Reverse liposuction

November 12, 2018 11:31 PM

The Australian freakshake (drink, dessert and topping presented colourfully in and over one glass) can contain up to 39 teaspoons of sugar, say health professionals and campaigners. BBC News: "The Toby Carvery Unicorn Freakshake is made with grape and raspberry flavoured ice cream, blackcurrant jelly pieces, milk, freshly whipped cream and topped with marshmallow, skittles and almond macaroon." Toby Carvery have also launched a Yorkshire Pudding freakshake. Though not always lucrative, other variations include Nutella (Dublin), Crème Egg (Chelmsford), 1.5 litres of thick chocolate milkshake (Dubai), cheesecake (Manchester), doughnuts (Somerset), red velvet cake (Aberdeen), vegan freakshakes and a Baileys cake-version. Best eaten with eight slices of pizza.
posted by Wordshore (47 comments total)

they're always so beautiful on the 'gram and I _always_ avoided them.
posted by cendawanita at 11:46 PM on November 12, 2018 [3 favorites]

The perfect dessert to chase an Octuple Bypass Burger with!
posted by egypturnash at 11:50 PM on November 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yuck
posted by growabrain at 11:51 PM on November 12, 2018 [4 favorites]

I've never eaten one. Well, of this generation of milkshake variations; I did have a chocolate lard milkshake in Santa Monica over a decade ago and ... didn't feel so good afterwards. There's also part of my brain which reacts badly to the concept of putting a slice of cake into a milkshake. It feels like these are two things that are fundamentally wrong inhabiting the same place, like playing cricket in clothes which are colourful, or sex in a sauna. Just ... no. (Personal view, Your Freakshake Motivation May Vary)
posted by Wordshore at 11:54 PM on November 12, 2018 [5 favorites]

Admittedly I never heard them called 'freakshakes', but the Aussie connection totally makes sense. (over here it can be known as 'loaded milkshakes' but even then I'd never seen them pitched as a specific new (Aussie) thing, just another hipster evolution so they're just grouped with ppl doing classic American-style ones, but now that I'm googling more, I see that initially they totally were hyped that way!)
posted by cendawanita at 12:03 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

The closest we have come to that abomination in Sweden is the Birthday Shake at Max. It's a horrible cloying thing with a "chocolate" "lid" hiding under all the whipped cream, resembling plastic in both flavor and texture. 2/10, would not recommend.

But in comparison to the freakshake it's practically health food.
posted by Vesihiisi at 12:35 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

The Australian Freakshake is as Australian as the Bloomin’ Onion.
posted by awfurby at 12:49 AM on November 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

I would like to eat about one-eighth of that. One-eighth would be plenty.
posted by zardoz at 12:52 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Ohh it's the dessert version of those bloody marys garnished with like an entire dinner, food as spectacle but you've got to admit that some of these folks have the aesthetics nailed down.
posted by drinkyclown at 12:58 AM on November 13, 2018 [6 favorites]

I love the moral panic aspect of this... like we didn't have Knickerbocker Glories back in the day. I bet they had a ton of calories in them.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:25 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

awfurby: "The Australian Freakshake is as Australian as the Bloomin’ Onion."

As the second link puts it, "American-style 'freakshakes' "
posted by chavenet at 1:32 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, this kind of unbridled excess has been going on for a long time. It’s not all that far removed from a Dairy Queen Blizzard (your choice of crushed candy bars, cookies, and other toppings included).

Heck, candy, man. Lik-m-Aid / Fun Dip candy was basically pure sugar crystals. You licked a stick of sugar and dipped it in the sugar crystals so they’d stick. Then you licked the sugar off of the sugar. Then when all the granulated sugar was gone, you ate the stick of sugar.

Or Pixy Sticks, which were just packets of sugar crystals you poured directly into your mouth. See also: cotton candy.

God how did we manage to make it past childhood?
posted by darkstar at 1:35 AM on November 13, 2018 [6 favorites]

Just looking at those pictures is giving me a stomach ache.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:41 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

> darkstar:
"Oh yeah, this kind of unbridled excess has been going on for a long time. It’s not all that far removed from a Dairy Queen Blizzard (your choice of crushed candy bars, cookies, and other toppings included).

