Fast food in order of how unhealthy it is?

[Orlong]

I can go to Applebee's and get a sirloin steak with some veggies and a yummy portabella stuffed mushroom for less than 550.

Maybe a sirloin the size of a quarter

[tratra]

Depends out of all of this, subway you can take a wholemeal bread shandwich that has only pepers cucumber light cheese and turkey, thats quite healthy.

[Deleted]

Depends out of all of this, subway you can take a wholemeal bread shandwich that has only pepers cucumber light cheese and turkey, thats quite healthy.

Except the bread is made using HFCS, and is already processed carbs. The peppers are preserved in a sugar solution in some branches, the "light" cheese replaces fat content with sugar content (the dumbest thing to do), and the turkey is, well let's not go there :P

[Anium]

Largly depends on what country you're in.
And pizza express unhealthy? This is news to me.

The smell of subway just makes my insides turn.

[Schmeebs]

what I got from this thread is everything is unhealthy, bread will literaly kill you because of how unhealthy it is, and nobody anywhere can agree on what is good for you.

[Osmeric]

what I got from this thread is everything is unhealthy, bread will literaly kill you because of how unhealthy it is, and nobody anywhere can agree on what is good for you.

What you should get is that the conventional wisdom about what constitutes healthy food is not well supported by good evidence. Fortunately, groups like NuSI are putting serious $ into doing definitive experiments and trials.

[Raamm]

This has been scientifically proven by now Long John Silvers = Numero Uno Heart Attack Inducer. http://www.cspinet.org/new/201307011.html

[Schmeebs]

What you should get is that the conventional wisdom about what constitutes healthy food is not well supported by good evidence. Fortunately, groups like NuSI are putting serious $ into doing definitive experiments and trials.

Yeah, my personal philosophy is to not eat tons of shit all the time.

Doing that, and increasing my exercise I've managed to lose 45 lbs, and thats with the occasional Subway.

[Osmeric]

Yeah, my personal philosophy is to not eat tons of shit all the time.

The problem with that is that your assessment of what is "shit" may not be scientifically accurate. For example, we've been told butter is bad, but whole wheat bread is good, when the opposite may be the truth. And objecting to food merely because it is processed smacks of naturalistic superstition.

[Lenonis]

Many salads at fast food restaurants have more calories and fat than their sandwiches.

There are a few aspects to this that make this comparison terrible.

1) Not everyone uses the entire dressing packet. Many restaurants (fast food or otherwise) nearly down the salads in dressing. A lot of savvy eaters will get it on the side, dip their fork in the dressing, then stab a bunch o' salad. You get just fine dressing flavor and only use 1/3 of the amount or less.

2) A salad is a complete meal. A single burger is not.

3) I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask for additional dressing. But...anecdotal and whatnot.

4) Not all salads are made equal. If you want to link salads soaked in bacon and Ceasar/ranch dressing of course they are going to go to shit nutritionally. However if you get a more basic salad with a grilled chicken breast it's definitely one of the healthier options on the menu, doubly so if you go light on the dressing or pick one that isn't soaked in fat or sugar.

[DocHibb]

It's possible to eat healthy pretty much anywhere. However, when I'm hungry for fast food, idgaf about how unhealthy it is. McDonald's Southwest salad is good when you're trying to eat healthy but someone else wants McD's.

[Tziva]

Many salads at fast food restaurants have more calories and fat than their sandwiches.
[...]
Fast Food salads being healthy for you is a sham and a myth that people fall into. And since the dressing packets are so tiny, most people askk for 2 or 3 of them which only makes the salads skyrocket in calories and fat

I order the salad because I like it. Lots of people order salads because they like them, not because they're on some kind of diet. That the salad is healthier than getting a double bacon cheeseburger and fries doesn't hurt.

But even in the case of someone who is solely concerned with health (and I'd argue those people aren't ordering from a fast food joint in the first place), it's not necessarily true that salads are worse than their burger counterparts. For one, healthfulness is more than just comparing calories and fat; for example, the salads that contain nuts have both inflated fats and calories from those, but the fat from nuts is probably better for you than the fat from bacon, etc. For two, it highly depends on the type of salad you get and how much dressing you use. Many of the salads you listed are pretty much the worst possible examples. (fwiw, according to the website, one of the salads I get is 344 calories, including meat, croutons, and dressing -- which I don't even use the whole packet of -- and 14g of fat for a pretty large salad. That's pretty decent numbers for a whole meal)

[also the dressing packets for every FF salad I've ever gotten is huge -- like five or six times a ketchup packet -- so I can't imagine someone using more than one]

But like I said in the post you quoted!, salads can be a more healthy option but it depends on what you put on or in it. At it's core, a salad isn't inherently unhealthy. Yes, a lot of people eat salads slathered in dressing or topped with fried chicken or bacon or whatever, but it doesn't have to be the case.

My point still stands for the OP: you can't rank fast food healthiness based on the restaurants rather than the food items, because it's going to vary enormously depending on what you pick on the menu.

[belfpala]

Going out to eat in general is unhealthy. You're kidding yourself if you don't think that plate of pasta you just ordered from Carrabas/Olive Garden is <1400 calories.

I blame portion sizes. Last time I ate at an olive garden, I couldn't even make a dent in my plate of pasta.

Edit: and possibly upbringing. I know many people who feel guilty if they don't eat everything put in front of them, because that's how their parents raised them.

- - - Updated - - -

I order the salad because I like it.

I currently munching on a plate of cucumber slices, celery sticks, and some table salt. As you said. Because I like it.

