“Epic Meal Time” is a popular Youtube video series taking the art of unhealthy eating to epic new heights—or to epic new lows, depending on how you look at it.

Millions of hungry viewers tune in each week to observe some culinary mayhem. The job of the host, Harley Morenstein, and his motley crew of amateur chefs is to assemble some sort of miniature mountain, made entirely out of food, and then eat it.

Harley acts as a burly, bearded, comical goon of a commentator, and he aggressively narrates a play-by-play account of the cooking procedure as it unfolds on screen.

The featured dish is usually prepared with a sumptuous array of ingredients, such as fast food, sugary food, greasy food, meat, cheese, a significant portion of bacon and a heavy coating of Jack Daniels whiskey. “Anything that could be considered a vegetable” is strictly prohibited.

No molecule of fat goes unconsumed. The show even has a calorie counter, just in case viewers need an empirical measurement of the gluttony on display. Their latest meal, the “Super Pastry Cake,” which was filled with more candy than what an industrious child might rake in after a trick-or-treat plunder, contained approximately 60,000 calories.

To call the series “shallow entertainment” is probably an understatement, and possibly even an insult to shallow entertainment.

But in all fairness, it’s not totally mindless. The production quality of each episode is of a high standard. There are humorous gags that are often clever and premeditated. And, though the recipe ideas are ostensibly half baked (and half deep-fried), the final entrée typically winds up looking elegant and, dare I say, appetizing?

In addition, the show is relatively harmless entertainment. Harmless for the viewers, that is. It remains a mystery as to how the chief food devourer on the program, nicknamed “Muscles Glasses,” still has blood flowing freely though his arteries.
But there are no damaging results for viewers because, as Morenstein himself suggests, the appeal of the show is virtual.

“In this day and age, I feel like there’s a big emphasis on organic foods or a lot of negative media in regards to obesity and stuff like that. We are there eating this, and [viewers] are eating vicariously through us,” he told ABC News.

This is true for most fans. Each episode is merely a fleeting fantasy; a brief, blissful plunge into the depths of culinary opulence.

However, it’s important to note that alongside the pleasure of the meal, there seems to be a further connection made between the fans and the entertainers. It’s not solely based on the cuisine, because beneath it all — beneath the bacon strips, and bacon flips, chocolate sauce drips and Jack Daniels sips — there is a crucial undercurrent of satire.

Harley and his cooks are in constant caricature mode. They match the distorted food portions with equally distorted personalities. Harley is an angry-looking figure and his narration is essentially just hostile smack talk, ironically intended to intimidate viewers, or “haters,” as he refers to them. Muscles Glasses is so cool that he doesn’t even need to spit his game. His expression remains stolid behind a pair of aviator shades, and his hulking mass simply waits for the next meal to be presented before him.

It’s this sly pretense of egotism that fans might be drawn to for a few reasons. First, it makes the show automatically acceptable. Because caricature seems to imply that whatever failing of humanity is being demonstrated, it is not being promoted. It is instead being parodied and, therefore, criticized.

That general cultural idea could probably use some serious reevaluation at present.

But secondly, as with the extreme food, the extreme behavior of the hosts allows viewers to indulge in extravagance; behavioral extravagance in this case. People can vicariously experience the pleasure of dropping their attitude suppressants and letting loose through this group of uninhibited misanthropes.

It is a liberating ritual and it must be widely practiced because, in any group of top ranked Youtube videos, it is not uncommon to find similar eccentric personalities making a mockery out of self restraint; beckoning the rest of the community to take a walk on the dark side.