Fattening Food at the Iowa State Fair

Daily Mail: With fat oozing out of its thick cinnamon and honey batter and sugary icing being drizzled over the top, just looking at this new state fair snack might make you feel sick.

This new delicacy of deep-fried batter on a stick (right) has become a hit for a vendor at the Iowa State Fair. But at over 400 calories and more than 45 grams of fat from just the two ounces of butter even before it is put in the deep fat fryer for three minutes and covered in glaze, this 'treat' is unsurprisingly going to do nothing for your waistline.

But that has not deterred fair visitors, which this year will include Sarah who is stopping off when her One Nation bus tour resumes on Friday. The Tea Party darling wrote in an email to supporters: 'I'm excited to try some of that famous fried butter-on-a-stick, fried cheesecake-on-a-stick, fried Twinkies, etc.'

The four dollar bite is being sold as the fair celebrates its one hundredth year of making a full size cow out of butter. Last month 'Butter Cow Lady' Norma Lyon, who sculpted the cow for over 60 years, died.

It has become a fair food tradition to constantly stoop to new depths of bad health with other popular products including deep fried Twinkies, Snickers and Oreos. Fried butter first appeared at the Texas State Fair in 2009, but a whole stick of butter dipped in a cinnamon and honey batter, fried and then drizzled with a sugary glaze is a new low.

Fair vendor Larry Fyfe, who created the deep-fried butter on a stick said: 'Whenever you say "butter on a stick", people think of a stick of butter and it running down their face and everything, and it just doesn't sound too good.'

But he explained that once the stick is fried, most of the butter has melted. 'You're not biting into no stick of butter,' he told local station KCCI. 'No. It's all melted, most of it, into the mix. Maybe a little bit of butter might run out yet, but the lion's share of it melts right into the mix.'

Mr Fyfe said that customers have been comparing the snack to the taste of French toast. But not everyone trying out the new food seemed as impressed. One boy tasting the butter stick told KCCI: 'The butter has run all over me.'

The state fair in Iowa, where over 65 per cent of adults are either obese or overweight, runs until August 11 in Des Moines.