What are your thoughts on fast food?

What are your views on fast food? As a person who eats a lot of fast food daily or weekly. I find it as yummy! Simple as that. Living in California you have many different ethic groups who serve great ethic food. Like Mexican, Italian, Arab, Hawaiian, and various Asian restaurants. Which I consider fast food since the food is served quickly. Maybe you're different. You probably find fast food cheap and or disgusting.

Most fast food is cheap because they use the cheapest possible ingredients with as much chemical flavoring as they can to make people like it. Everything has way too many calories, salt and high fructose corn syrup (also known as Corn Sugar.).

IMO Fast food is partly responsible for the decay of cooking skills and the ridiculous prices of food in stores: When it costs the same to eat out as it does to make a meal at home-something is way wrong.


Quick addendum: "Fast Food" has connotations other than quickly served food

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


I stopped eating fast food about two months ago and have improved my physical and mental being in ways I can't describe. Most fast food has literally 0% fiber... making it easier and faster to eat. But that is just messed up. I don't down on anyone who eats fast food but I do express the benefits that I have felt from switching to a high fiber diet.

reply to post by lordtyp0


Hey! Don't be bashing on fast food man! haha. JK. I hate to agree with you on that. I'm in love with fast food. It's so simple to buy a burger. Then cook all day long.

reply to post by nittin


Fiber? That word sounds foreign to me. What is fiber? Carrots? Sorry to sound stupid here. I just don't know what fiber is. What do you eat?

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


Are you serious? Yes carrots have fiber in them..Just google the benefits of fiber. In my opinion fast food has no fiber which causes all the crap from the food to stick in the body rather than be properly digested. The reason fast food has no fiber; it makes it much easier, cheaper, and faster to cook. Which does not benefit the customer in any way. Although it does make the food easier to eat. But I don't think that is natural...

fastfood; it's for the ignorant masses.

Rebel;
You don't know what fiber is?

What do they teach you in jr high?

reply to post by Lysergic


Take it easy! I just forgot. It's not like I request fiber dollar burgers at Burger King every time I go there.

reply to post by Romantic_Rebel


Well you won't find fiber at any fast food joint.

My gosh, I haven't eaten any fast food since May. I don't eat out much at all, mainly because I'm a better cook than the cooks in the restaurants I go to. I made chicken marsala Friday night and it was superb. I've cooked professionally off and on all my life. I got my first cooking job at Wendy's and that was a long time ago. I can understand the attraction of fast food. It's just some of the things they do in fast food places. Like one Kentucky Fried Chicken I worked at, it was common practice to put chicken that some one dropped on the floor back in the tray. I stopped eating chicken there after that. I can do it better and I don't mind the time it takes to prepare a good meal.

I avoid fast food as much as I can.. now, if we have nothing to eat and it is the only option, I eat a small portion.. although, I really miss the cheap taco places in cali... nothing is better than a 2:30 am drunken taco

reply to post by nittin


Yeah I know. What do you cook for yourself? I actually know how to cook really real. I'm just to lazy to cook anything. My friends say I make the best desserts they ever tried.

Fast food? Meh... don't care for it, and I typically don't eat it unless we're on the road traveling.

Personally I prefer cooking my own meals for a number of reasons,

- better tasting
- you know what's in it
- takes little time depending on the dish
- like to cook

Here's a rather quick recipe I posted a few years back for someone looking for a meal to prepare for their date.

They didn't get home from work until 5:30 and their date was due to arrive at 7:00

It's very easy to make, takes little time to prepare, and makes for quite the colorful and delicious meal... and better yet costs less than $10

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I usually only eat fast food when I'm in a hurry somewhere, and if I'm hungry while travelling with some time to kill - then I sometimes visit Burger King at the airports grabbing a burger with fries! - that's the only time I'm eating processed fast food burgers and fries, and it happens approximately about 6-8 times a year, maximum!

Okey to be honest, I just love the Italian restaurant & pizza place around the corner where I live, it's a cozy family place owned by a elderly Italian couple and one of their 'very nice' daughters is a server waiting tables as well. So two times a month we go there and have their fantastic delicious home made pizza and some red wine, enjoying the friendly & relaxed atmosphere.

And it also happens from time to time when I'm alone and is lazy to cook, that I phone them and quickly drop by to pick a pizza from them to eat while watching a movie alone at home.

But I don't know if I can count that as "fast food pizza" since most of their ingredients are mostly fresh products, and not the processed or canned stuff? And it's never more than a total of 3 pizzas a month.

Okey, the cheese of the pizza is quite fatty though, so it's not so healthy to eat them too often!

(I usually compensate with not eating any cheese at home for 3-4 days after I had one pizza, so it hopefully equals out in the end lol!)

And then sometimes, I'll have such a craving for Döner Kebab with some strong sauce, so I usually eat 1 to 3 of those each month as well!

Ohh! I almost forgot!

I'm also guilty of eating 1 or 2 delicious Gyros each month from a great Greek guy who makes the best ones in town, while visiting a friend who lives in that part of town.

That's really all the "Fast Food" I eat on a yearly basis, so I guess i'm a very moderate consumer regarding fast food?

I very seldom eat fast food or much "pre-processed" food products at home, and I usually cook our food from scratch using good raw products like fresh meat & chicken, and I eat a lot of raw organic vegetables, sallads and fresh fish - I really like to cook as well, which also perhaps happens to be one of my few natural gifted talents!

So my thoughts on fast food?

Nice to have available when you really really need some food FAST!

And it really depends on how often and how much fast food one eats as well I think?

