Facebook are corrupting journalism as a profession, and creating confusion and misapprehension in readers minds about every issue under the sun.
Be critical of what you read – not just about food, but about everything.
~ Maggie J.