Still popular at the age of 40

Rob Price

Still popular at the age of 40

Forty years ago, in 1967, San Francisco's Haight Ashbery District began hosting a youthful residential trickle that eventually would grow into a national counterculture.

Down the coast, in mid-June of the year, the Monterey Pop Festival featured the debut of a an obscure rock guitarist named Jimi Hendrix.

And over the next 60 days, the Age of Aquarius would celebrate its Summer of Love.

On the other side of the country, just outside my hometown of Pittsburgh, a different revolution was taking shape. It was in 1967 that a Uniontown McDonald's franchise owner named James Delligatti invented a newfangled doubledecker cheeseburger that, one year later, the McDonald's corporation would name the Big Mac.

Jimi Hendrix would eventually change the history of pop music; meanwhile, Delligatti's fancy cheeseburger would change the way Americans eat. According to one estimate I read last week, Americans now eat about 550 million Big Macs a year. Devoted fans of the Big Mac include former President Bill Clinton who reportedly stopped at a McDonald's for one after bidding his fellow Democrats goodbye at the 2000 Democratic Convention. I am not as famous as Clinton, but I too savor that unique blend of sweet sauce, salty pickle, a hint of onion and the taste of hamburger meat that, somehow, doesn't really taste like hamburger.

Yes, I know the Big Mac is a dietary disaster. Each Big Mac made in the U.S. packs a whopping 540 calories and 29 grams of fat. Assuming each gram of fat contains nine calories, nearly half of the calories in each Big Mac derives from its fat content, defying health experts who recommend a diet in which only 20 to 30 percent of daily calories derive from fat. A steady diet of Big Macs will lead to big trouble, as Clinton himself discovered a couple years ago when he had to undergo cardiac bypass surgery.

But it's unfair to blame America's obesity epidemic on the Big Mac alone. Burger King's Whopper with cheese - which I also like - packs more than 800 calories. Arby's Giant roast beef sandwich contains just under 490 calories and much more if you dump a lot of Horsey Sauce on it (which I like to do). As long as America is a fast food nation, it's going to have a weight problem.

Beyond the obvious health issues, the Big Mac has become an icon of America's love affair with the hamburger. It's an attractive-looking meal: A high bun that contains two, as they say, all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. The bun is double sliced, and the middle layer of bread lends some stability to the sandwich. Skilled eaters of Big Macs can eat one with one hand while they steer a car with the other.

Of course, they're shouldn't. A Big Mac is best enjoyed inside a McDonald's, where the smell of cooking fat enhances the aroma of one's individual meal. An order of French fries is a vital, salty addition, while a cold soft drink completes the fast food trinity that's simply too difficult to coordinate while driving a car. You have to be willing to steer with your knees.

I am particularly partial to a Coke when I eat a Big Mac. Years ago, I lived down the road from a McDonald's and would bring a Big Mac home so I could enjoy it with a beer. In retrospect, that was a mistake. Beer doesn't really go with Big Macs. The combination of special sauce and pickles cries out for a sweet non-alcoholic drink. Beer is a dietary distraction and a mistake of the young.

Of course, a lot has changed since I tried washing down my Big Macs with a Bud. I'm 20 pounds heavier, for one thing. And I would be a lot heavier had I not reduced my yearly intake of Big Macs from, say, 180 to about 6. I eat a Big Mac every once in a while nowadays, and I frequently don't finish my French fries, and I generally throw out half the Coke.

But I do eat all of my Big Mac, savoring the familiar sweetness of the sauce and that tangy moment when my teeth crunch into a dill pickle. In spite of its enemy status among the healthy-food conscious, the Big Mac endures.

So does Jimi Hendrix. You just can't say the same about the Summer of Love.