How a milkshake became an international symbol of badness

The 2,000-calorie Cold Stone Creamery peanut butter and chocolate milkshake is "the unhealthiest beverage in the US, according to Mean's Health Magazine.

Ice cream lovers, beware. For the past two years running, Men's Health Magazine - an American monthly guide to all that is morally serious, namely, "fitness, sex, women, workouts, weight loss, health, nutrition and muscle building" - has declared Cold Stone Creamery's PB&C milkshake to be the unhealthiest beverage produced in the United States. According to Men's Health, the 24-fluid-ounce "Gotta Have It" sized shake contains more than 2,000 calories and as much saturated fat as 68 strips of bacon. The magazine chattily calls the drink a "Cold Stone catastrophe".
It was a blindingly hot morning when I sidled up to a local Cold Stone to sample my ration of ruination. When I asked the man behind the counter if he had the PB&C, he eyed me conspiratorially. "The best one!" he said. "Try a medium!" Apparently the "Gotta Have It" size was unavailable, leaving me with a measly 20 ounces of catastrophe. There is nothing particularly remarkable about the PB&C, whose ingredients - chocolate ice cream, peanut butter and skimmed milk - are blended into a thick puree. But Men's Health, a magazine that specialises in the production of inane lists ("9 smells you need to eliminate") has succeeded in elevating the milkshake into an international fetish. Newspapers from New York to Bangkok have reported on "America's worst drink", citing the "esteemed men's fitness magazine" as an authority.
It's hard to say what ordinary people do with such news, but for fatty desserts as for celebrities, it's probably true that any publicity is good publicity. The shake, which is pretty tasty, hasn't really caught on in Abu Dhabi, according to the man who made mine. People prefer the more traditional chocolate and vanilla shakes (not exactly boiled spinach themselves). That's probably because no newspaper here has repeated Men's Health's silly superlative. Oh. Whoops.