I am not in favor of rewarding stupidity, and encouraging the trend of raising people to be quivering nancies. Everyone practices some form of self abuse. None of them should be litigable.

I think it's safe to say that you don't know much about healthy eating, that's all I'm saying. The mere idea of a salad without ham cubes, bacobits and ranch dressing is anathema to you.

By your own conservative estimate, you eat fast food twice a week and your own home cooking is similar enough to fast food that you can't tell the difference. This is not what they had in mind when they said McDonalds is a 'sometimes' food.

I don't know how you cook, but I don't know if any meal I've ever made for myself has been more expensive than $5 a plate. Not to mention I probably save time by cooking my own food over going out to buy it pre-made. I spend, maybe, an hour every third day cooking a meal for myself that makes enough leftovers to eat for lunch and dinner for a few days. It takes me at least ten to fifteen minutes in walking time alone to get to food for each meal.

Fast food is cheaper to buy, RR. It usually costs me around $20-30 to cook a meal for my family. Sometimes more, depending on what we're having. We can eat at McDonalds's for under $20. I can see why money would factor into this, and convenience is also an issue. I only work part-time and sometimes it's still a struggle to get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. A couple of times a month I break down and buy fast food just because I didn't have time to cook. I sympathize with mothers who have to work full-time. I honestly don't know how they would cook a meal every night.

Like Alice and Devo have already noted, when you're cooking for more than two people, it gets expensive. Especially if you're planning on doing something notably healthy (fresh veggies alone these days get expensive) or extravagant.

But last night, I made chili for 3 people for about $4.50 a plate. Thats because, you know, its mostly all canned shit where brands don't matter.

Wouldn't that be as bad as fast food though? I don't mean from the view of hygiene obviously but as in canned foods like that would have a fair amount of crap in them aswell y'know?

Canned corn, canned tomato paste, canned kidney beans....not that I see, no? Maybe a little extra shit, but nothing compared to a $4.50 menu meal at Burger King, right?

Sass, did you buy the highest quality tomato paste? or the grocery store brand? Get all generic brands.

The hell. It's tomato paste, dude. The price range doesn't VARY too much.

Unless you're implying generic is like, more healthy or some shit. In which case, I would be tempted to argue with you on the principle in general.

Dont jump to conclusions so fast. No, im implying buy the cheapest shit you can find for all of that if your going to compare it to fast food. You say a .50 cents here or there isnt a big deal, but it adds up fast.

Dude. What the fuck are you on about.

$4.50 a plate compares fucking fine with a $5 value meal. I don't NEED to go cheaper. Not to mention that it HARDLY MATTERS in the scheme of this thread.

Fact of the matter is that you can cook for cheaper than fast food, but it takes more effort.

I would simply like healthy alternatives on all fast food places' dollar menus.

Since I started on a diet 3 months ago, I studied all the major fast food nutritional charts. Yup, I pretty much couldn't eat anything on the McDonald's or Burger King menu. HOWEVER, Wendy's and Taco Bell had good options.

Wendy's had small chili (good protein, low cal, low fat), side salad with fat free dressing (veggies, low cal, no fat).
Taco Bell had "fresco style" versions of their chicken/steak soft tacos and hard tacos (good protein, low cal, low fat).

That's about all I can eat from fast food, though (and the taco bell one isn't as cheap as I'd like since the chicken and steak are 1.69 each as opposed to the "BIG BELL VALUE MENU" which has a 1/2 pound fatty burrito for a buck).

I just want to be able to eat at McDonald's or Burger King again for cheap (and healthy).

I honestly wasn't going to post since everyone's making good arguements against the original poster but this news post was too good to pass up. Addiction maybe?

