About

Fat Man Eating MSG Burger, Aspartame Cola, Genetically Altered Spuds refers to a political art piece by conspiracy theorist and artist David Dees depicting an overweight man with a "Bush '04" button sitting at a table in front of a Burger King meal and a bottle of Prozac, each food item labeled to reveal their most unhealthy alleged ingredient, including the labels, "MSG Burger," "Aspartame Cola," "MSG Fish Fillet," "Fluoride Springs" water and "Genetically Altered Spuds." The art piece was posted to Dees' website as early as November 2006 and was used in articles about the purported dangers of food items such as MSG, Aspartame and artificial sweeteners throughout the 2010s. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, the image became increasingly used in memes as an exploitable, with the man behind the table of food often being replaced with another character via photoshop.

Origin

As early as November 7th, 2006, David Dees hosted an art piece featuring an overweight man sitting before a table full of food with MSG, aspartame and other purportedly unhealthy ingredients on his website, DeesIllustration.com,^[1] under the "satire" section of the site (shown below). Dees is notable for his artwork that plays off of conspiracy theories, which are sometimes used in memes, including examples like the Cellphone Tower Radiation Effects image.

The image was used throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s on conspiracy forums and in web articles about the supposed dangers of things like MSG and artificial sweeteners in food, with examples including a post to the Stormfront.org^[2] forum in a thread titled "The deliberate fattening up of America," a 2011 New Times^[3] article titled "Tips for men to stay healthy" and the 2013 Reporterre^[4] article "Aspartame: yes, it is harmful!"

On March 26th, 2015, an anonymous user of 4chan's /pol/^[5] board used the image in a greentext post where they observe how high the cost of healthy ingredients is in America, which was reposted to /r/4chan^[6] that day along with a comment by an anon criticizing OP, garnering over 2,100 upvotes in eight years (shown below).

Spread

The image continued to spread over the following years, becoming the increasing subject of memes. On July 20th, 2018, Tumblr^[7] user randomitemdrop posted the image with a description of what items he would drop if he were a defeated enemy in a video game, garnering over 8,600 notes in five years (shown below).

On January 28th, 2023, Tumblr^[8] user special-support-section posted an edit of the image featuring Neco-Arc in front of the table, garnering over 4,800 notes in nine months (shown below, left). The image was originally posted in an October 2021 YouTube^[12] video by KMETAS. On February 23rd, Tumblr^[9] user grox posted a redraw of the meme with a shark fursona at the table in response to a user writing, "that's a wonderful shark fursona you've got. very cute. now let's see a picture of them facing forward," garnering over 17,000 notes in eight months (shown below, right).

On September 5th, X,^[10] formerly Twitter, user @BLOX posted the original image under the caption, "how it feels to play a simulator game on Roblox," garnering over 550 likes in a month. On October 14th, Instagram^[11] user spooky.miller reposted the meme, garnering over 13,600 likes in two days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References