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Want to guarantee you'll never eat fast food again? Listen to this.  Melanie Haiken writes at forbes.com that the food we usually think is healthiest -- grilled chicken -- isn't.  She quotes one  employee: “To keep it from sticking to the grill, we use three squirts of liquid margarine on the bottom of it. To keep it juicy, once we’ve lain the frozen blocks of chicken, three more squirts of liquid margarine are applied to the tops.” (At least that's better than the chicken nuggets that come in liquid form at a famous place with arches, according to another source.) How about tuna?  Stay away.  "T una is emptied out of a plastic packet, the water or oil is squeezed out of it, and then mayonnaise is added in equal parts to the tuna," Haiken reports. And that mayonnaise?  It may sit out all day.  And day-old chicken patties and nuggets? Sometimes they're stripped of their breaded coating, then chopped up and served as chicken salad. What about fo...

It's no surprise that fast food makers target their ads to kids.  We all know that.  But did you also know that  less than 1 percent of all fast food kids' meal combinations meet the recommended national nutrition standards?  And that only 3 percent of kids' meal combinations met standards set by the fast food industry itself for childhood nutrition? So reports dailyrx.com on a new study just out from Yale that found that kids see two to three fast food ads every day, and that's because in 2012 fast food advertising increased 8 percent from 2009. All in all, $4.6 billion was spent in advertising for fast food restaurants in 2012, according to the Web site. "For context, the biggest advertiser, McDonald’s, spent 2.7 times as much to advertise its products ($972 million) as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water, and milk advertisers combined ($367 million)," the report explained. dailyrx.com notes that, according to the study, the average US preschooler sa...

In direct contradiction of a post I made earlier this month, McDonald's is not leading the pack when it comes to offering healthy food for kids, or adults. Mark Bittman notes in yesterday's NYT that even though every McDonald's exec he's talked to says the fast food outlet is only an occasional "treat" for his kids, why isn't the corporation taking a larger step to really make its food, well, healthier? The company points out that it now substitutes milk, water or juice (not so good) for soda, but still, the soft drink makes up more than 50 percent of the beverages sold to kids. "And, despite a well-publicized announcement a couple of weeks ago that promised to market only water, milk and juice in its Happy Meal advertising, there’s little sign of the sugar-peddling diminishing," Bittman writes. He adds that while it’s true that 21 percent of all Happy Meals are now sold with milk, "the vast majority of that is chocolate milk, which,...

Imagine this.  A fast food restaurant that has its own gardens to produce sustainable and healthy foods? But yes, Virginia, there is one.   And it's called b.good. Sadly, even though it's reportedly a chain in the Northeast, it's not one that's here in Connecticut, where I live.  And I have to say I've never heard of it.  But apparently they're regionally located and they're known for their determination to grow the very lettuce that goes on their hamburger buns. b.good , projects that it could harvest about 3,000 pounds of tomatoes this year, in addition to 500 pounds of greens, from gardens adjoining two of its store locations, according to fastcompany.com. Apparently it all began on the roof of a parking garage in downtown Boston, above the b.good restaurant. And now that it's growing its business from its original 12 locations to offering franchises, we're probably going to be hearing a lot more about it. You have to admit, rooftop garde...

It's pretty interesting.  Why do people who normally eat fruits and vegetables, and chicken and fish, when they do eat meat, devour french fries and hot fudge sundaes when they go out to fast food restaurants? Stephanie Clifford at The New York Times reports that " American consumers, even otherwise healthy ones, keep choosing caloric indulgences rather than healthy foods at fast-food restaurants." Restaurants have added salads and fruit and other healthier foods for some time.  But, as Clifford notes, "i t’s the sugary, fatty items that are flying — or waddling — out the door." Would you believe, as Clifford points out, that you can now have a bacon and egg sandwich between two glazed doughnuts?  You can, at where else, Dunkin Donuts. McDonald's CEO Donald Thompson recently told Cifford that although the chain had dedicated "one-sixth of its advertising time to salads, they make up 2 to 3 percent of sales, and don’t drive growth. "  Then...

It's probably not such a surprise but a new study has found that teens who don't get enough sleep also don't get enough of the right things to eat. "Well-rested teenagers tend to make more healthful food choices than their sleep-deprived peers," according to a study led by Lauren Hale, PhD, Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, as reported by newswise.com. The real value of this insight?  Doctors may now be able to figure out why sleep deprivation can lead to obesity. To me, it's pretty obvious.  When at the end of the day, I'm tired and stressed, and starving, I don't reach for an apple, I go straight for the M&Ms. Not only do sleepy teens on average eat more food that’s bad for them, they also eat less food that is good for them,” said Dr. Hale, speaking about the study results, according to the story at newswise.com . In the study those teens who said they slept fewer than seven h...

