Think of a healthy fast food chain. Which one comes to mind?

If you chose Subway, you’re not alone. According to a recent survey by market research firm Decision Analyst, Subway is the fast food franchise consumers trust the most for nutrition information.

Subway is the leader in consumer trust with almost one-quarter (24.2%) of consumers saying they “completely trust” its nutritional claims…42% of Subway customers choose this restaurant because it “has a good selection of healthy items,” compared with only 3% of Taco Bell consumers who select this restaurant for its healthy menu.

“Subway owns the nutritional claim relative to its competition, as there is a significant gap between Subway and these other popular fast food/quick-service restaurants.” read more…

Sorry to rain on this parade folks. Subway has taken pains to portray itself as a healthy fast food, and if you look at the nutrition information on their menus and website, it is quite impressive.

Until you read the fine print. Read more…

The American Heart Association wants you to be healthier. And in a new, online campaign, dubbed My Life Check, the organization is introducing 7 factors that will help you live longer:

1. Stop smoking
2. Get active
3. Lose weight
4. Eat better
5. Manage blood pressure
6. Control cholesterol
7. Reduce blood sugar

No big surprises in the list. Smoking is a killer that everyone acknowledges. Most of us live a sedentary lifestyle and would do better to get physical activity into the daily routine. Losing weight and eating better seem like the same thing at first, but are not necessarily so. To lose weight you just need to cut calories, but that does not mean you are eating healthfully. Case in point, the recent Taco Bell Drive Thru Diet, where a young lady lost 50 pounds by eating at a fast food establishment. Eating better means incorporating nutrient dense foods into the lowered number of calories you are consuming as part of your diet. Nutrient dense foods are fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean cuts of meat, legumes, and dairy products.

These first 4 activities can be handled by yourself, with help and advice from registered dietitians to create a weight loss plan that fits your personal needs.

The last 3 suggestions in the list require a visit to the doctor’s office for a checkup and some tests (blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar), something we should do once a year if we’re healthy and young, and more often if not.

The program is sponsored by the “Pharmaceutical Roundtable”, which in the AHA’s words is:

the first roundtable in the pharmaceutical industry and one of the most exciting developments in cardiovascular research in recent years. This innovative forum provides an opportunity for an ongoing exchange of ideas and information between our medical leaders and those from prestigious pharmaceutical companies.

All the big pharma companies are members and will be more than happy to provide you with pills, shots, and treatment plans to help you get better.

Other features of the program include an online quiz you can take to assess how you are faring in each of the seven steps to a healthier heart.

What to do at the supermarket:

It’s much cheaper for you, not to mention healthier, not to be in a position to need the help of the pharmaceutical industry. You don’t want to get to the stage where drugs are what keep your heart healthy. So start making smart food choices NOW, for yourself, and even more importantly, for your children.

Our usual basket of advice includes buying mostly unprocessed products and preparing meals and snacks at home. When you do buy prepared foods, a short ingredient list is usually a sign of a better product for you. Try to ignore front of package health claims and marketing speak, because in many cases they only present half the truth – a low fat product may be very high in sugar to compensate.

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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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In several cities and states across the country, people are encountering menus labeled with calorie counts at chain restaurants and fast food joints. These are the results of local or state ordinances that came into effect in the past year.

While some argue over the efficacy of such measures, claiming that they have not resulted in people shifting to lower calorie options, there is no doubt that increased transparency can do no harm. Although restaurants originally objected to such laws, some embraced them proactively. YUM brands, the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut chains announced recently that they would voluntarily post the information in all their locations nationwide.

New legislation is now being pushed on Capitol Hill to mandate this labeling nationally. The Menu Education and Labeling Act (MEAL for short) will also require food establishments to disclose information on fats, sodium, and carbs for each menu item.

According to the LA Times, others are promoting an alternate bill:

The restaurant industry is pushing a competing bill. The Labeling Education and Nutrition Act, nicknamed the LEAN Act, would require chains with more than 20 units to post calorie counts. It also would nullify state and local measures now in effect and preempt future regional measures.

Why would the restaurant industry want to push for an alternate bill? At first, they were strongly against any sort of labeling. But when they realized the consumer tide had turned and there was no way to stop labeling, they wanted to be involved as much as possible in order to “mitigate the damage” such measures could cause.

For example, require that just calories be labeled, not any other nutrient. Or require that the label appear on a printed menu, and not on the menu boards, which is where most people look.

Another approach is to reduce the number of establishments affected by the law. In NY you don’t have to post calorie info is your chain has less than 15 locations. By increasing the minimum number of restaurants to 20 or more, additional restaurants will be off the hook.

Not to mention that simply by introducing an alternate bill, the restaurant industry and its lobby are buying time. For surely there will be discussions, negotiations, and back and forth dealmaking until a watered down version of the original legislation will be enacted in a few years.

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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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flickr photo: markhillary

Americans spend over 40% of their food dollars outside the home, in restaurants and fast food chains. Many experts see these meals as a prime contributor to the obesity epidemic, as fast food tends to be nutritionally inferior to home cooked meals. New York City enacted a menu labeling law earlier this year, and several other cities followed suit. Each menu item now includes information about calories, fat, sodium, and sugar, helping consumers make more informed meal choices.

Yesterday two more milestones in menu labeling were achieved:

1. California became the first state to enact a menu labeling law. From the LA Times:

Consumers are typically unable to correctly guess the nutritional content of fast food. One study found nine of 10 people underestimated the calorie content of certain restaurant foods by an average of 600 calories. Another study found that even professional nutritionists underestimated the calorie content of restaurant food by 220 to 680 calories.

2. Yum Brands, the owner of Pizza Hut, KFC and others will start adding calorie counts to all food on the menu, in company owned branches across the nation.

Now lets see if consumer habits will begin to change…