All You Can Eat

More and more ballparks are offering all-you-can-eat sections. Predictably, not everyone loves the idea:

"It's disgusting," says Christine Gerbstadt, a registered dietitian and national spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association (ADA). "Why can't people just enjoy the game and eat sensibly?"

Anyone want to engage Ms. Gerbstadt in this debate?

"What attracted me was eating as much as I could," says Toney Fernandez, 20, of Harbor City, Calif.

Methinks that there won't be a meeting of the minds here.

But really, how bad can these sections be?

Ron Ranieri, general manager of concessionaire Aramark at Atlanta's Turner Field, calculates that a typical all-you-can-eat customer downed: 3.35 hot dogs; one 20-ounce soda; one 7.9-ounce bag of peanuts; one 3-ounce order of nachos and 32 ounces of popcorn.

Those numbers are "insane," the ADA's Gerbstadt says. They equate to more than three times the daily recommended calories and carbohydrates, four times the saturated fat and sodium, and seven times the fat suggested by the Agriculture Department's 2005 diet guidelines. That's not counting the beer and desserts many fans also polish off. Those who eat even close to such amounts on a semi-regular basis, Gerbstadt says, are at added risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer and erectile dysfunction.

"This is something you do once in a lifetime, and pray you don't get a heart attack," she says. "They're eating the equivalent of four days of food, or twice what the average person eats on Thanksgiving Day. I hope these people have tons of Pepto-Bismol."

Look, I'm not planning any trips to the feeding trough sections myself, but I'm more likely to do that than invite this Gerbstadt lady to a party. Man, what a buzzkill she is.