Carbs gone wild at the fair

Daniel Chinn prepares to chow down on a Krispy Kreme Double Cheeseburger.

It was 100 degrees at the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona, but at Chicken Charlie’s food stand, Nelly Alvarez was hustling to keep up with demand for this year’s signature dish.

“Yep, it’s a half-pound double cheeseburger between two Krispy Kreme donuts—really,” Alvarez explained to one wide-eyed taker after another. “I hear they’re pretty good!”

Privately, however, Alvarez confessed that she actually hasn’t tried Chicken Charlie’s cheesy, meaty, sugary, gooey new 1,160-calorie item, which this week joined the fair vendor’s menu of deep-fried avocados, deep-fried pickles, deep-fried Oreos, deep-fried Kool-Aid, Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joes and other diet-busting fare. After seven years working at fair booths, she said, she now brown-bags it at her lunch breaks.

“I bring a lot of fruit, a lot of water,” she laughed, looking around to make sure no potential customers were listening. “I brought a salad today.”

Few displays evoke more mixed feelings in food- and health-obsessed Southern California than the deep-fried gluttony of the Los Angeles County Fair. In L.A., where food trucks compete with high-end juice bars, and bacon-wrapped everything vies with the pursuit of the perfect kale salad, the fair menu never fails to offer an over-the-top serving of amusement, rebellion and carbs gone wild.

“I try to be good. I try!” said Marie Thomas of Carson, wandering through a haze of Texas barbecue smoke, kettle corn and cotton candy. “But once a year? C’mon.”

After all, she pointed out, she shopped hard at the fair, which theoretically might burn off some extra calories. “So right now, I’m looking for something cheesy, something greasy and something fried.”

Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, whose department has been part of a nationwide anti-obesity effort, says there’s nothing wrong with the occasional splurge. Everything in moderation—that’s essentially the theme of the county’s Choose Less, Weigh Less campaign.

It turns out that not all fair fare is unhealthy.

“I can’t say not to go to the fair,” Fielding says, noting that he rarely misses. In fact, he said, his department plans to staff a booth there for County Day later this week.

“But I’m in favor of choice, and sometimes the choice at the fair isn’t as broad as it is in other places.” Indeed, asked how to eat at the fair and remain healthy, Fielding was hard-pressed: “Well,” he joked, “I think at one point I saw corn.”

Fair spokeswoman Renee Hernandez says some healthy food does, in fact, co-exist with the traditional extreme fair food.

“Cardinale’s Wood Fired Pizza has a pizza salad, which is a bed of romaine and mixed greens with healthy pizza toppings,” she says. “And there are chicken and shrimp kebabs.”

And, she notes, there’s Terri’s Berries, the Encinitas-based fruit stand that has been at the fair for decades. 

“We get a lot of people who are happy to find us,” said Elodie Crutchfield, proffering whole fruit and baskets of berries, some of which were, shockingly, not even dipped in chocolate. “I know the ceviche stand has a mango cup, but that’s the only other healthy fruit option I know of here.”

DPH Director Fielding noted that eating something nutritious before or after a trip to the fair might work for some people. “I think you just have to choose carefully and not be easily seduced by what looks most appetizing on an empty stomach.”

But sometimes the pull is just too overwhelming.

“This looks amazing!” cried 13-year-old Daniel Chinn as donut glaze oozed onto the bright yellow cheese of his Krispy Kreme burger.

Afterward, the youngster was less enthusiastic.

“It was good,” he said, slumped at the lunch table and wearing a wan expression. “But now I feel horrible.”

Fair temptations run the gamut, from newfangled chocolate-covered bacon to old school Sno-Cones.

Posted 9/5/13