Customer has heart attack while eating aptly named Triple Bypass Burger

posted at 4:03 pm on February 15, 2012 by Howard Portnoy

I maintain that after all is said and done, how people choose to spend their time is their own business. That is true whether they while away their leisure hours planking (which proved fatal for one Australian daredevil last May) bungee jumping (which nearly did the same for another Aussie in January), or chowing down on a  6,000-calorie burger at a chain restaurant ominously named the Heart Attack Grill.

The Mail Online reports that one customer came to appreciate the potential truth in advertising in the chain’s slogan: Taste worth dying for. The man, whose name has been withheld, was enjoying the house’s signature Triple Bypass Burger when he went into cardiac arrest on Saturday in the chain’s Las Vegas store. The sandwich contains three burger patties, 12 strips of bacon, cheese, red onion, sliced tomato, and the Heart Attack Grill’s own “unique special sauce.” Add in a side of Flatliner Fries, cooked in lard, and you’re in heaven—or close to it in the case of the man in question.

The chain was founded ironically by a former nutritionist, “Doctor” Jon Basso, who in a previous life ran a Jenny Craig weight loss center. Meals at his restaurants can exceed 8,000 calories, and a sign outside advertises that anyone over 350 pounds eats free. Waitresses dress up in old-time nurse’s uniforms (modified to reveal some cleavage) to drive home the anti-health message.

Basso was interviewed about the incident involving his customer, described as 40 years old:

The gentleman could barely talk. He was sweating, suffering.

I actually felt horrible for him because the tourists were taking photos of him as if it were some type of stunt. [One was thoughtful enough to record a video of the man being led out by paramedics on a stretcher.]

Even with our own morbid sense of humor, we would never pull a stunt like that.

That last claim may be a little—well—hard to swallow in light of an ad for the restaurant which notes that the food “may include sudden weight gain, repeated increase of wardrobe size, back pain, male breast growth, loss of sexual partners, lung cancer, tooth decay and liver sclerosis stroke. In some cases mild death may occur.

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