Although on the matter of eating out VS eating at home. I admit my husband and I cant really afford to have nice home cooked meals. We tend to eat out or just have really cheap-prepackaged stuff because we can't afford any better. I guess working at Subway is a slightly better alternative to McDonalds or Burger King, but those subs are tricky as fries. That "6 grams of fat" deal only counts if you dont get cheese or any condiments (aside from sweet onion sauce or mustard)

You guys spend over $20 making a home-cooked meal for two people? WTF is that all about? There's three people living in my house, and altogether, a home-cooked meal can feed all three of us for like $10-$15 easily. Except for McDonald's, fast food is usually more expensive, especially Wendy's and Dairy Queen (where it costs us about $20-$25 total for all three of us to eat). So I dunno where you guys are getting your food or how much you're eating, but it's a bit too much I'd say! RacinReaver is absolutely right on this, it would never be more than $5/plate, if that, and it takes far less time (given how long it takes to drive and wait in the drive-thru). Oh, and let's not forget to factor in the cost of gas because President Bonehead is too damn busy funding his ridiculous war to put more money into investigating alternative fuel sources; imagine the advances we're missing out on because all that money is getting wasted. So yeah, by the time you factor in gas and driving and waiting, fast food takes longer and is more expensive, just as RacinReaver said. If you're spending so much on home-cooked meals, they must be pretty damn big meals.

Oh, and Sass, you say stupidity is picked on around here, but from the looks of it, it's the other way around. From the looks of it, stupidity is encouraged while thinking for yourself and intelligence are picked on.

Man, you sound just like my dad, who will go out of his way if he knows another store is selling the same bargain-bin stuff for 10 cents cheaper. Back in the day, he had a mental map of every place within five miles that was selling Pepsi for 79 cents a 2L. And no, before you ask; it never made a whit of difference.

Double Post:
One wonders why you choose this route so frequently then.

:edgartpg:

Nothing more needs to be said, thats hit the nail on the head, people are just bloody lazy. That or people are too busy to wait on food


That guy just seems like more of a looper than anything else, I reckon if he was that addicted he'd probably be quite sizeable but still managed to slide through a roof vent?

Yea, sure, but like Devo (again) proved, its not ALWAYS cheaper. Eating out of cans is nice and convenient when you're short on time and you have mouths to feed. But like Devo, my tally for tonight's dinner was around $30 for 3 of us.

It's not that people are lazy alone. It's that while dinner CAN be prepared for cheaper, they aren't ALWAYS cheaper. Laziness has a hand in it, but not as much as cost.

I guess that sounds about right yeah

As for people attempting to sue fast food outlets, that drives me mad, they knew what they we're doing to themselves, fast food is nice but if people are too stupid to know when to stop its them who should be held accountable right?

I mean to this day I still cant believe that cigarette companies are being sued by people who used it before warnings were displayed. they inhaled smoke into their lungs ffs there's no need for a damn warning. I hate cigarette companies but for gods sake its like saying people had no brains back then!

Expect a warning on fast food over the next year or so, beside the warning that there may be traces of nut...

Do you eat these steak dinners every night? I sure as Hell don't eat steak every night. So sure, occasionally it will cost more, when you have a bigger dinner like that, but not most of the time.

Take my dinner tonight, for instance. I simply had a Healthy Choice frozen dinner. Has decent nutrition, faster to fix than fast food could ever be, and really pretty cheap for an entire dinner.

I might eat more lavishly maybe once a week. Like I said, I don't freaking stuff myself. It's called self-control. It's also called moderation. Fast food companies aren't to blame for people getting fat, people eating too much are to blame!

Discovery of the decade.

wait


you think frozen meals are home cooking

what.

so like, does a larger dinner for you mean a Hungry Man meal? Maybe a seperate side dish of frozen veggies?

Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine, and SmartOnes (bleh) are a lot healthier than normal TV dinners. Plus, they're cheap if you get them in bulk. It's silly to compare to Hungry Man, which is packed with sodium and fat.

I lost most of my weight due to a diet that included a lot of Lean Cuisine meals.

I think lurker was focusing more on the fact that Patty had said she had home cooking a few times a week, then mentioned frozen meals.