Fast Food ...

When my husband I were first dating we went to see Morgan Spurlock speak at the university I was attending. And it has changed our lives forever. It was the third date for us and the first "real" date. The other two were those get-to-know you lunches.


They first showed us Morgan Spurlock's movie "Supersize Me." We both had seen it before, so we knew what we were watching. He then talked about his journey to eat 30 days of McDonalds and the behind the scenes action of creating the movie. He was well-versed and it was more like listening to comedian than a "lecture," which is how it was presented. He said many things that changed my opinion about fast food. I think what it did to his body was the biggest factor. It took him six months to go back to his pre-McDonalds weight. Six months to recover from a month seems like a real reason not to eat fast food. He also talked about the chicken and how processed it is. I now think, how hard is it to make chicken nuggets from scratch? Not that tough or time consuming even. The most influential comment he made was about the beef -- they grind up as many as 100 (maybe it was 1000) different cows at the same time and you could have any number of cows in one patty. Ugh, that just makes me feel sick. Another reason we buy a large sum of our meat from a meat market.


So, the outcome of that "date" is that I haven't eaten McDonald's since (about 3 1/2 years). I used to eat it weekly. The only exceptions we make to our non-fast food diet is Subway, Cousins, Quiznos, Culvers and my husband goes to Qdoba and Chipotle. About a year ago, I was with people who ordered KFC. Out of politeness and hunger I ate it. My stomach hurt so bad all night and it didn't even taste good. Occasionally, even at regular restaurants I get a "fast food" item, and my body just can't handle it anymore. I used to eat fast food a minimum of three times a week when I was single.

I think the hardest part about not eating fast food is that it made traveling so much harder. I used to drive through on my way to my parents -- a three hour drive. It was so much a part of my routine that I had no idea what to do. Of course, now we make sandwiches and bring our own drinks and snacks. But the truth is that fast food is convenient, but it is not healthy. We quickly realized that there really are no healthy fast food stops when we travel. And we wonder why the country has a weight problem.

If you haven't seen the movie, you must watch it. It will change your opinion of fast food forever.