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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...

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...

Big surprise!  Children's meals at restaurants are still unhealthy! And we're not just talking about McD's and Burger King. According to a new study of the "nutritional quality of meals for children on the menus of the nation’s largest chain restaurants ... 91 percent do not even meet the standards set by the National Restaurant Association’s Kids LiveWell program," as reported by the NYT's Stephanie Strom. Just five years ago, Strom writes, a similar study found that 99 percent of kids' restaurant meals were unhealthy so I guess we've made some progress.  But not nearly enough. Strom notes that even though restaurants are now bragging about their "healthier" options for kids, truly healthy meals have gone from one percent to only three percent of what's offered.  Not nearly enough, experts agree. Strom singled out in her story Subway, which does not offer sugared sodas with its kids meals, but offers water or nonfat milk ins...