When it comes to food on-screen, some meals live long in the memory. Whether it’s because they’re so gross, tempting, or just plain odd, those outlandish fictional dishes always leave us wondering what they'd be like to eat. But just how many calories are in some of those?
This collection breaks down the content of the dishes and calculates the nutrition behind them. Where possible, the items will be simply based on what can be deduced on-screen. The others will come directly from the horse's mouth - recipes by the writers or producers. The totals are based on the most reliable nutritional information available.
For a few of these, you just need a well-stocked pantry and a strong stomach, but others would pose a serious challenge to prepare and finish in one go. From the gigantic cake in Matilda to Homer Simpson’s moon waffles, this collection looks at the actual calorie counts in those TV and movie feasts.
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Who hasn’t secretly dreamt of waking up one Sunday morning to find John Candy has made a stack of gigantic pancakes in your kitchen?
Just one of them would be a challenge to finish. If we take the snow shovel used to flip the flapjacks to be a typical 18-inch model, the approximate diameter of the Candy cakes is a few inches greater, probably about 24 inches.
We can see the batter brand used is Aunt Jemima (now Pearl Milling Company), so working out the calories is just a matter of scale. Not including the syrup, a 4-inch pancake prepared as instructed (with egg and oil) comes to 95 calories. A pancake six times larger works out at 570 calories.
Of course, that doesn’t include syrup or butter. There looks to be about a pound of butter (3,200 calories) topping two cups of maple syrup (1,700 calories) for the whole stack, which appears to be 10. If evenly applied, that’s about 1,000 calories apiece. Most of us would probably tap out after one.
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Breakdown of the Cake:
- Semisweet chocolate (16 ounces) - 2,177 calories
- 3 sticks of butter - 2,430 calories
- 2 cups and four tablespoons of sugar - 1,738 calories
- 12 eggs - 936 calories
- ½ cup all-purpose flour - 227 calories
Breakdown of the Icing:
- 16 ounces semisweet chocolate - 2,177 calories
- 16 ounces of heavy cream - 1,648 calories
- Cook’s blood and sweat - 5 calories
Vicious sneak-thief Bruce Bogtrotter is forced to consume an entire 18-inch cake in front of the whole school as punishment for sneaking a slice from Miss Agatha Trunchbull’s personal stash.
The 1996 movie was an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel and, very conveniently for this list, gave a recipe for the infamous cake in Revolting Recipes. It's for a mere 9-inch cake, half the size of Bruce’s gargantuan feast. So, all we have to do is double it.
The final ingredient is a little harder to define, as no definitive measure of “cook's sweat and blood” is given. We hope it's just a figure of speech, but it would be in character, so we'll base it on the actual caloric content of blood, which is actually hardly anything. Even five calories is seriously pushing it. At more than 11,000 calories total, this mighty cake would stretch even the hardiest competitive eater to the breaking point.
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Bobby beat the Panhandler Steakhouse’s Challenge: eating 72 ounces of top sirloin in less than one hour. And he had it rare.
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“It’s roughly the size of a two-year-old child if the child were liquified. It’s a real bargain at $1.59.
So, the calorie count of the biggest Big Gulp really depends on what you put in it. For a cola, that's just under 6,000 calories.
For an actual liquified 2-year-old weighing about 25 pounds, you're looking at around 20,000 calories - and trying to find out that information will almost certainly put you on a watch list.
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Breakdown of the Dough:
- 4 cups flour - 1,820 calories
- 4 eggs - 312 calories
- 3 tablespoons olive oil - 357 calories
Breakdown of the Filling:
- 4 cups Genoa salami - 1,472 calories
- 4 cups sharp provolone cheese chunks - 1,852 calories
- 12 hard-cooked eggs - 936 calories
- 4 cups small meatballs - 1,132 calories
- 7 ½ cups Tucci Ragù sauce - 2,820 calories
- 3 pounds ziti - 3,198 calories
- 2 tablespoons olive oil - 238 calories
- 1 cup finely grated pecorino Romano - 431 calories
- 6 large eggs, beaten - 468 calories
“This is so f*king good I should kill you." - One patron's verdict sums up the experience of this veritable mountain of Italian food.
Based on the actual recipe provided by co-star, writer, and director Stanley Tucci, you probably wouldn't survive if you tried to finish the whole shebang in one go.
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Breakdown:
- A full pound of ground beef - 1,506 calories
- 6 slices of American cheese - 624 calories
- grilled onion - 44 calories
- 5 strips of bacon - 215 calories
- 2 Krispy Kreme donuts - 380 calories
According to Robert Jebediah "Granddad" Freeman, the ultra-indulgent Luther Burger was invented by Luther Vandross himself.
We'd likely have a similar reaction as Granddad's grandson Riley (immediate food coma) if we ever actually tried to eat one - but it would probably still be worth it.
Mighty meal?