Heck, candy, man. Lik-m-Aid / Fun Dip candy was basically pure sugar crystals. You licked a stick of sugar and dipped it in the sugar crystals so they’d stick. Then you licked the sugar off of the sugar. Then when all the granulated sugar was gone, you ate the stick of sugar.

Or Pixy Sticks, which were just packets of sugar crystals you poured directly into your mouth. See also: cotton candy.

God how did we manage to make it past childhood?"

I love Pixy Stix. They are pretty much the quintessence of candy. No BS, no nuts, no vague nod at healthiness, no gimmicks like Lik-m-Aid. Just sugar with a little flavor. Not even a fancy wrapper - Just a paper (or plastic, if you are living large) tube.
posted by Samizdata at 1:47 AM on November 13, 2018 [6 favorites]

As the Aberdeen link does not go to the Inversnecky Cafe, I think we can safely dismiss this as a fad. I really feel the need to make one of these, but interestingly, googling for local examples to learn from (in Australia) suggests they are very 2015. The local paper pronounced them dead back in June. CW: contains triple-donut choc-coated bacon milkshake
posted by GeckoDundee at 1:58 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Now I kinda wanna try one - just once.
posted by Harald74 at 2:08 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

From one of the ban proponents in the BBC article:

""These very high calorie drinks, if consumed on a daily basis, would result in children becoming obese and suffering from tooth decay - that is not acceptable," he said."

That's ridiculous. Nobody is having one of these a day (and if they are, the shake isn't the problem). You could object to do much Michelin grade food for exactly the same reasons - it's too rich, that twelve course tasting menu is too much, you'd develop proper health problems if that was your dinner every day.

But of course the proposed ban is on tacky things that poor people enjoy, not Heston's restaurants.
posted by Dysk at 2:20 AM on November 13, 2018 [27 favorites]

"That is more than half the daily recommended amount of calories for an adult and over six times the amount of sugar recommended for seven to 10-year-olds.

It is the equivalent of drinking more than four cans of cola."

Shit, we'd better ban four cans of coke as well!
posted by Dysk at 2:24 AM on November 13, 2018 [7 favorites]

But of course the proposed ban is on tacky things that poor people enjoy,

Talking of which...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:39 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

The Australian Freakshake is as Australian as the Bloomin’ Onion.

However, the Australian Freakshake is far more venomous than any other known Freakshake species.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:10 AM on November 13, 2018 [14 favorites]

Shit, we'd better ban four cans of coke as well!

It burns me up that Coke and Pepsi are now the *only* soda I can consume because the rest have been "now even less sugar!"-ed, due to the sugar tax, and spiked with artificial sweeteners which cause my bowels to empty without warning.

I can't drink 7-up, even, any more, which was the only soda I was allowed as a child.

Now they're coming for our low-quality chainstore desserts? I WANT MY FSCKING SUGAR AND CALORIES. CALORIES ARE MY FAVORITE FOOD SO THERE.
posted by tel3path at 3:39 AM on November 13, 2018 [8 favorites]

My major objections to the freakshake are structural rather than moral - personally I prefer to consume both cake and milkshakes, when I choose to, without making a giant mess. Looks impossible with this kind of setup.

That being said, I'm the person who wipes or washes their hands 5-10 times while cooking anything because I had clean freak parents who never let me get particularly dirty as a kid, and now as an adult I can't stand having any kind of goop on my hands for longer than a few seconds.
posted by terretu at 3:45 AM on November 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

Lime spider or GTFO.
posted by retrograde at 4:05 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love these so much. I love that people hate them. I love that they're opulent. I love it. I could probably eat one a year, about as often as I can eat a bubble waffle.
posted by Braeburn at 4:25 AM on November 13, 2018 [5 favorites]

God how did we manage to make it past childhood?

