The burgers are free – all day, every day – at the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Ariz. The only catch is you have to weigh at least 350 pounds. The fake nurse who weighs you is young, hot and female. All guests, regardless of weight, are called “patients” and are “admitted” by the “nurses” who dress them in bibs that look like hospital gowns. Strategically placed mirrors behind the counter provide patients with heart-stopping views of fake-nurse crotch.

The menu includes unfiltered cigarettes and milkshakes reputed to have the highest fat content in the world, but burgers are the main attraction. They range from the single to the quadruple bypass, based on the number of patties they contain, with two pieces of cheese for each patty, between buns shiny with lard. If you finish an 8,000-calorie Quadruple Bypass Burger, a fake nurse will push you by wheelchair all the way to your car. On a recent visit, Zach Fowle of the Phoenix New Times reported watching one customer eat two quadruples. “The guy has the meat sweats and looks like he might spew at any minute. It’s a good thing he’s getting wheeled out, because it looks like he can barely walk,” Fowle observed. The burgers come with all-you-can-eat “Flatliner Fries,” which are cooked in lard and smothered with cheese and/or gravy.

In every fiber of its being (perhaps fiber is the wrong word), the Heart Attack Grill is a one-fingered salute to the health food movement. That’s the idea, according to owner Jon Basso.

A former Jenny Craig weight-loss program franchisee, Basso claims to have eaten a Double Bypass burger every day for the last five years without gaining a pound. Lean physique notwithstanding, Basso considers himself a trailblazer in the rebellion against healthy eating in the spirit of shameless cholesterol bombs like KFC’s Double Down sandwich.

“I view myself, not as an originator, but to have been the key driving force of this trend,” he told me via e-mail. “The Heart Attack Grill hit with BIG international publicity in 2006 which gave other restaurateurs the courage to put something of gigantic proportions on their menus.”

Other restaurants have tried to mimic Basso’s medical-themed, death-courting business model, and he’s sued them all, including establishments like “Heart Stopper Burgers” and the “Flatline Grill.” So far he’s successfully forced copycats to quit using fake naughty nurses to sell, and celebrate, obscenely unhealthy burgers.

The health food movement began early in the last century in response to a newly industrialized food system that valued flavor and the economics of scale over the health consequences of its products. White bread, sugar, meat and fat were some of the movement’s prime targets. Many of those same foods are now at the core of a new crusade that, for lack of a better term, I’ll call the “sick food movement.” While the health food movement was a sincere attempt to reform a system that seemed indifferent to health, the sick food movement is a cynical response to any attempt to encourage healthy eating.

The sick food movement has parallels to the Tea Party in that both draw on deep wells of vague dissatisfaction, and both are less articulate about what they’re for than what they’re against. The common ground is hinted at in the tax line on Heart Attack Grill’s receipts, which reads “Obama’s Cut.” Like many Tea Party talking points, in which relationship with reality is optional, “Obama’s Cut” is a flat-out lie – sales tax has always been state-imposed and not federal. Nonetheless, given that the First Lady has made healthy eating one of her pet projects, and that the president’s health care bill has a substantial prevention component, eating poorly has become rallying cry in the minds of Obama’s political opponents.

“Get away from my french fries, Mrs. Obama,” warned Glenn Beck at a recent Tea Party event in Illinois. “First politician that comes up to me with a carrot stick, I’ve got a place for it. And it’s not in my tummy.”

But the reward for stuffing yourself to the point of needing a wheelchair ride to the car is limited to bragging rights, the kind of faux-heroism celebrated in competitive eating events and TV shows like Man v. Food. Offering free food to fat people ups the ante by providing a financial reward for obesity.

I asked Basso if he’s intentionally trying to pack his restaurant with fat people in order create an environment where obesity is OK, and people feel comfortable being gluttonous. He responded on politically correct moral grounds. “Many of my very best friends are obese, and the sad fact is that they are picked upon in the same way the homosexual community used to be.”

Basso’s free-food-for-fat-people policy is a calculated risk. He doesn’t advertise, so the attention it draws is especially good for business, as is the restaurant’s fat-friendly ambiance. But the policy also creates the intriguing possibility that some “patients” who are already within gulping-distance of 350 pounds will make a calculation of their own: You spend “x” dollars in order to buy enough Quadruple Bypass burgers to put you over 350 pounds, then you can be done spending money on food. This makes gluttony more than a patriotic exercise in personal freedom. It’s an investment. What could be more American?

There is, of course, a solid argument to be made that efforts to improve America’s eating habits would be a good investment for the country as well. Alas, I can already hear howls of protest from the Fat-tea activists: “First they’ll take away our grease, then they’ll come for our guns.”