Food Porn

News came out today about a new breakfast sandwich at Burger King, the "Enormous Omelet Sandwich" It is about 730 calories and 42 grams of fat. It contains a sausage patty, two eggs, two slices of cheese and three strips of bacon. Yipes! But, apparently that's not as much as in Hardee's "Monster Thickburger." I'm sort of mixed on the responsibility of the fast food industry and the problem of American obesity. It is the American Way to be gluttonous it seems, and back when they made regular sized sandwiches, Americans just ordered two or three of them. From a marketing standpoint, fast food restaurants just supply the demand set by Americans.

Whose fault is it that so many people are fat? From a consumer standpoint, I think restaurants are partly to blame, but if someone orders a food with the words "Enormous" or "Monster" in the title, well, you gotta figure they're not worried about restaurant responsibility. I'd love to see how a sandwich titled "The Super Triple Fatty Deluxe Burger" might do in the market. It would probably actually do quite well! LOL.

You can't blame restaurants 100 percent and you can't blame consumers 100 percent either. They're working together to make America fatter. The only way to get unhealthy food off the market is to stop buying it. The only way to get healthy food into fast food restaurants is to make those choices when you go. Sadly, that's not going to happen. Too many Americans are already fat, raising fatter offspring and putting money toward the big-portion market.

That said, 730 calories in and of itself is not all that bad if that's 1/3 of your day's intake. Balance that big breakfast with a modest bowl of vegetable soup and green salad with vinaigrette for lunch, broiled shrimp and veggie shish kabobs and brown rice for dinner with a little sorbet dessert, and you've had a relatively healthy, 2500 calorie day. But, unfortunately, that's not how most people end up thinking about eating - the mindset here is that "it's just a sandwich." You ask "what did I have for breakfast?" and in most people's minds it's "just a sandwich." Most people don't think "four servings of meat/protein, two servings of dairy and three servings of bread." If we all thought like that, I don't think Americans would be able to get fat no matter what was available in restaurants. Instead, we think "I had a measly sandwich hours ago. I'm ready for a big fatty lunch!"

What I do think fast food restaurants could do is to have a sticker for each sandwich with the basic Nutrition Facts right on it. Wrap the sandwich as usual and slap the sticker on there. Do the same on the french fry cartons and other food containers where possible. Surely, nobody could sue them then! That takes much of the responsibility off them for whatever they want to sell. Why haven't they thought of that? Well, maybe they do like to somewhat "trick" consumers. I mean, take a chicken Caesar salad with ranch for instance. No way in heck would they want to slap a label on there that said how much fat and calories are in a salad! What, and scare salad eaters away? People want to believe that they made a smart choice. I think back to when I was fat and I was getting a Wendy's Garden Veggie Pita thinking it was probably an okay choice. I was tricked for sure. I didn't know I was eating like 30 something grams of fat for basically salad on a pita, something that I could make at home to contain less than 4 grams of fat. There is a bit of "tricking" going on there, but they're not doing it to make people fat, just to make money. I'm guessing Wendy's discontinued the pitas because people realized that they might as well have a fatty burger if they're going to consume that kind of fat. Ah well. As long as people don't start ordering chili with extra fingertips. ;-D