Lots and lots of fillings. No dental sealants for kids of my era.
posted by 41swans at 4:52 AM on November 13, 2018 [5 favorites]

I picked a bad time to go back on keto...
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:03 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

And I suffer pangs of guilt if I eat more than one Oreo in the same day.
posted by notreally at 6:27 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

They just introduced something similar at Disney World and my reaction at just seeing a picture was an instant stomach ache and several cavities.
posted by Mick at 6:40 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Jesus God. My pancreas just grew a protective layer of Kevlar.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:48 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

One of these places opened up in New Orleans (Shake Therapy on Carrollton). I had no idea they were an international thing. I've been twice, both times I put the leftover shake in the freezer and finished it the next day with no real loss of quality. You just eat it with a spoon straight out of the freezer or put it on the counter for five minutes. You can split it with your beau, too. There are loads of things that are too big for one person to eat. Don't ban them, just tell people it's more than one serving.
posted by domo at 6:54 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

You know those people who can't look at pictures of things with lots of holes in them?

I have something like that for this food.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:13 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

You know, I would be fine with all of this shit, in fact delighted, if it were inside the glass? Which I guess is the basic model of self serve frozen yogurt with 1 million toppings? But it seems like the entire aesthetic here is that it’s impossible to serve or eat these things without getting whipped cream and caramel sauce all over yourself, and then the entire construction seems doomed to melting and falling on the table or floor immediately – this isn’t just decadence that you eat, it’s decadence that’s impossible by design to eat unless you’re OK with licking an avalanche of cake and melting whipped cream off the side of a glass, or the floor. Looking at them gives me dripping anxiety and that feeling I get when Andy Samberg in that early skit throws a birthday cake onto the sidewalk. It’s weird to me that the moral panic angle of this is “too many calories” because if I had to pick a reason they make me uneasy it’s conspicuous consumption/nonconsumption food waste.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 7:23 AM on November 13, 2018 [7 favorites]

I feel like there are several issues in play here.

The first is that, as Dysk points out, the tacky foods of the lower orders are always unfairly suspect - you can choke yourself on eggs benedict and foie gras if you want and no one will say boo.

The second is that of course, most people aren't going to be able to eat a whole one of these, or if they are, it's a one-off for their birthday rather than a daily thing.

The third, though, is that these are being created against a background of cheap terrible foods and expensive fruits/vegetables/etc. I've never seen a knickerbocker glory the size of one of these things, and we all know that Very Large sweets of the past were much smaller than Very Large sweets today. That's happening because sugar is cheap. Sugar is cheap, television is cheap, but vegetables, good teaching, nice housing and durable goods are out of reach for the majority now.

So I guess I'd say that Very Large sweets aren't a problem because of people's individual choices, they're one of the many problems of structural inequality. If we lived in a fair society where everyone had access to good food, medical care and secure housing, it wouldn't matter if everyone ate one occasionally. But right now, today, this kind of thing is a symptom of some things that have gone badly wrong.

As usual, the real solution is to fix the real problems, but we won't do that - we'll just blather on about middle and working class people making bad dietary choices.
posted by Frowner at 7:48 AM on November 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

Jia Tolentino: Those Giant Willy Wonka Ass Milkshakes Are Bullshit

Worth the read just for the sentence "KonMari your goddamn snack life."
posted by deludingmyself at 8:04 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

You just eat it with a spoon straight out of the freezer or put it on the counter for five minutes.

Yes; I was seriously thinking of doing an AskMe question about this - do you eat or drink a freakshake, as it's apparently a milkshake which is a drink and not food - but I feel the all-seeing eye of the mods on AskMe questions like this so maybe not.
posted by Wordshore at 8:06 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

if someone brought me one of these as a birthday surprise or similar i would pull the fire alarm and flee in the chaos
posted by poffin boffin at 8:07 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

I just feel like it half asses two excellent desserts (Wordshore, sex in a sauna is wonderful)
posted by PinkMoose at 8:52 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

I dunno. There is definitely a class aspect to most food panics, but I think there are other factors at play here. For one thing, it seems to be universally acknowledged that these things owe their popularity in part to Instagram. They're super photogenic, which sets them apart from other milkshakes. And Instagram moral panics are often about gender and age, even more than class. I'm also curious about whether they're actually that cheap. I don't really catch UK class nuances, but in the US, Five Guys, which the article mentions, is not a place where poor people eat. It may be a place where blue-collar people with money eat, but I checked the menu for the one nearest to me, and it would be like $20 for a burger, fries, and a shake. That's not exactly McDonald's.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:01 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

my personal food panic is that eating this would cause me to die instantly
posted by poffin boffin at 9:13 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

During a heatwave this past summer in Toronto, I stopped for lunch at a tiny Mexican restaurant and left with a chamoyada. I didn't know such a thing existed. A mango ice smoothy, covered in candy corn and jelly babies, with a sugar/tamarind paste straw. I may make it a tradition but should probably limit myself to even numbered years.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:26 AM on November 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

As usual, the real solution is to fix the real problems, but we won't do that - we'll just blather on about middle and working class people making bad dietary choices.

