Want to die early: eat like an NFL player

Here are two stories that I came across today.

The restaurant Chili's is using three NFL players to tout its new bacon burgers. As you have read many times on this blog, bacon burgers are not the kind of portions anyone should be eating, especially NFL players. And just to confuse you, Chili's wants you to over-eat burgers so they will contribute to charity.

There something wrong -- very wrong -- with the NFL, with charities and Chili's, all associated with over-eating burgers.

There should not be confusion around the second story. If you want to die before you are 50 years then be an overweight NFL player. You'll double your odds.

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, and Philadelphia Eagles running back Brian Westbrook will each represent one of three new Chili's Smokehouse Bacon Burgers in the name of their favorite charity. Available now, guests are encouraged to visit their neighborhood Chili's to taste these new burgers, because the player with the best-selling burger at the end of the 60-day promotional period will receive $10,000 from Chili's to donate to their charity of choice.

"These three new Smokehouse Bacon Burgers are sure to satisfy the hungriest of appetites," said Todd Diener, president of Chili's Grill & Bar. "We are proud to team up with these great athletes for a promotion our guests can get excited about and, more importantly, support their charities and the communities they serve."

Of course. Those burgers have enough calories to feed several people.

ESPN - Heavy NFL players twice as likely to die before 50 : "The amazing athletes of the National Football League -- bigger and stronger than ever before -- are dying young at a rate experts find alarming, and many of the players are succumbing to ailments typically related to weight.

The heaviest athletes are more than twice as likely to die before their 50th birthday than their teammates, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study of 3,850 professional-football players who have died in the last century."

Most of the 130 players born since 1955 who have died were among the heaviest athletes in sports history, according to the study. One-fifth died of heart diseases, and 77 were so overweight that doctors would have classified them as obese, the study found.