cross-country food journey all this week and sent reporting teams to every corner of america and beyond. our mission to get fresh answers about how our food is grown, how the choices we make impact our health, our state of mind, our budgets and of course, the pure joy of eating. we have teamed up with the new cnn.com food destination to bring you autocracy, mind, body and wallet and looking at the american diet, not just how much we are eating first up, the texas state fair, the deep fr r fryerment is just for solid foods anymore. fried beer. it is 5:00 somewhere. fried beer is the new addition to this year s menu. beer is frozen then tucked inside a pretzel then the pretzel is thrown into the hot oil. love it or hate it, it is a matter of taste, i guess. growing portion sizes in the u.s. are a matter of fact. check this out, a typical cheeseburger and fries 20 years ago packed about 685 calories.
whole thing. you usually, you know, lean toward the salads to slice off calories. now you ve got a whole lot of calories extra. yeah. if it s friday they re drinking it. are you a beer drinker? used to be. if it s fried? no. they ve got not too. fried beer as well. it s kind of putting it in a pretzel pocket and deep frying that does not sound good at all. doesn t. fried chocolate, you might get me on that one. really? maybe. i d like to hear the ingredients on that one. i like my chocolate plain old chocolate. it s just chocolate. now it s got to be deep fried. maybe a deep fried crust with melted chocolate in the middle? could be good. all right. this is my favorite one because you know that i m a germ phobe, right? everybody knows. i m the one with the hand sanitizer doing the key boards and the mouse and everything around the station. so you know, you go to restaurants and see the grade they get, right, for safety?
electronic, it has to be the traditional type that you put up at this point. some feel the sign could distract drivers. the man says the sign needs to illuminate to show others the way. we re willing to take this to federal court if need be. mr. cuppen is hoping the houpb changes his mind. jon: interesting. lauren greene, thank you. jenna: what one of the big stories of the day, hurricane earl. it has weakened but still packing a dangerous punch. we have live pictures from long beach, new york for you, we re tracking the hurricane of the storm heads up the east coast, changing gears completely, you like fried food? one of the guys has created what some are calling heaven on earth. it s fried beer. for real. for real. fried beer. he s going to cook it for us in the next hour, and jon is going to try it. jon: i am?
francisco today. jon: some breaking terror news right after the break, new threats against europe and the united states to tell you about. plus, if you have a three-day weekend ahead, think about this unusual snack. you know, people will fry just about anything, a snickers bar, a stick of butter, but fried beer? jenna says it can be done. she s even tried it. jon jen i have. jon: we re going to put it to the test. jenna: delicious. a for strong bones, i take calcium. but my doctor told me that most calcium supplements. aren t absorbed properly unless taken with food. he recommended citracal. it s different it s calcium citrate, so it can be absorbed with or without food. citracal.
in the meantime, to this story now, most people would agree nothing goes better with fried food than an ice cold beer, but what if the beer was fried as wellsome that s right, one texas man is now serving up a unique finger food for the texas state fair, but you re seeing it here first on fox news. mark zable is the creator of fried beer. he s joining us from dallas. mark, you have some explaining to do. our viewers and our newsroom want to know why you re frying perfectly good beer. well, a couple reasons. one is i really wanted to try to win the toe be by this year at the big tex choice cookoff, the second is to make life simpler. you should be able to eat it instead of just being able to drink it. [laughter] jenna: so how does it work exactly? well, aye been able i ve been able to encase beer inside of a dough and deep fry it. if you were to break one after it s been open, the beer will