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07.01.09 - 6:28 PM
Hold The Fries
Hoping to combat America's growing obesity, California today became the first state to require that chain restaurants provide calorie counts for their food, along with listing amounts of sodium, saturated fat and carbohydrates. Still, the brochure's on the counter, yours for perusing or not. Wanna know what's in Chili Cheese Fries? No, you don't.
15 Comments so far
Show AllI haven't eaten any fast food in over 25 years but when I visited McDonald's it always amazed me that they put scads of salt on the fries instead of allowing individual choice. I suppose its still the same.
You can ask for fries without salt, they'll cook you a fresh batch.
I ate at a nearby Chili's a *lot* when I was in college, and usually ate a lot, including a burger. When i finally got around to checking out the nutrition information on its website, guess what shocked me the most? The biggest amount of calories in a burger order came not from the meat, not from the fries, but from the bun! About 400 I think. Apparently they buttered them. I started getting the burgers with the smaller whole wheat bun instead, without butter.
And the fries didn't have nearly as much sodium as you'd think. All the chicken dishes had far more sodium than the burgers there, because most chicken served in restaurants like that has been injected with a saltwater solution, supposedly for "seasoning", probably really to extend shelf life and to charge more for the weight of the chicken.
just last week, on my way to a class, while walking through the food court at the local mall, i passed by a young boy, perhaps nine years old, sitting at a table there, with both sets of his pudgy little fingers wrapped around the first cousin to the item in the above foto. this little boy, already 30 pounds overweight, a gleam in his eyes, had the look of total bliss on his face as he was lifting the dead beast toward his bloated cheeks.
meanwhile, my two dogs, when not consuming from $50/bags of dog food, and yes, leftover vegetables from the garden, find themselves enjoying - at least three days per week - the simple pleasures of raw meat/bones. the irony does not escape me.
If your child is 8 years old and weights almost 200lbs (just an example), you should be charged with endangering the welfare of a child. I work at a deli and this little girl came up and ordered a pound of fried chicken. I figured it would be to split with other members of the family but they sat down and she ate the entire pound.
Well it's part of our biology. It's been documented that humanity's consumption of meat enabled the brain to grow bigger and more complex and for us to advance as a species. Also, up until the invention of agriculture (and still many many times after), food was not so plentiful, and the human body craved whatever had the most calories...meat. It's an instinct for survival, pretty much.
I think that's also why it's so difficult for overweight/obese people to lose weight...you have to fight against millions of years of biological instinct to consume less energy (food) than you exert. I currently weigh well over 400 lbs., but I have finally started losing weight for the first time in several years, thanks to my choice (and lack of it due to being poor) to make all my own food, and making healthier choices. I don't get cravings for meat or anything like that, but I still consume it because I know my body needs more protein than the whole grains, nuts, etc. I eat provide. I just eat less of it than I did before, usually in the form of a few meatballs with my whole grain pasta I cook during weeknights, and then the bacon and eggs I cook for breakfast on weekends, usually chicken for dinner on weekends too.
And don't blame that poor kid for what he enjoys, corporations have spent decades and untold amounts of money creating food protects that can fool a human brain into thinking it's delicious and nourishing. it's tough to fight against that.
It isn't just biological instinct that makes it difficult for overweight people to lose weight. There are also physiological reasons, changes in how an overweight person's body handles various hormones, insulin, receptor desensitivity.
Also, for some people, there might be motivation issues. It can harder to motivate oneself to engage in physical activity when one is overweight.
zmann - "Well it's part of our biology. It's been documented that humanity's consumption of meat enabled the brain to grow bigger and more complex and for us to advance as a species."
I've always believed that the fruit Eve supposidly tempted Adam with was meat.
People with type "O" blood are the heaviest meat eaters. (I read that in some book about blood types). Type "A" (which is mine) are the least. I grew up on a farm, and on meat, but was having trouble eating meat at a pretty young age. Now I have to force myself to eat it.
Another thing that doesn't help with the obesity problem is bread. My mother loved bread and she weighed around 230 lbs or more at one time. She was only 5' 2". Bread is cut thicker than it used to be, so every sandwich you eat is actually the equivelant of three slices. Of course all the buns, muffins, and so on are all monstrosities. I used to buy one of those big muffins and it lasted four days. Now I just make my own with an antique muffin tin, and they're a fourth the size of the ones in the stores.
As a skinny (100 lbs) senior, shopping for food is a nightmare. I just look at the meats, and am amazed at the size of the packages of beef, how large chickens have become, and all the other things that have balooned over the past ten or more years. My huge gripe has been that cooking utensils have grown accordingly to the supersized foods. I tried to find a new pancake turner to replace one I'd had for twenty years. They were all so big I could hardly hold one.
I don't think the obesity problem is going to diminish until we lose the "bigger is better" attitude. Then we'll have to go to work on the food additives.
Typical CA nanny statism.
Never cared how may calories were in my fast food (a lot) won't care now.
Just enjoy your life people. You love that stuff, you can eat it. You don't like it, you won't have to eat it. It's as simple as that.
As for CA, how about worrying about that 26b deficit right now? Eyes on the ball.
Maybe Ahnold should put a heavy tax on junk food like they have in Ohio on tobacco.
I see the salt shaker is nearby in case you need it!!?? I looked at the photo again. It's really a disgusting looking "meal". Is that a tomato and some pieces of an onion on the side? What IS that stuff? Are they vegetables? And that orangy melted stuff on top is probably "cheese food." Burp!
It's a good start. Sodium content in fast food and other processed foods will, hopefully, be the next eye-opener. I see it's listed, but many people don't know how unhealthy a diet, high in sodium (hard to avoid unless you're paying attention) is. Let's hope this leads to other states taking up the fight. Obesity and un-health just aren't "pretty", not to mention how expensive they are for society.
Yes, I can't really eat foods that are very high in sodium anymore. Check out the nutritional info for any sandwich at Panera...one sandwich has 100% of a person's daily allowance of sodium. The last two times I ate there, I threw up later due to how much salt was in the food...nasty.
Yeah ZMANN, that was one of the first things I started noticing too. After I started decreasing the amount of sodium in my diet on purpose, and then after going vegetarian and vegan, anything that had a larger amount of sodium would absolutely make me gag, even if they WERE vegetarian.
Yeah, I now have a love-hate relationship with pizza. Oy.