This has got to be either a joke or a bad dream. Taco Bell is running a campaign called the Drive Thru Diet with a pretty gal named Christine who claims to have lost 54 pounds of weight by eating the lower calorie options at Taco Bell. Photos and videos of before and after leave the viewer scratching her head – did she really lose all that weight while munching on tacos?

What you need to know:

Eating at fast food establishments is detrimental to your weight. Period.

Even if they shave off a few calories, the products at Taco Bell and others are still made from the cheapest ingredients that fast food chains can procure. That means lots of oil, salt, and sugar on top of additives, preservatives, and artificial flavorings.

On its site, Taco Bell admits that the results of sweet Christine are not typical. And that the lower calorie foods are NOT LOW CALORIE food:

For a healthier lifestyle, pay attention to total calorie and fat intake and regular exercise. Fresco can help with calorie reductions of 20 to 100 per item compared to corresponding products on our regular menu. Not a low calorie food.

So you eat crappy food, save only 20-100 calories per item and you’re gonna lose weight?

That’s a taco-ful of baloney.

Seems like YUM Brands, the owner of Taco Bell and Burger King, seeing its sales plummet this year, decided to copy a page from Subway’s playbook.

What to do:

If you are serious about weight loss, invest in a few meetings with a registered dietitian and together build a practical work plan that you can live with for a lifetime.

Cutting visits to fast food chains down to zero or thereabouts, along with switching from soft drinks to tap water, you will see changes rather soon.

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Happy 4th of July everyone. We’d rather it be called Independence Day, because that is what we have been celebrating for the past 200 years, not a date 7/04.

As we head to cookouts, picnics, bar-b-ques and other food related festivities, we should consider ourselves the luckiest people in the world. Democracy is not the default state of rule in many places around the world. Many countries are art war, some with neighbors, some with themselves. Our nation’s wealth has enabled many of us to lead very comfortable lives, beyond comprehension to many of the world’s denizens, who survive on but a few dollars a day.

Is it any wonder that the number one country people dream of immigrating to is the United States of America?

But we shouldn’t rest on our laurels. Our country isn’t perfect, and neither are we. Although we live in a free country, our choices are often limited. Without even thinking about it, we are steered in ways that are hard for us to resist. Say What?

We’ll take food as an example (surprising, heh?)

1. If you want to eat healthfully at a rest stop along an interstate highway, you can’t, because it’s all fast food. How much of a difference is there between Wendy’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut? They’re all different flavors of obesity-to-arrive-soon and heart-disease-right-after. And they all serve either Coke or Pepsi.

2. How free are families to choose the food they put on the table? With supermarkets stocking 45,000 items, most people would say very free. But a close look reveals that in each aisle there are a few dominant companies, or a few dominant types of food. In breakfast cereals, most of the 400+ boxes are manufactured by just a handful of corporations (General Mills, Quaker, Kellogg’s). Sure, you could buy that healthier brand but

a) it costs 30% more,

b) your kids won’t eat it because there’s no superhero endorsement on the package.

3. You’re at the ballpark, 4th inning, getting hungry. What about some food and drinks? No problem. That is if food=hot dogs, drinks=Coke or Pepsi. If you want to choose freshly squeezed juice, you can’t. A salad? Who are you kidding.

OK, these are just a few example of the limited choices we have.

Limited, unless we decide to swim against the current. We urge you to try, just so you can feel what it’s like to be truly independent. And if enough of us swim against the current, soon the current will follow us. (And that’s what makes this country great).

God bless America!

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You’re in your thirties, forties and fifties.

You’re trying to eat better than you once did.

You’ve gained a few pounds since highschool, and maybe even have a medical condition. You’re not eating all the stuff you used to, whether it’s a refined taste you have acquired over the years, or limits you’ve imposed on yourself due to health considerations.

You’d like your children to eat healthfully as well. But that’s where problems  arise.

You’re not alone. If you are a parents to children under the age of 3, you still  have a chance to succeed because you control almost of every facet of their day, including meals. But it’s all downhill the minute kids go to preschool, kindergarten, grade school and onwards.

Here are a few reasons why it’s an uphill battle:

1. The law of the lowest common denominator. If your child has an apple for snacktime at school, but another kid is munching on twizzlers, what snack will both of them want tomorrow?

2. Childhood heroes sell (out). Movie tie ins are a very lucrative business for Hollywood. Entire licensing departments exist at all the major studios whose task is to sell the rights to use images in conjunction with sales of junk food. In just one example for this summer, Burger King is promoting Star Trek, Transformers, and G.I. Joe.

