Is the fast food making us unhealthy?

[sh1980]

fast food comes cheap and i can easily afford it i cannot cook it everyday because of my job and better quality food is expensive. How do i bring in the balance?

[walksalone11]

fast food comes cheap and i can easily afford it i cannot cook it everyday because of my job and better quality food is expensive. How do i bring in the balance?

Order the healthier(relatively) items from the menu but better yet, on your day off cook up some dishes and put them in the freezer for those days when you are too tired or too busy to cook, but best of all is pare down the supposed "essentials" in your life, step out of the rat race and enjoy a much simpler(read serene) life with your loved ones.

[amberdeviney]

I think that fast food is making most americans more unhealthy every day. I mean, there is only so many calories a person can eat in a day before they start gaining weight, and with fast food restaurants and menu's the way that they are there is no way that it can be doing anything but hurting the physical upkeep of your body. Fast food on a daily basis is not a very healthy choice.

[SurveyMack10]

Absolutely not. No one is forced to buy fast food. And just about every fast food restaurant offers salads and other healthy options. It is a choice to order the unhealthy stuff. On a sidenote, the government trying to stop fast food companies from being unhealthy is an intrusion on our rights. We all have a choice. Blaming the fast food companies would be like someone selling a man a gun, the man killing someone, and blaming the seller of the gun.

[bschumacher]

Most fast food has lots of grease and starch. There are some selections that don't, but these tend to cost more. To save your money and health, make a roast chicken, a large pan of stew, a pot of bean soup, and enough cooked vegetables to last your family through the week. Freeze what you can't use up w/in 3 days, and thaw it out as you need it.

[adstony]

Its not that the fast food is making us unhealthy it just makes it easy to become that way.  Kids just love the nuggets.  The food is easy to get.  Then if you go cheep there is no way to get healthy.  The salads when you have very little money at the time are just too much.  Then if you watch the move SUPER SIZE ME it shows after just 30 days of eating nothing but fast food and doing the amount of exerise the "average American" does in a day does to your body.  I took the person 4+ months to lose the wieght he put on after doing the movie.

fast food comes cheap and i can easily afford it i cannot cook it everyday because of my job and better quality food is expensive. How do i bring in the balance?

Order the healthier(relatively) items from the menu but better yet, on your day off cook up some dishes and put them in the freezer for those days when you are too tired or too busy to cook, but best of all is pare down the supposed "essentials" in your life, step out of the rat race and enjoy a much simpler(read serene) life with your loved ones.

walksalone11 has the best point.  The idea of trying to make meals ahead of time and then it help both for time and cost.

[tzs]

yes, especially when we don't just eat it every once in a while for the "quality"of the food, but eat it in massive "quantities" at a time

[madisongirl49]

try cooking a big dish like a casserole at home over the weekend, and re- heating it every night quickly in the microwave for dinner. thats what my family and i do... or we throw in some of the barilla yellow box pasta because its filling and healthy.

[MommyWifey08]

fruit isnt the expensive neither are veggies. coupons and sales are a good way to get healhier food,and its all in modernation. and excercise and vitiums


is there a spell check on this thing?

[SurveyMack10]

It is quite possible to buy healthy food at fast food restaurants as well. Almost all offer salads.

[thetop31]

Everybody knows that fast food is not healthy, in fact dont say that you don't cook or don't have time to cook, you have of course, the time when you are at home, you can cook the easy and simple food which you can bring it wth you to work. except you spend 24 hours in your working place.

[tammypete]

I think that its between the fast food we eat and the lack of exercise we get!   Everything nowadays is made for easy access...where you don't have to put a lot of effort into it...

[mattymatt79]

When my wife was pregnant we started realizing that fast food was a horrible alternative so what we started doing is making very large meals and then freezing them.

We quickly realized we were not only saving a ton of money, but eating a lot healthier.

Things like speghetti and large casaroles easily freeze and reheat very well and can be portioned out so that they can be taken for lunch at work or for leftovers at home. And by preportioning them before freezing all we had to do was take the container out and heat that so we weren't eating the same thing for three straight days.

It worked out very well for us because we went almost three weeks after bringing home Catherine without having to cook, which made our lives that much easier. We would have done more except that we ran out of space.

It takes some work, but we'd spend a Saturday just cooking and then portioning out and having food for the entire week or more.

Buying vegtables from local farmers we've also started eating healthier as well, and eating inseason vegtables, their cheaper.

Making our own bread and pasta and sauce has helped as well with eating healthier as well as saving a ton of money

[squirrelgirl44]

I completely understand the whole "not having time to cook" thing.

However.

I still order items like a side salad off the dollar menu, and then I'll cook lean hamburger meat on my foreman grill at home, it only takes maybe 6 minutes. Things like chicken, yeah, it takes a while to cook, but I will just make it all one night when I am watching tv or something. There are "fast" healthy ways to cook, you might just be a bit more limited on your options.

Fast food places are not making us fat. People being too lazy to care or know what is in their food and not exercising makes them fat. People choose not to educate themselves and fast food takes advantage of that.

[mattymatt79]

Grilling Chicken *bleep* on a grill takes 4 minutes a side.
Boneless porkchops are about 6 minutes a side.

A grill is the cheapest as well as healthiest thing you can own.