please don''t laugh....i have to make a confession

[Haven]

I'll admit it. I love McDonald's. I probably ate a McDonald's meal within the last month--double cheeseburger with a coke, baby.

My sisters and I have this bad habit of going out for McDonald's when we're all together. It's my favorite splurge food, I'm not joking.

In fact, and this is probably the most embarrassing thing of all--my hubby and I watched Supersize Me and it made us CRAVE McDonald's. We went out and ate it the next day.

ETA: I have students who eat fast food for the majority of their meals, and they're not ordering salads and apple slices. It's horrible. And I kind of envy them.

 

[HollyS]

Date: 9/25/2008 3:41:17 PM
Author: purrfectpear
You know how you read a thread title and your brain goes into anticipation...?

I read DF''s title and my brain said ''oh boy, this ought to be good''

I feel a little verklempt now

But he always does that . . . he sucks us in with his tantalizing headline, and just like the supermarket tabloid, he drops us into ''so-whatsville''. Where''s the beef? (Sorry, since we''re talking fast food, I thought I should trot out the old Wendy''s line from Clara Peller!)

 

[HollyS]

Date: 9/25/2008 4:00:55 PM
Author: dragonfly411
so lemme get this straight. You don''t trust fast food beef, but you''ll eat hot dogs?

Yeah, DF! Do you know what they put in those things? Ewwww! Oh, well, if you put enough mustard on it, you kill all the cooties and cover up the ''suspect'' meat taste!

 

[joflier]

Date: 9/25/2008 3:19:38 PM
Author: Dancing Fire
i eat at Micky D''s many times,but i just don''t like hamburgers. i order their fish fillets,fries and apple pie.

Mmmmm.....apple pies! Their so good! And their $menu fudge sundaes arent'' too bad either!

 

[Dancing Fire]

Date: 9/25/2008 3:41:17 PM
Author: purrfectpear
You know how you read a thread title and your brain goes into anticipation...?

I read DF''s title and my brain said ''oh boy, this ought to be good''

I feel a little verklempt now

why ? you think i would post something indecent ?

PP, you ain''t "MIND CLEAN"

 

[Dancing Fire]

Date: 9/25/2008 4:00:55 PM
Author: dragonfly411
so lemme get this straight. You don''t trust fast food beef, but you''ll eat hot dogs?

i know,i know, i''m weird

i don''t like hamburgers.

 

[Dancing Fire]

Date: 9/25/2008 4:49:03 PM
Author: purrfectpear
I knew someone who worked in a plant that produced hotdogs.

It took me another 14 years to eat one. I''m over it now, but I wish I didn''t know what went in them

I try to eat Kosher dogs, I tell myself they have higher standards.

i use to work at a cannery when i was a teenager. i don''t think you wanna know what goes into the ketchup tank.

 

[Tuckins1]

I guess that''s a good thing since they''re nothing but garbage... But WEIRD!! They are bad for you but sooo delicious!!

 

[UCLABelle]

Don't, I am an addict (and my once very growing waist, which is now finally shrinking...from 0 to 2 to 4 to 6 to 8 to 6 can prove it!).

 

[Harriet]

Sure.

And, because of you, I had 2 Krispy Kreme doughnuts today.

 

[diamondfan]

In and Out rocks. They do not have them in Philly.

 

[oobiecoo]

I don''t trust ground beef much either.

Aren''t the Kosher hotdogs ok, or are they still sketchy?

 

[Julianna]

Date: 9/25/2008 4:18:45 PM
Author: mrssalvo

ha, i was thinking the same thing. the one''s from costco are all beef...but still,not sure why you wouldn''t trust Mickey D''s but trust Costco. (i eat the costco dogs too from time to time)..

In this case at least, beef is a subjective term...heh heh.

Mmmm hotdogs. I love ''em!

 

[diamondfan]

kosher hot dogs are supposed to be much better, they do not allow all of the filler and other stuff, I will not ever eat a regular hot dog.

