When I was a kid there were few things I loved more than fried chicken skin. I would just think about all that fat, crispiness, spices, the powerful magic of MSG, and just salivate. And don’t even get me started about fried chicken cooked in old palm oil. It’s so good that it’s borderline orgasmic. If some day, in some dark-as-hell future, I’m sentenced to death by firing squad, you better believe fried chicken skin will be my final meal. Who the hell cares if it’s unhealthy? I’m about to die anyway, might as well go out with some beautiful MSG-soaked crispiness on my tongue.
But here’s something a lot of people might not know about fried chicken: it’s classist. In Indonesia, there are two kinds of fried chicken: the elitist urban drumsticks served at KFC and McDonalds and the yellow-tinted ayam goreng of the streets. When fancy fried chicken first came into this country, it hit the cities first, where it was sold at Western fast food chains. You had to live in a big city like Jakarta or Surabaya and be able to afford a meal that costs as much as twice a normal meal to try some fast food fried chicken.
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Thankfully, it didn’t take too long for local alternatives to pop up. Fried chicken is the great equalizer, a dish so simple that it can level out class hierarchies. But these local chains didn’t want to call their food ayam goreng (Bahasa Indonesia for “fried chicken”). That would ignore the dish’s Western roots. Instead these places sold “Fried Chicken,” or “Fred Ciken,” or hell, even “Friend Chiken.” It doesn’t really matter what it’s called as long as it’s in something that resembles the English language.
I honestly don’t care either. As long as it’s a bag, bucket, or box of crispy fried chicken, I’m happy. I honestly once had a dream where I was swimming in a huge pool of fried chicken like some sort of Scrooge McDuck. Although, I guess that would be pretty traumatizing for a duck…
So basically, you could imagine my excitement when my editors started to talk about doing a weird food marathon—an experiment to see if someone’s favorite food would turn against them with enough repetition. It was finally my big chance. I could get away with eating fried chicken every day, for every meal, without shame. But, wait a minute. Could it kill me? How bad could a week of only fried chicken actually be for my body?
“A week is not long enough [to totally ruin your health], but if a person who was already suffering from obesity was to do this, it could increase the risk of serious chronic disease,” Jansen Ongko, a nutritionist, told me on the phone. “Excessive consumption of fried chicken can cause not only hypercholesterolemia and hypertension, but also chronic diseases like a stroke and a heart attack.”
That’s because a single piece of fried chicken contains anywhere from 300 to 350 calories, 10 to 15 grams of carbohydrates, and 20 -25 grams of fat, Jansen told me. Well, those numbers are pretty scary, but whatever, how bad could a week of fried chicken really be?
I was about to find out.
Day 1 – “Hello, Sabana”
I started my fried chicken challenge on a Tuesday. The first day went pretty smooth. I bought some street chicken from the Sabana near my office. Sabana is a local fried chicken chain that sells paper bags of crispy drumsticks, thighs, and breasts from roadside kiosks. Since it was my first day, I figured I would go for my favorite cut—the thigh.
Everything was going great, then I noticed the latest addition to the office: a scale. Apparently, everyone at the office, wondering if a diet of fried chicken would have serious health effects, wanted to see if there was a way to graph some data here. Look, I get it, but I am also not about to put my actual weight out there for the whole world to see. So instead, we’re gonna start with a simple “–” to represent my starting weight, whatever that may be.
Weight: —
Chicken consumed: two thighs
Day 2 – A surprise
I started my day feeling pretty constipated. I guess not eating veggies has its down sides. I drank some yoghurt probiotic stuff and it helped a bit, but my stomach still hurt a lot. I was starting to think that this whole thing was a stupid idea, when the strangest thing happened. I got on the scale and realized that I already lost 1 kilogram. What? I lost weight?! My mind was suddenly full of ideas. What if I discovered the next fad diet? The Fried Chicken Fast or the Drumstick Detox or something like that? I would make so much money with my (patent-pending) all-fried chicken take on the Paleo Diet that I would never have to work again. After all, why eat like a Caveman when you can eat like a Colonel?
The other plus today is that I found a new fried chicken spot. I was feeling tired of Sabana, so when I stumbled upon D’Besto, in Mampang, I was super eager to get in there and give it a try. They had this option called Sadas, or ” sayap pedas” (aka “spicy wings”), on the menu that was just delicious. It’s as tasty as Wing Stop, but at a quarter the price. It’s times like these that you’ve gotta love Indonesia’s obsession with copying stuff. Where else is the knock-off just as good as the original?
I loved the Sadas so much that I bought a second helping for dinner. The menu at D’Besto shows some serious range. The fried chicken comes in three different levels of spiciness, different cuts, and it’s all deep-fried to perfection. Sabana is sometimes soggy, and it only comes in one flavor. Time to step up your game Sabana! Trust me, I’m sort of a fried chicken expert, you know.
