It’s Not Fine Dining, But Just Ok

Ordering in fast food has never been the most healthy choice, but it sure has changed over the years – and we’re not talking just product selection.

I remember back in the 1980’s when a pizza place opened up, whose slogan was “buy one, always get one free.” This started a trend, where all the pizza places followed suit, offering cheap deals on buying multiple pizza pies.

These days, you never get a free pizza, they just knock off a few dollars from each pizza when you buy more than one.

The pizza places and many other fast food restaurants also used to offer speedy delivery. One place’s famous slogan “30 minutes or it’s free” still rings in my memories. It even got to the point where rumors circulated about what the company did to delivery drivers not meeting the tight timelines. Such as taking the cost of the order out of the driver’s pay, or worse – firing the driver. Some restaurants even printed on their boxes “we care about your safety, our drivers never have to pay for a late order.”

Time may constantly move forward, but times have gone back to the dark ages in terms of speedy fast food delivery. When I order from a big chain chicken and ribs place, I used to always get a guaranteed to arrive time for the order. Now they always tell me that my order is on a “no time guarantee delivery, we’ll get you your order as fast as we can.”

As fast as we can? Hello! When I order fast food it’s not because of a future need, I’m hungry NOW. I know I can’t have it instantly, but just how long is “as fast as we can?”

Very rarely do you get your order for free if they do promise a time of delivery which isn’t met. Most places only will refund you the cost of delivery, which usually is only a couple of dollars.

Sure, fast food has other benefits still – it takes less time as you don’t have to prepare it yourself, and there is less clean up afterwards as all you need are the dishes and utensils for eating the meal. And when you order from a big chain, you are almost always guaranteed to get exactly what you ordered, they occasionally make mistakes, but usually they are consistent in terms of what they offer and how.

But once you offer something to the customer, it pains us when you take it away. Or confuses us when you add things that – well – that we’d never thought you would.

Like when McDonald’s started selling pizza’s in the late 1990’s. Who would have thought that a burger joint would start selling pizza? McPizza didn’t last too long – though it wasn’t that bad. Like the Big Mac, it had a distinct flavor all its own.
But it usually took longer to make than a burger, so often you’d get your hot pizza just as your friends had finished their meals and were ready to leave.

And now many pizza places have added French fries and onion rings to their menus. I remember years ago when they had potato wedges – don’t see those too often anymore. Guess they just swapped one form of greasy food with another.

Now when the fast food restaurants start selling fine steak dinners, with a nice bottle dry Chardonnay – that’ll be when I really cross over and start ordering more often!

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Longevity and Fast Food Nation?

Maybe fast food isn’t all that bad for you? Glen W. Bell Jr., the founder of the Taco-Bell restaurant chain died this past Monday at 86. He passed away at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, no cause of death was available at press time. Though for most of us, if we eat fast food on a regular basis, we’d be lucky to reach half Bell’s age.

There’s no question we live in a fast-paced world, where fast food dominates. It is far too easy these days to hit the local Burger King, quiet the kids while enjoying some family time by going to McDonald’s with a Playland, or satisfying a quick hunger with a quick taco at Taco-Bell.

These places were designed for our rapid-fire lifestyles. McDonald’s even has a university to train their managers and front-line staff, so that you are in and out of the line-up within a heartbeat.

But if you down too many Big Macs, chocolate Frosty’s, or enjoy too many Finger Lickin’ chicken meals, you may not have a heartbeat yourself.

Heart disease is still one of the top killers of North Americans, along with cancer (lung, skin, breast and prostate among the high ranking cancers).

You are four-times more likely to die from heart disease than a car crash in Canada, yet there are more licensed drivers on Canadian roads (some arguably should never have got their licenses in the first place) than there are Taco-Bell restaurants dotting those roads.

Maybe it was just a matter of coincidence that the founder of the largest Mexican fast food restaurant chain in North America died during the month when many have made New Years resolutions to shed excess pounds and get healthy? Or maybe it is a sign of our high calorie, drive-through eating culture?

Bell isn’t the first of the mighty fast food tycoons to pass away. The founder of burger giant Wendy’s died a few years ago, as did ice cream cone icons Ben and Jerry. One of those ice cream icon’s sons actually has come out on American television claiming his father’s product impacted his dad’s health.

Life isn’t forever, despite all the potions, lotions and magic concoctions you see advertising the eternal fountain of youth on late night infomercials. But we don’t have to die from eating poor diets, made of nothing good for our bodies.

That slice of processed cheese in your Big Mac has gone through so many chemical processes by the time it lands on your bun, it is anything but natural.
Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock coined the very appropriate phrase “Franken food,” in his documentary Super Size Me, where he shows us what a constant diet of McDonald’s will do to the human body.

We may not see cures for cancer in our lifetime, and we can’t control whether or not we are run over by a car, dying in a plane crash, or even simply slipping in the shower. But we can control what we put into our bodies, and that is a start.

I’ve often wondered if they put some magical secret ingredient in fast food products which cause us to suddenly have these cravings where we just have to have one.

But those cravings aren’t anything more than our own laziness in making our own healthy home cooking, or our thriftiness in search of the fastest and cheapest meal, rather than taking the time to invest in healthier choices.

It always amazes me, how people are so willing to drop thousands of dollars they don’t have to secure loans for high-end luxury cars which they’ll drive for a handful of years, yet they are too cheap to spend the few dollars they do have in their pocket on some fresh, natural, wholesome and healthy food choices for their bodies, which they will have for life. Their lives. That is if they live long enough to keep ‘em.

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