 

[Linda W]

Me either Caroline. I do love the ones at Costco. I have those once in a while, while we are shopping there

 

[starsapphire]

Ohhh, Costco hamburgers.....we either get the preformed packaged ones or the fresh ones made into rounds, and all you have to do is flatten them. And we freeze them, and split one hamburger into 2, saving $$$, and having something else with the burger. Most of the time when we go to McD''s, I have the fish sandwich with fries, coke and an apple pie. Not exactly watching my figure when I do this.......

 

[ksinger]

You are now officially my hero. You ROCK!

I was forced by hunger and nothing else for leagues, to stop at a McDonald''s on a recent trip to KC. I ate the filet of fish. I steadfastly refuse to eat one of their burgers. I don''t think I''ve eaten one in 20+ years.

 

[Apsara]

Very wise indeed.

You should read Fast Food Nation. That cured me off of beef and pork for good, and I go through great pains to find true free-range, non cruelty chicken now and then when i feel like I need protein. I continue to eat fish.

While the author has been widely crtiticzed as "liberal", I, a conservative, found the book to be plainly written and supported by mountains of fact--it spurred me to do a LOT of research on the topic and what I found out only horrified me more. Fast Food is the root of a lot of social issues and a poster child for what is wrong with American society: greed, sloth, quantity over quality that have become our values. The animal cruelty involved in "factory farming" (aka "industrialized agriculture") is enough to make you sick, letalone the human toll on the exploited, often migrant, workers who toil in vile conditions for little more than mimimum wage.

I will NEVER give a fast food restaurant another dollar of my money. As a nation, we need to have greater awareness of where our food comes from and the price paid by animals and humans to get us that 99 cent burger. I think there are a lot of good people out there who, if they knew the truth, would gag at the thought of consuming fast good, and most meat found in stores today.

Cows and especially pigs are sensitized, sentient beings, just like the dogs and cats we pamper and dress up in Coach collars (in fact, pigs are among the top six most intelligent animals after humans, alongside dogs, gorillas, dolphins and chimps). Their mass production in feedlots and inhumane mass slaughter (which often leads to animals being skinned, boiled and dismembered while still conscious) is unconscionable. And the health risks of eating such meat--I could go on for pages. That pack of chop meat you buy at your local store has meat in it from no less than 10--20 different cows. YUCK.

At 35, after a life of eating meat (I did stop consuming veal 10 years ago--why anyone eats veal is beyond me--we should be ashamed to even serve it as a food), my eyes were opened and I learned about how we have all this meat--fast food joints, piles and piles of it at the store. I naively thought Bessie and her friends tooted aorund the farm and after a healthy life, filled with people who has some measure of respect for her, was slaughtered humanely with no consciousness and pain. WRONG.

it''s tough--I miss meatballs, steak, prok chops...I have begun research into some mid-Western ranchers who are trying to take back the business, the land and the animals from these corporate monsters--Lasater Grasslands Beef and Niman ranch are a couple out there. They raise their animals on vast grazing pastures with natural grasses, no hormones, no grain, just a natural, cared-for environment. The slaughter process, I was told by Lasater when I contacted them, is as "humane as possible, with the animals fully unconscious"....plus they use only a small local slaughter house run by one family with long-time, trained staff vs. the factory slaughter of big agribusiness.

I wrestle with this....rght now, I am quasi-vegetarian.... I don''t expect everyone to stop eating meat...but as a nation, we need to understand the true price of meat in both animal and human cost. If we ate less, treated meat as a "treat" not a way of life, we''d be a healthier, leaner, and more compassionate people.

I encourage everyone to become educated. Ignorance is indeed bliss , but I don''t want to live that way and I would hope most thoughtful, caring people would not as well.

 

[Apsara]

Footnote: Don''t be fooled by labeling/marketing around "free range" in stores--there are no regulations around that term and it could mean there is a 5 inch hole in the side of a shed where a chicken could poke its head out for a minute of its miserable life. Do your homework and find farms where the chickens are raised in true free range, natural habitats, with no "de-beaking" and natural, no-additive diets.