United States - Fatty Food Heaven?

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The problem, there, is that a garden salad with no dressing is not a meal. Eating healthy doesn't need to suck. Further, while it's possible to eat healthy at a restaurant, it generally requires knowing in advance exactly how the food is cooked. All too often, what would be a healthy meal at home can be a nutritional disaster when you go out. Think that pasta marinara over at Olive Garden is healthy? You wouldn't after you saw all the butter, cheese, and oil they put in the pasta and the sauce. The problem with that, though, is that you probably aren't going to taste the extra 600 calories they sneak into your meal. The only thing you're going to notice is that it tastes better than usual.

 

Of course, sugar and fat taste great. They are taste amplifiers, much like glutamate. That's why they are used.

 

Drew,

Since you quoted my post it is clear to see that I did not suggest having a salad with no dressing. I said not to use all the dressing. Dressings tend to have a lot of fat and in the low fat case, excess sodium makes up for it. Going healthy by ordering a salad and then loading it up with a bad dressing is counterproductive. But using a little bit doesn't kill it.

A real, healthy meal can be made from a salad. A lot of restaurants offer a lean, grilled meat like salmon or chicken on a number of salads. Go with a vinagrette rather than a ceasar dressing and you are well on your way to a healthy meal that doesn't suck, either. I have on occasion asked how certain items on the menu are prepared. There's your advance knowledge. I assumed once that the green beans on one place's menu would be a good choice. They came out in a small cup that was filled with beans, butter and bacon. Freaking nasty. I learned my lesson there.

 

Giles, I wasn't taking issue with the whole of your post...just a part. I kind of doubt you've ever ordered a McDonald's salad before. I have, and can assure you that, unless you want to pick out the egg yolks and cheese piece by piece, you aren't getting a healthy or filling meal. To be fair, it's been 7 years since I've last stepped into a McDonalds, so the salads may have changed since then.

I do feel the need, though, to re-iterate that a salad is not a meal. Sure, you might get enough fruit and vegetable servings (if the salad is made with an eclectic enough selection of greens, tomatoes, etc), and there is sometimes enough protein, you really aren't getting enough grains. Perhaps it is just my bias as a vegetarian of 12 years (vegan for the last 7) who's been forced more times than I care to discuss to attempt to subsist on restaurant salads while traveling or dining with co-workers, but salad is an appetizer, not a meal. Not only is it impossible to get "complete" nutrition with a salad ordered from a restaurant, but it also won't have enough whole grains or legumes to actually be filling.

 

I for one am glad to live in a country where I can enjoy whatever I want to eat. Whether it is healthy or non-healthy it is my choice to eat it. In the immortal words of Al Bundy, "C'mon kids, let's go clog an artery."

 

That may be the bottom line for you, but for most that is not realistic. There are so many chemicals and additives to food these days that the average consumer has to be a chemist to figure out what her/she is getting (probably T2 could figure out what's going on with that stuff). IMO, restaurants don't even remotely care about the health of their customers. Like you commented, it's all about the "bottom line" for most of them. It would not even surprise me to discover that the industry added chemicals to their food to make it more "addictive."

 

Chandos,

They do. How was that with the aroma substances added to cigarettes? What about glutamate in crisps? Ever had the feeling you couldn't stop eating until the package is empty? I know that very well. In my presence crisps evaporate.

I know that there is at least one large food company adding a slight vanilla flavour to all of their products, from the baby food to ketchup in order to 'prime' them. Idea is to get the customer used to the trademark taste in childhood, so he won't get astray later. And they certainly aren't the only ones. And that's not just restaurant food, but stuff you get on the shelf. What do they have in the US? Aromated milk? Sugared milk? So much for milk being natural and good for you.

Monty,
getting the folks primed, would mean, when combined with good marketing, they they will not go to another restaurant when they feel the crave. To the contrary.

 

Exactly.

 

Monty,

Point is, you don't. From what I read the vanilla taste in ketchup for instance is not consciously notable, but it is there. And it was added with the deliberate intent of priming the customer, and it apparently works.

Only insofar as you speak of addictive drugs. No, they don't want to hurt their customers, but they sure have a keen interest in keeping them 'loyal to the brand' to sell more of their product and retain or expand their market share. That's what those tobacco additives in cigarettes were all about. And that's what glutamate in crisps is all about - it tastes great, and it makes you (want to) eat more. I know the effect first hand

Do you really think they spend millions on branding, taste concepts, priming and marketing - but do not consciously decide what they put into their food? Of course the choice of ingredients it is deliberate. And of course the pursuit of concepts like taste branding and customer priming is completely deliberate.

 

Oh, they do. At least the Colonel does-- in his chicken. He puts an addictive chemical in it that makes you crave it fortnightly!

In my experience, the only food that I've ever craved in kimchi. Now aint that odd?

 

Ragusa, additives to enhance flavor and additives to extract more nicotine out of cigarettes (and thereby make them more addictive) are orders of magnitude apart. To put these things on the same level is simply silly.

