You'd never know it from the State Fair, but there are things that even Iowans won't eat.

I've derived many an hour's pleasure from The Virtual Autopsy, a site maintained by a British medical school. There, medical histories, autopsy findings, and even pictures of the autopsied organs of folk who have shuffled off this mortal coil are provided, together with the opportunity in each case to choose among multiple possible causes of death and then have your "findings" critiqued . I actually got rather good at it, and wish that there were many, many more cases to "solve." In fact, the site almost makes me think I would have been a good  forensic pathologist!

Almost. Chemistry was never a strength of mine, and I"m afraid that it can't be avoided in pathology- or in most medical specialties, actually.

Anyway, one of the cases the web site presents involves a teenaged girl who died after eating  "a chip butty" (above). Being an American, I had no idea what a chip butty was. So I asked a friend of mine in the UK. He tells me that it's essentially a french fry sandwich.

Yes, that's what I said. I cannot conceive of such a thing, but apparently the Brits not only can, but do. And they not only can conceive of such a monstrosity. They actually eat them. But then, they also eat steak-and-kidney pie.

I tried steak-and-kidney pie at the Folk Fair at Navy Pier in Chicago several decades ago. It tastes very much like I imagine the straw would on the floor of a well-populated and not very well kept barn.

Lately I've noticed that Denny's, the sponsor of the The Late. Late Show with Craig Ferguson, has been advertising what it calls its "Midwestern Meat and Potatoes Sandwich." It's essentially pot roast, cheese, some kind of white goop, and french fries on a bun. Now, having grown up in the Midwest and lived here most of my life, I can assure you that it was Denny's, and not the notoriously sensible people of this region, who conceived of this disgusting item. Why would anybody (outside Great Britain, apparently) think that a starch sandwich is a good idea? It's true that Chickies- an Italian beef and hot dog stand on Pulaski Road back in the Chicago neighborhood where I grew up- used to top of its hot dogs with an order of fries. But they were not meant to be an actual part of the sandwich.

But this is not to say that we in the Midwest don't have our culinary peculiarities. Goulash, everywhere else on the planet (and especially in Hungary), is cubed beef in a spicy paprika gravy, served over flat noodles. But in Iowa and Nebraska, it's elbow macaroni and other stuff mixed together in tomato sauce- sort of chili mac, but without the chili beans. My mother used to add ground beef to a similar dish, and called it "concoction" (though when I was small, I knew it as "concussion"). I gather that Iowans and Nebraskans use a similar sort of logic in using the word "goulash," which kind of sounds somehow like it ought to be the name of something that results almost by accident from throwing various cans of this and that together. The only problem, of course, is that the Hungarians already use that word for a very different dish.

The Iowa State Fair is always the occasion of gastronomical enormities, as well as gastronomical wonders. The devouring of a shiskebob at the Lamb Producers' Pavilion is a ritual I observe ever time I go to the Fair, as is the eating of a inch and a half-thick Iowa pork chop on a stick and a beef sundae (mashed potatoes topped with beef and gravy and crowned by a cherry tomato). But I avoid the deep-fried Twinkies and Snickers bars. I may be something of an omnivore, but even I have standards. And arteries.

This year, the State Fair menu includes the ultimate artery-buster, one that grosses even the Brits out: fried butter (right). Apparently they prevent the butter from melting by utilizing the same mysterious principles employed to prevent  ice cream from melting when it's  baked in order to make Baked Alaska.

But no matter the depths to which we sink, we Midwesterners have our pride.

No, we do not eat french fry sandwiches. Or things that taste like the floor of the cattle pavilion.