[Tziva]

I blame portion sizes. Last time I ate at an olive garden, I couldn't even make a dent in my plate of pasta.

It's both. It's also high calorie pasta smothered in butters and/or cheeses and/or heavy cream and/or meat. Super high calorie and also probably not especially good for you. And, yeah, also in an enormous quantity.

WHATEVER FETTUCCINE ALFREDO IS GOOD SO IMMA HAVE IT SOMETIMES.

(well not at the Olive Garden. There I just eat a few bowls of minestrone soup and then get all my calories from the millions of breadsticks I shovel in my piehole. But I do like me some alfredo sauce sometimes and I make it tasty homemade)

[belfpala]

WHATEVER FETTUCCINE ALFREDO IS GOOD SO IMMA HAVE IT SOMETIMES.

(well not at the Olive Garden.

It's so easy to make. I can get it done in the time pasta takes to boil.

AND DAMN IT, YES, I WILL EAT CREAM WITH BUTTER AND CHEESE SOMETIMES WITH PASTA AND GARLIC BREAD (and a salad, don't forget the greens).

[Deleted]

Its a sandwich where the buns are made of chicken meat and it has bacon and cheese in the middle.

oh wow, i need this in my life. they sell this in the UK or just USA?:P
edit- nope apparently it was never on sale in the UK

[belfpala]

oh wow, i need this in my life. they sell this in the UK or just USA?:P

I tried it once... Only worth it for bragging rights. Never again. I don't see it on the UK menu. Sorry.

[PixelFox]

The thing is, we know almost nothing about nutrition and how the cells in different parts of your body deal with this stuff. Most of what we get for nutritional advice is way too simplistic to be useful in many cases. If you study modern biology a little you'll learn that each cell in your body is more complicated than a super-computer, with the equivalent of millions of lines of code running to try to do the right thing under whatever circumstances arise. So all this "don't eat fat" or "don't eat carbs" or the General Hospital Japanese Sex Diet or whatever's popular this week is really like trying to maintain a watch with a sledgehammer.

The best advice from actual research at the moment is: if you want to live a long life then just eat LESS. Don't stuff yourself until you're completely satisfied at every meal. Just eat enough to take the edge off the hunger. What you eat is probably less important. Yes, you need a sufficiently balanced diet that includes the molecular components that your body can't make for itself, but other than that you can trust your body to generally be able to operate on whatever you give it (as long as you avoid actual poisons and mutagens, but we don't always know what those are yet either).

And much still comes down to genetics (which you can't do anything about at the moment) and luck (rolls of the dice that you can't ever do anything about), so you can live a "healthy" lifestyle your whole life and still die suddenly of heart disease or get cancer or whatever, or you can eat like a slob and live to 100. The question is simply how much you'll move the odds by changing your behavior, and which behavioral changes will move the odds which way and how much, and these are things that we really don't understand yet.

So "Don't Worry, Be Happy" may be a similarly successful strategy when compared to any other advice.

And if you're relatively young today, you should also relax because chances are that much of this is going to get figured out in your lifetime as part of the ongoing revolution in biology. Until then, don't worry too much about it. In 50 years we'll probably be able to undo all of today's bad advice.

PF.

[belfpala]

The best advice from actual research at the moment is: if you want to live a long life then just eat LESS. Don't stuff yourself until you're completely satisfied at every meal.

I haven't looked at actual research. Just from personal experience though, eating slower and eating less. Also, just for me, eating more frequently. Perhaps 2 meals per day, and 5 snacks. By snack I mean a handful of nuts, or chips (not the whole bag), or as I mentioned above, a plate of cucumber and celery.

Everyone is different though.

[Deleted]

The thing is, we know almost nothing about nutrition and how the cells in different parts of your body deal with this stuff. Most of what we get for nutritional advice is way too simplistic to be useful in many cases. If you study modern biology a little you'll learn that each cell in your body is more complicated than a super-computer, with the equivalent of millions of lines of code running to try to do the right thing under whatever circumstances arise. So all this "don't eat fat" or "don't eat carbs" or the General Hospital Japanese Sex Diet or whatever's popular this week is really like trying to maintain a watch with a sledgehammer.

The best advice from actual research at the moment is: if you want to live a long life then just eat LESS. Don't stuff yourself until you're completely satisfied at every meal. Just eat enough to take the edge off the hunger. What you eat is probably less important. Yes, you need a sufficiently balanced diet that includes the molecular components that your body can't make for itself, but other than that you can trust your body to generally be able to operate on whatever you give it (as long as you avoid actual poisons and mutagens, but we don't always know what those are yet either).

And much still comes down to genetics (which you can't do anything about at the moment) and luck (rolls of the dice that you can't ever do anything about), so you can live a "healthy" lifestyle your whole life and still die suddenly of heart disease or get cancer or whatever, or you can eat like a slob and live to 100. The question is simply how much you'll move the odds by changing your behavior, and which behavioral changes will move the odds which way and how much, and these are things that we really don't understand yet.

So "Don't Worry, Be Happy" may be a similarly successful strategy when compared to any other advice.

And if you're relatively young today, you should also relax because chances are that much of this is going to get figured out in your lifetime as part of the ongoing revolution in biology. Until then, don't worry too much about it. In 50 years we'll probably be able to undo all of today's bad advice.

PF.

That's not the best advice at all.

Meet with a nutritionist/dietician (whichever is the protected term in your nation) and try saying that. After they're done chuckling they'll calmly put you to rights.