In case you haven’t heard, Starbucks will now Super-Size your iced Venti 2 pump, 4 sugar, super skinny, double wide, whip it good, mocha-chaita-cino-o (or whatever you order) for 50 cents extra.  Yep, the voluminous Venti has officially been dwarfed by the trendy Trenta.  Why?  Because everyone needs a coffee that’s larger than their stomach capacity– duh? Oh, I kid you not, the 31oz Trenta is actually 16ml more than the average stomach size.  It can hold an entire bottle of wine – with room to spare.  The Trenta is the Dirk Diggler of drinks, the Dolly Parton of pick me ups.  Seriously America, why are we so obsessed with all things larger than life, and larger than necessary?

The sign at my Starbucks counter reads “Bigger is Better,” but is it?  Is it ALWAYS better? A 24 oz Venti Caramel Macchiato is 300cal, 39g of sugar, and 150mg of caffeine.  Therefore, a Trenta version could be as much as 5000 cal, 300g of sugar and 2 billion grams of caffeine or something like that…math isn’t my strong suit.  Unless you’re a trucker who’s being held at gunpoint while hauling a shipment cross-country, I can’t imagine the need for such a beverage.  Of course, you’d also have to be a trucker with an enormous stomach, as your belly would otherwise fill to capacity before you finished your drink.   That last sentence was just silly, as truckers are rarely known for their svelte bodies.  Oh gosh, now I’ve offended all truckers reading this article. But, I digress.

It seems as if nothing is ever enough for us Americans.  So, what’s next?  Men trying to enlarge their penises?  No, wait, my inbox is already swollen with ads for that procedure.  Will fast food joints make a burger so big, that they’ll need to give a defibrillator as the toy surprise?  Nope, we’ve done that too.  The Triple Whopper with Cheese has an eye-popping 1230 cal and 82 grams of fat!  Somehow I think “Triple Bypass with Cheese” would be a more fitting moniker.  Even J Lo’s derriere has been super-sized; you’ll find it on Kim Kardashian.

It’s pretty clear our desire for excess is boundless, so who can blame Starbucks for cashing in on this universal infatuation?  I asked a patron with a Trenta why he bought his quart sized coffee.  His response, “I’m thirsty.”  Well, there you have it, thirsty people everywhere will be ordering this larger than life, yet miraculously still able to fit in a cup holder, beverage.  Pretty soon we’ll simply order a troth of coffee, and of course, they’ll call it a Trothe`.  That’s right – we’ll thumb our noses at obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.  No matter, we’ll be too hopped up on caffeine to give a damn.

This article was originally posted on my Seriously? column at Hybrid Mom