Fat Bomb

This is a "chivitos":

Take a hamburger patty, top it with some bacon slices, top that with a slice of ham,top that with a fried egg, top that with a slice of cheese, and top all that that with lettuce and tomatoes.  Put that whole pile between mayo-smeared bread bookends and serve with fries.  You are now eating the national food of Uruguay. 

I don´t know that it´s actually the national food of Uruguay, but I think it should be, so as of this moment, and until Uruguay enlightens me to the contrary, I declare it so.  The chivitos has jumped into the upper pantheon of foods that I like but are bad for me.  In fact I think it takes second, bumping into third place the monte cristo sandwich:

The gold is still held by the Katz´ deli cheesecake shake:

which is a cheesecake turned into a milkshake. 

The combination of food like the chivitos and the ability for those who choose to live a manual labor-light lifestyle seems to have led to a phenomenon in Uruguay´s cities that I haven´t seen much before in Latin America: overweight people.  Not that everyone´s a pudge or anything, but it definitely isn´t uncommon walking down the street in Montevideo or Colonia or Salto to see a number of people who are a little soft around the midsection.  It´s a sign of relative prosperity I guess.  As is the fact that if you open one of Uruguay´s daily papers to the Opinion page you usually find articles opining on international affairs not involving Uruguay.  If being overweight and wanting to give out advice aren´t signs of a prosperous people, I don´t know what are.