Oh, but they are - I've read news pieces today calling for a ban on these, in the vein of the sugar tax.

That's why if I drink any soft drinks other than Coke or Pepsi now - or any food without checking the label for this devil's chemical first - my bowels empty without warning.

The sugar tax is a societal change to protect me from my own bad choices. As an aversive, it works very well.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a ton of coal to put in the bath.
posted by tel3path at 9:29 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

But of course the proposed ban is on tacky things that poor people enjoy, not Heston's restaurants.

There is something in that. Guzzling Prosecco like a camel at an oasis is painfully obviously not good for your health - and, like freakshakes, also not good on teeth. But heck, Prosecco appears to have replaced other alcoholic drinks and certain white powdery substances as the fixation and addiction of much of the middle classes.

Calls or campaigns to limit how much Prosecco can be bought in one go, or pressurising the government to legislate for it to be diluted, or to have a tax which stings the target demographic? Nope.
posted by Wordshore at 10:06 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

I dislike both milk and things that drip, so I will gladly take the Bloody Mary equivalent (it's like soup, salad, and slider-wing-kebab all in one!).
posted by batter_my_heart at 12:13 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I am learning all kinds of names for future sex acts: Lime Spider, Bubble Waffle, Knickerbocker Glory. Keep 'em comin' (heh)!
posted by fiercecupcake at 2:45 PM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

My problem with these things is aesthetic. If I want a thing, I want that thing. If I want a frozen yogurt, I don't want oreos, gummi bears, cookie dough or sprinkles in it. I want a tart, smooth, frozen yogurt. I'm not even in the frozen yogurt store for frozen yogurt, because I know the frozen yogurt here is an atrocity; I'm here for a bubble tea, but when I ask the clerk for a bubble tea made of tea with tea-flavored tapioca bubbles in it, he goggles at me because no one has ever ordered tea-flavored tea before and he has to check with the manager on how to do it. But I need to stop ranting about this, because this isn't even my intended rant, this is just the warm-up rant. A friend made me go to a Thai ice-cream place that is so new and trendy that normally I wouldn't even hear about it until the NYTs style section covered it 10 years from now. This is a place where you sit on high top benches in front of a sushi-like counter, only the man behind a counter drops things on an ultra-cool steel plate, and whatever thing it is freezes instantly and he scrapes it up in little ice curls and artfully arranges the curls in a bowl. Which might be fine, except you need to choose a flavor, and then a thing, and then another thing, and then a topping, and then a garnish, and they were mostly grotesque. I ended up picking tea flavor with tea powder and tea topping with a pocky tea stick on top, and I could tell I had lost the respect of everyone in the place.
posted by acrasis at 4:48 PM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don't really catch UK class nuances, but in the US, Five Guys, which the article mentions, is not a place where poor people eat. It may be a place where blue-collar people with money eat, but I checked the menu for the one nearest to me, and it would be like $20 for a burger, fries, and a shake. That's not exactly McDonald's.

We're talking about Toby Carvery here, not Five Guys. Prices vary by location (ie London is pricier) but their freakshakes are generally a fiver. A full roast dinner is just over a fiver. It's absolutely the same price range as McDonald's. This isn't some pretend gastropub for the middle classes. It's basically food-focused 'spoons.
posted by Dysk at 3:03 AM on November 14, 2018

(And yes, other articles mention Five Guys, but the BBC article on the actual proposed banning does not. It does bang on about Toby Carvery's unicorn freakshake though, and the only other purveyor of them it even mentions is Harvesters, a competitor in the same market and price bracket.)
posted by Dysk at 3:10 AM on November 14, 2018