I like to think and believe that my very moderate intake of fast food is safe?

Don't Americans have any healthy fast food? If you know what's in it, and how it's made, and know the integrity of the place you're buying it from, it can be OK.

Avoid the fast food burgers, they're probably one of the worst. Fries are very, very, very bad for you. If you have to go there, these places should sell green vegie salads. They do up here.

Up here, we have sub sandwich places, where you choose what goes in it. Lots of fresh vegies, some lean meats (if you want), on a whole wheat bun is delicious and healthy. They are also made in front of you, with the sandwich maker wearing gloves, that get changed for every sandwich made.

Tacos can be healthy, if you add lots of lettuce and tomatoes. Get a salad with it. Don't eat too many, too many calories will make it unhealthy.

Salad bars. Fast. Healthy, if freshness and cleanliness regulations are followed.

Fiber = whole grains, all vegies, fruits, seeds, nuts. Eat lots of vegies and fruits every day. 5 to 10 servings.

Learn how the food is cooked. Even the slowest restaurant food can be worse for you that some of the healthy faster food, if it's cooked with lots of fats, salts, or fried. Or dropped on the floor, or if the food handler isn't clean or healthy. Or the ingredients sit too long, maybe on their way to going bad.

Learn how to cook. Not just barbeque. One of the best thing a person can do for themselves. Get a crock pot and learn about it. Great way to cook.



Just noticed the poster above me. They sound like they found a good healthy pizza place. I had to learn to make my own, there are no pizza places near me Whole grain crust, lots of fresh vegies, and herbs. Nothing fast about it though, the dough takes a couple of hours to make.

See, just research what you're eating. And if you know it's unhealthy, eat it only sometimes, and get a salad with it.....

I use to eat fast food often. Now my family and I keep away from it as much as we can. Sometimes we will, but it has become rare.

Ever since the McDonalds study, with the burger that took ages to start to decompose. Well, that is just sick. I do not want whatever is in there to cause that inside me.

And being a trained chef. We try to stick to descent places to eat that use allot of local ingredients. And I try to cook the same for my wife and kids.

I don't eat fast food, unless you can consider a cornish pasty fast food? And I buy from a very reputable local company which makes them fress in store every day.

I never ate much of it, and I've never had a big mac, a whopper or whatever else the chains call their "flagship" burgers.

It's not even that it's tasty - it's just that your brain craves the rush of refined carbs, so it makes you think it's tastier than it actually is.

The amounts of sugars and processed carbs are in there for one reason and one reason only, and that is to get you addicted so that you start to crave the food after a while.

A lot of fast foods from non-burger outlets are full of really horrible meat parts, MSG and other additives.

The only way I would ever eat fast food would be if I had no other choice - the phrase "fast food" is in itself a myth.
I can cook up a delicious meal in about 30 minutes, with just normal stuff I have in the fridge or freezer - about the time it takes on average to drive to the FF place, queue, order, pay and drive home.

And I don't mean a salad - I mean meat, veg and rice/pasta/spuds.

It's really easy, nutritious, filling, tasty and a great way to impress women or men depending on your gender or preference.

All you need to do is keep a few herbs and spices in the cupboard, buy FRESH FROZEN veg which is often better quality than you get in the market and keep it in the freezer, keep your preferred carb in the cupboard, and get a recipe book.

I have 2 and a half year old twins, they have never had a fast food burger and fries or any of the other junk that the fast food franchises pass off as real food. I used to love Micky D's burgers but then when I was pregnant with my kids I looked at my ten year old nephew and realized how unhealthy he was. He was severly over weight and at the time didn't even know what an orange was. He tried to eat it with the peel on it. Now almost three years later he is 13 and weighs almost 300 pounds and has high chelerstrol. The entire family is horriably over weight and they eat out at least five nights a week. (I don't mean at a decent resturant but every fast food place u can imagine) My sisters idea of cooking a meal is to cook four pounds of bacon and serve a case of prepackaged danish along with it. I know that the decline of americas health is due to the quick, easy and cheap access to fast food which in my opion has so much artifical crap in it that it can hardly be classified as food. I love to cook, using fresh local ingrediants and organic when possiable. My kids benifit as a result as do my husband and I. I swore that I wouldn't give my kids anything that I couldn't pronounce every ingrediant in and so far I haven't reguardless of how expensive it is.

Most fast food is high in fat, high in calories, high in salt, and high in carbs.

Ever read the "nutritional" info on a McDonalds burger? You'll wish you didn't....
Still though, the simple fact is, it's cheap...and in the current economy, sometimes that just wins.

If I have to keep going to the store every couple of days for fresh fruits and veggies, it's a real drain on the bank account. Likewise, getting home late doesn't leave a lot of time for cooking.

So far, my solution of choice has been crockpot meals... You can do the prep the night before (after eating the meal you had cooking that day), and just start it in the morning before you leave.

Then, when you get home, the house smells of dinner, and it's ready to go (my wife and I both work, so this is a great solution).

Plus, it's easy to use frozen veggies, which keep longer, in these meals.

Originally posted by Gazrok
So far, my solution of choice has been crockpot meals... You can do the prep the night before (after eating the meal you had cooking that day), and just start it in the morning before you leave.

Then, when you get home, the house smells of dinner, and it's ready to go (my wife and I both work, so this is a great solution).

Plus, it's easy to use frozen veggies, which keep longer, in these meals.

Another great thing about crock pots is that you can use the cheaper, tougher cuts of meat, and it tenders up really nice. You barely even need to have recipes. Once you know how to use the crock pot, it's almost impossible to make anything except very good, tasty meals.