Weight: -1 kg
Chicken consumed: four wings, two thighs
Day 3 – Too much of a good thing
It’s Thursday morning, and I’m back at D’Besto, buying some spicy Sadas for brunch. I know, I know, who eats spicy chicken wings first thing in the morning? Only the most devil-may-care, zero-fucks-given person to walk down Jl. Mampang Prapatan Raya, that’s who. I would’ve bought enough for the whole day too, but I realized that my wallet was a bit light. Oh well, there’s always Sabana, right?
I devoured the Sadas at work. So far, my stomach was doing just fine. My bowels though? There was definitely some trouble brewing. All this fried chicken was turning my digestive tract into a no-movement zone. My intestines were like Jl Kapten Tendean on a rainy Friday night—totally backed up.
In the afternoon, I ate two piece of chicken from Sabana. It’s really not that bad, just too much flour, I guess. After a bit you feel like you’re eating a cookie, just with chicken thrown on top.
Later that night, I was hanging at a local bar sipping on a cocktail of cheap red wine ( amer) and beer—a concoction called Abidin. And I ate another piece of Sabana chicken. Sabana and Abidin were a perfect pairing. Who knew?
Oh yeah, and I gained that 1 kilogram back. Oh, well. I guess this diet isn’t happening after all.
Weight: +1 kg (back to normal)
Chicken consumed: four wings, two thighs (again)
Day 4 – My bad decisions catch up to me
I regret thinking that Sabana and Abidin were the perfect pair. I woke up with the worst sore throat, probably from constantly swallowing all these jagged pieces of fried chicken skin and eating all those spicy-as-hell wings from D’Besto. I decided to go to Sabana, and Sabana alone. I came around on the chain. Sometimes you want your fried chicken to be as normal as possible. I only ate one thigh though, because at this point, I’m feeling pretty sick of fried chicken.
For dinner, I felt like it was maybe time to mix it up. I bought some sambal ayam penyet, which is basically the “home cooking” version of fried chicken. But that sambal is spicy chili sauce, so, of course, it messed up my stomach. I had the worst acid reflux. It made me feel queasy, and totally killed my appetite. I took some meds and it all calmed down. But lesson learned: don’t eat sambal ayam penyet with some rice on the side.
Weight: — (normal weight)
Chicken consumed: two thighs (that’s it)
Day 5 – New city, new fried chicken
It’s my brother’s birthday, so I decided to head down to my grandparents’ home in Purwakarta, a small city located somewhere between Jakarta and Bandung, West Java. The trip should’ve only taken an hour or so, as long as the traffic was normal. But, of course, the traffic was as bad as my bowels, so the whole trip took about three hours.
I had heartburn the entire time. When I finally got to my grandparents’ home, I had to turn down my mom’s amazing home cooking and request fried chicken. She offered to order me some KFC, but no, I said, I want local fried chicken.
What arrived was four pieces of Hisana fried chicken. How was it? The best so far. If D’Besto was the tops earlier this week, then this chicken is through the roof. It broke all the barriers and went sheer off the fried chicken scale.
Look, I still craved D’Besto’s spicy Sadas wings, but Hisana was pretty hard to forget. Sadly, my stomach was tired of all this fried chicken. I had diarrhea at my grandparents’ home, and the acid reflux continued through much of the day. I decided to cut the Hisana up into tiny pieces and drown each one in mayonnaise mixed with chili flakes. It tasted amazing. But who knows if it actually helped my stomach.
Weight: ?? (I forgot)
Chicken consumed: four thighs
Day 6 – Chicago style
It was late Sunday night and I was heading back to Jakarta with a piece of Chicago fried chicken in my bag. It sounds super American, although I thought Chicago was known for its own pizza, not fried chicken. Whatever. It wasn’t as good as Hisana, but was about as crispy as D’Besto. I really didn’t care. My throat felt like shit. My stomach was a mess. All I wanted to do was give up. But I was too close to the finish line. Plus, my boss would just laugh if I gave up this soon. “Six days? That’s it?” Ugh, I can hear him now.
Weight: Who cares?
Chicken consumed: two thighs
Day 7 – It’s almost over
I woke up with zero appetite. I took Vitamin C and drank some yoghurt every day in a desperate attempt to not get sick, but it wasn’t working. I was coughing all morning. I figured I could eat a single piece of chicken and survive the day. I wanted some coffee, but my stomach wasn’t having it. I thought maybe something cold, but my cough was too bad. (We believe that cold drinks can make you sick, so it’s best to avoid ice when you’re feeling ill)
I toughed it out until 1 am and then went nuts. The week was (technically) over! I downed a bowl of salad and ate some chocolate cookies then went to bed. I was so sick of chicken. I didn’t want to see another fried thigh or drumstick for at least a month.
Oh, and it was also judgement time. After a few days of avoiding the scale, I was a bit worried about how much weight I gained. But guess what? I LOST weight. After a week of eating nothing but fried chicken, I was 1 kilogram lighter than when I started. It was probably the break from eating rice that mattered. But, honestly, if it came down to doing this for another week (or even a month) or just buying a bigger pair of pants, I would choose the larger size. You can definitely have too much of a good thing.
Weight: – 1 kg
Chicken consumed: one thigh