Restaurant visits are slipping and guess who they're blaming?  Millenials. It's turning out that 18-to-30-year-olds just aren't going to restaurants much.  Fifty to 60 million of these young people are going out to restaurants far less than baby boomers did at that age, according to Stephanie Strom. And restaurants are hurting. Strom reports that research has shown that "restaurant visits among millennials have fallen 16 percent over the last four years, failing to pick up even as the economy has improved. The outlook for the restaurant industry over the next 10 years is dismal,” Bonnie Riggs, a restaurant industry analyst at a consumer marketing firm, told Strom.       Sales are expected to grow less than 4% in the next 10 years for places like McDonald's and even fast-casual outlets like Chipotle, a very bad thing for restaurants. In fact, McDonald's sales in stores open a year fell 1.2%, after rising every quarter for almost the last decade...

OK, we've been talking about low-balling calories when we try to figure out how much we're eating.  But guess who does it the most?  Teenagers! CBS News reports today that they're the ones most guilty of underestimating just how fattening what they're eating might be. The answer's pretty simple.  Where do teens mostly eat? "We found that people, especially teens, are consuming more calories than they think they're getting when they eat fast food," lead researcher Dr. Jason Block, of the Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, said in a press release , as CBS News notes. While adults underestimate calories by about 20%, and parents of school-age children by 23%, teens do it by 34%. That's an awful lot of french fries and Big Macs and Strawberry Hand Spun Shakes unaccounted for.  Which is kind of interesting when you compare that to the young teens you see that weigh barely more than a sponge. Surely they're not the o...

This probably shouldn't come as any surprise but a new study has found that we vastly underestimate the number of calories we're eating when we're feasting at fast food chains. Nanci Hellmich reports at usatoday.com that "Teens underestimated the calories in fast-food meals by 34%; parents of school-age children by 23%; and adults by 20%." This, from a survey by lead researcher Jason Block of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute Pretty scary (and this doesn't include all the "healthy" food we overeat.  The restaurants visited were McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, and Dunkin Donuts, among others. At least one-quarter of all participants underestimated what they were eating by 500 calories (that's a meal, for some of us), Hellmich notes.  Teens' foods contained almost 800 calories but they estimated them at around 200, and adults, while doing a little better, still lowballed an 800-calorie entree by almost 2...

Oh no, say it isn't so!  But a new survey has found that Subway is every bit as unhealthy as McDonald's. In a study of young people from 12 to 21, a little over 1,000 calories were consumed by each participant at the golden arches, while at Subway, it was 955,  according to a story at takepart.com.  The Institute of Medicine (IOM) advises that students eat no more than 850 calories at lunch (and for people like me, on a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet, even that sounds decadent!). Now, I was also under the impression that Subway was healthier.  There you could get a turkey sandwich (okay, rolled turkey), tomato and lettuce on a bun, hold the mayo, maybe a slice of swiss cheese, and that just had to be healthier than a Big Mac, no? But the sodium content is higher at Subway (that's probably how they get away with making the food taste good), and the Subway sandwiches, one of the chain's most popular offerings, still had 200 more calories than a similar McDonald's mea...

If you think there still aren't healthy options at most fast food joints, you're right.  CBS News in New York reports that in the last 14 years not a lot has changed.   Offerings are no more nutritious than they were when we first started worrying about it, according to a new study. Though fast-food chains have improved their meat, saturated fat, and caloric intake levels, they have seen a huge rise in their dairy and sodium levels, according to the study. Included in the study were McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Arby’s, Jack in the Box, and Dairy Queen. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study found that "the nutritional quality index of fast-food meals went from 45 out of 100 in 1997 to (only) 48 in 2010." Most families visit one of these chains at least twice a week, the study also found. Thankfully, my son isn't big on fast food so we rarely go, though I must admit we went through a period a couple of years ago i...

So your kid likes Whopper Jrs.  What's it hurt to have them once a month, or even once a week?  A new study has found, plenty.  According to an article by Alex Kecskes, kids who eat fast food three or more times a week are at a 30% higher risk of asthma, eczema and hay fever than kids who don't. As someone who developed asthma later in life, it's terrifying when you can't breathe.  I only remember one time when I was wheezing so badly, even my emergency inhaler didn't work.  If I hadn't thought to use my son's nebulizer, who knows what would have happened.  "That's how people die," my allergist told me. If we can spare our kids that (and mine has asthma, too), wouldn't that be better? http://www.healthcarejobsite.com/articles/fast-food-may-increase-risk-of-asthma-eczema-and-hay-fever-12081-article.html