3. Convenience. The kids have to eat at school. You need to prepare their lunch every day. Or do you? What about some pocket change for little Johnny to get something at the school cafeteria? Or better yet, at the fast food diner conveniently located 2 blocks away from school.

4. Junk Food tastes good. It’s hard to argue with kids, whose taste buds are more responsive to sweet than complex tastes.

5. More convenience. You had a long day in the office, and the last thing you want to do is spend an hour cooking dinner in the sweltering kitchen when you get home. How simple, and cheap, it is to pick up a ready meal at one of the many drive-in windows spread around town.

6. The law of diminishing moderation. You don’t want your child to be totally clueless, plus the grandparents will have a fit if they can’t bring little Sally a chocolate treat when they come over this afternoon. What starts out as our good willed intentions to let kids enjoy a sweet snack once in a while, becomes once a day, and then once every few hours. Before you know it, things get out of control, and the majority of the snacks consumed by your kids are of the wrong kind.

What you need to do:

There is hope. But it requires strong willed parents who can help their children feel good about their food choices, and not feel like social outcasts.

It’s important to start your kids off right from the minute they’re weaned off milk/formula. Set rules that are reasonable (one chocolate snack a day) and stand by them. Show your kids how to prepare meals. Take them to a community garden. Teach them to read nutrition labels. Have them read about the risks of obesity and other diet related health problems. Eat together.

Talk with other parents at school. Talk with the teachers and school administration about improving the nutrition of school food.

If enough parents band together, perhaps law number one above will not be relevant anymore.

What do studios need to do: stop selling out childhood heroes to the highest paying burger!

What Junk Food Execs need to do: stop pushing crap at American kids. Think about your own children and multiply by 100 million!

And the government: Please, make them stop! You know they won’t do it on their own.

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Experian Simmons is a market research firm that publishes a free monthly e-newsletter, Consumer Insights to help keep clients current with the latest consumer behavior and market trends. This month they wrote about trends in the Fast Food Sector, or as it is affectionately called the Quick Service Sector (QSR).

1. McDonald’s, inventor of the quick service restaurant, is the #1 player, in terms of revenue. It has been, for ages

2. Burger King is #2, and has been, for ages.

3. Things get interesting in slot #3 which used to be Wendy’s, then Taco Bell, but now belongs to Subway.

4. Newcomers Chipotle, Jamba Juice, and Panera Bread have become a sizable force in the last few years by carving out niches for themselves.

5. The number of visits fast food establishments grew to 11.5 in 2008 from 7 the year before.

6. Men are more likely than women to eat alone at a fast food restaurant.

7. Americans aged 18-24 are 3 times more likely than older Americans to snack at a fast food chain with friends/co-workers.

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Following our post yesterday about the outdated government bodies regulating the US food and agriculture industries, we get a reminder as to the results of a non sustainable, uneconomic, and unhealthy fast food industry: the $0.99 value-meal. An article by The New York Times outlines findings by the Cancer Project, a nonprofit cancer prevention organization:

The organization’s dieticians reviewed so-called value menus at five of the largest fast food chains in the nation, awarding points for such unhealthy characteristics as sodium, fat and low-fiber content. Jack in the Box’s junior bacon cheeseburger topped the list as the worst offender. The burger costs just one dollar but is packed with 23 grams of fat, including 8 grams of saturated fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol and 860 milligrams of sodium and just one gram of fiber.

* In second-worst place, the 89-cent Taco Bell cheesy double beef burrito, with 460 calories, 20 grams of fat and a whopping 1,620 milligrams of sodium.

* In third-worst place was the one-dollar Burger King breakfast sausage biscuit, with 27 grams of fat, including 15 grams of saturated fat and over 1,000 milligrams of sodium.

* Fourth worst went to the one-dollar McDonald’s McDouble, which contains 19 grams of fat and 65 milligrams of cholesterol.

* Last, and least-worst, was the Wendy’s junior bacon cheeseburger, for $1.53, with 310 calories and 16 grams of fat.

Read the article…

Home preparation allows us to control the amount of fat, sugar and sodium we add to our food. It’s usually much lower than what can be found in mass prepared fast foods. We are no misers, eating out and enjoying a meal without having to do the cooking and the dishes is fun. Even an occasional visit to Mickey-D’s and the likes won’t kill anyone. However, in recent years, 50 cents out of each food dollar in the US was spent outside the home. That’s a lot of Big Macs.

And now that the economy is getting tougher, people need to make changes in their spending habits. Will they opt for the easy path: the even cheaper fast food, which are nutritional poison darts? Or will they save their dollars for purchasing more decent fare at the grocery store,  preparing a home cooked meal?

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