 

Only as far as directly harmful physical effects are concerned. The principle is the same. You 'amplify' your food. There's sugar, salt, and glutamate and in that league indeed, nicotine boosters are something else.

But except for that? What about the idea of biochemical customer binding through food additives in general?

You feed your baby with vanilla-ized or otherwise 'branded' baby food and it will then grow up and unconsciously prefer these products in later life? That's totally ok because it isn't harmful - you don't get sick of it - you just end up being primed for a certain brand? That's quite something else than just making tasty food.

Yes, it doesn't cause additiction as far as we know today, but it is still something I find sleazy and questionable - just like amplifying cigs to hook smokers on it. Where the circle closes.

 

Yesterday I made myself a huge hamburger fried in bacon grease for dinner That's how I do it at home, so the fattyness at restaurants and the like aren't a problem for me.

 

The attitude that the restaurants are responsible for an individuals lack of restraint is really tragic. This is just another example of a troubling trend. The restaurants do NOT make people fat. People who don't take responsibility for what they put in their bodies make themselves fat.

I used to eat McDogfood, Taco Smell, Kentucky Fried Pigeon, etc. I was unhealthy, got sick frequently, and was physically weak. I made the conscious decision to change my ways. Started eating healthy and working out regularly. I didn't blame the restaurant industry for my poor health, I blamed me.

Blaming the restaurants is a cop out. If people took personal responsibility for the very important, fundamental act of eating, then the restaurants would have to change. This is capitalism. Demand is being supplied. If people demanded something else (healthy food), it would be supplied.

 

There are a number of problems contributing to an overweight society here in America:

1.)Lack of excercise. Hardly anyone does any real, regular exercise anymore, and those that do usually see results. Of course, most of them then stop and loose the results and then wonder why...

2.)Larger portion sizes. This really is the case, and we are trained, both by parents and the 'this child is starving in Africa, don't throw away your food' commercials, to finish our meals. Add to that a consumer mentality, so getting more is as much of a deal as getting it at a lower price.

3.)Fatty cooking. Let's face it, there's a lot of this here, even in places that you wouldn't expect it.

4.)A snack-by-habit society. The snack food industry has done well, and there's a reason for it. Seriously, how many of you Americans out there have ever tried to fast for a day. You'll learn quickly how much you eat by habit.

5.)High-Fructose Corn Syrup. This one may catch many of you by suprise, and it is my personal favorite devil on the list. You see, corn syrup is a more-or-less tasteless volumizing additive in anything you can add it to here, and it all seems to be high-fructose corn syrup. Now what is high-fructose about it? Well, normal corn syrup is chalk full of complex carbohydrates, basically large chemicals that are zip-chords of simple sugars (fructose in this case). As I understand it, your body takes these and breaks the sugars off one at a time as needed, keeping the rest of the molecule in circulation in your metabolism much longer. High-fructose corn syrup, however, has been 'pre-digested' by artifical enzymes and processes so all the zip-chords have been zipped already and the fructose is floating free. This fructose hits your system like about 10K oranges all at once, and these simple sugars are either quickly used or immediately shunted to fat cells for storage. Guess which happens to most. And this stuff is pervasive, too. You'll find it in just about everything that has an ingredients list. I know, my mother-in-law used to be very overweight until she went on a high-fructose corn syrup free diet. Combined with a number of other weight-loss efforts, it has worked wonderfully, but she really has to hunt and peck to find something that doesn't have it in there.

 

JF,
it's not blaming the restaurants. I do eat in such places, although rather rarely, and I am slim. Yes, self restraint, moderation and exercise all play a great role, as does education about healthy nutrition and so forth.

But, and there we are again, I do not like to absolve the businesses producing food and selling it from any responsibility despite their very deliberate priming techniques. It's just the consumer who can't handle the food he gets served! Sorry, in my ears that does sound just a wee bit too convenient (and self serving) to be true. It is not that McD and their ilk are innocent victims falling prey to frivolous lawsuits.

PS: If the product, it's ingredients and the portion sizing can't be handled properly by an increasing number of customers, it is .... maybe unsuitable, maybe just a bad product?

 

Ragusa,

First, I applaud your healthy lifestyle. It is nice to know that we share this.

I agree with you, it is clearly a bad product. There is no disagreement there. That is what the market seems to be demanding. If people wouldn't buy it, the restaurants wouldn't sell it. Remember, restuarants are businesses. They want to make money. How do you make money? By selling something that is in demand. You frame my position as "It's the consumer who can't handle the food he has been served!". I look at it from the other direction. The consumer can't handle food he has demanded. Remember, the restaurants are not forcing anyone to eat anything. The person going into Olive Garden and pigging out on the "bottomless" pasta bowl could just have easily gone to the market, purchased some fresh vegetables and fish, and made a healthy meal. I speak as a reformed fast/junk food eater.

We can dance around this forever. It is a fundamental difference of opinion. I believe that an individual needs to take personal responsibility. You appear to believe that an individual is not responsible for their own choice in this case.