Baseball Seats with unlimited food and drinks a hit with fans, as dietitians cringe

USA Today reports:

Baseball and gluttony, two of America's favorite pastimes, are merging in a controversial trend taking hold at Major League Baseball stadiums across the nation: all-you-can-eat seats.

Fans in these diet-busting sections, for a fixed price usually ranging from $30 to $55, are able to gorge on as many hot dogs, nachos, peanuts and soft drinks as they can stomach. Some teams charge extra for beer, desserts and candy.

At least 13 of the 30 major league teams are offering all-you-can-eat seats for all or part of the 2008 season, up from six last year. Some of the teams that offered them last season are expanding their all-you-can-eat sections this season.

All-you-can-eat seats, usually in distant bleacher or upper-deck sections, are allowing teams to squeeze revenue out of parts of ballparks that used to sit empty game after game, team officials say.

"We're getting rid of (tickets) and making the public happy" by offering them a way to save money, says Andrew Silverman, executive vice president of sales and marketing for the Texas Rangers. The Rangers saw sales of 616 seats in their stadium's left-field corner take off last year after the seats were designated as all-you-can-eat areas.

Silverman says the Rangers will offer nearly 1,100 all-you-can-eat seats at 48 of the team's 81 home games this year.

The seats are drawing criticism from diet and health specialists who say they are symbols of binge eating, supersized fast food and poor nutrition. At a time when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the USA is in the grip of an obesity crisis with one in three adults obese, the idea of setting aside places for fans to gorge on high-fat foods is irresponsible, many specialists say.

"It's disgusting," says Christine Gerbstadt, a registered dietician and national spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association (ADA). "Why can't people just enjoy the game and eat sensibly?"

We doubt the Chicago Cubs will adopt this policy, in the near future,their fans can bankrupt any buffet in a matter of days.