Commentary

chocolate-covered what?

One of the unhealthiest snacks in the world can now be found in Ukraine. For years people here have loved pork fat, known as salo. Normally, small slices of the white fat are eaten with black bread, raw garlic and vodka. But this new twist is designed to appeal to Ukraine’s love of all things fatty. For the equivalent of £1 you can now get four small sticks of salo covered in chocolate at Kiev’s poshest Ukrainian restaurant. I wonder what would happen if someone stopped exercising and ate nothing but chocolate-covered pork fat for a month. Maybe somebody should make a documentary about it. Then again, the guy would just gain weight and feel bad. The outcome would be too obvious to hold an audience’s attention. On the other hand, unveiling the obvious can make for a very successful documentary. Here’s Jacob Sullum on Super Size Me, and on the mounting war on fat. And here’s a picture of chocolate-covered pork fat.