Drive Thru Window Food?

I'm just curious, how many folks eat fast food? And how often?

In the course of a normal year, I probably eat at a fast food type restaurant (Burger King, McDonalds, Wendy's, etc) 6 or 8 times a year. I rarely eat french fries. Never onion rings. Never fried chicken fingers. Then again I won't order a packaged salad either.

Now I do like hamburgers, but I either grill them at home or go to a 'real' hamburger stand that makes them fresh.

What I find odd is that most of the people I work with seem to eat fast food every day of the week.

So what is a normal amount of fast food?
Once a week?
Once a month?
Once a day?

I'm typing my reply as my wife is trying to get me to make a decision about what fast food place we are getting lunch from today. You see, my mother and my brother in law are in town visiting so we are going to have a fancy lunch; ie: fast food. Neither my wife or I like to cook and I can't say that we enjoy really fine foods either. I would be happy to eat frozen pizza every night of the week; sometimes I do. We both eat sandwiches or microwavable meals for lunch during the week. Every evening our supper is one of three things: frozen pizza, frozen chicken nuggets and french fries we cook in a fry daddy, or frozen hamburgers we cook on a George Foreman grill along with deep fried french fries.
To us, fast food is a treat like most people consider a fine restaurant a treat. For our anniversary we go to Arby's. Arby's is our favorite fine dining establishment.
So really our home cooking is no healthier than fast food, it's just cheaper.

I would say we eat fast food about 24 times per year.

Lawrence

I eat fish and chips often, some weeks maybe 5 times, most often once or twice. I also eat alot of microwave meals. I have frozen pizza every Thursday. Lots of junk on Saturday, dont have time to eat properly.

During the day, for lunch, its fast food or no food, usually no food. I do like a nice burger and onion at about 2pm if I dont have brekfast, usually fire up the barbie for that.

Have a proper meal every night though unless I am going out, gotta eat that veg.....

Guess I fit into the 'several times a week' crowd.

Should this be a poll maybe?

Bob,
I used to eat fast food everyday for lunch. Then I ended up with heart problems, so just watch what I eat, right? Then cholesterol problems, really watch what I eat, right? Now, diabetes problems.....I'm f***ed...LOL.

Nowadays I pack my lunch with low fat meat, on low carb bread, with carrots or something other to munch on throughout the day. I haven't been told to test my glucose levels yet, but I WANT to just to see how I'm doing. Sometimes to spoil myself, I'll get a grilled chicken sandwich and toss the bun. Or a turkey wrap, something along that line.

OhioTC18 said:

Nowadays I pack my lunch. . .

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I have been bringing a lunch from home for as long as I can remember. I probably go out to lunch once or twice a month. But that is just because I'm really cheap!

We eat dinner together as a family most nights too. I'm finding that is getting harder as my daughter is growing up, but even if she is at one of her friend's homes, then my wife and I still sit down to eat a meal. Our meals are typically not fancy, but they are typically 80% homemade (maybe boxed mash potatoes?). We grill a lot for dinner. So often dinner is lamb, chicken or beef, perhaps a pasta side, a salad, and maybe a veggie liked baked tomatoes. A glass of wine is also typical. If we are not grilling food then pasta is often the main course.

Most of my lunches at work are just packed up 'leftovers' from dinner.

I try to limit my consumption of pasta anymore. I would grill more often if I was not on this damned 'puter.........

The last few weeks I've been eating at Arby's twice a week, on the road alot lately. But at home, we rarely eat fast food, other than pizza maybe 3 times a month. Jan and I much prefer homemade food. McDonalds, Burger King, are not in the equasion at all. Wendy's, almost as rare. My lunches are 90% leftovers from the night before. All this, and I'm still at 210!!! What's a lad to do?

I do the drive thru way more often than I should. Multiple times a week. 3+ 3 being the minimum.

Living in that apartment through the week I eat lunch at a fast food place about every day. I'm not a gourmet type person with an educated palate so the fast food tastes OK to me. I usually eat off the dollar menu. I'll get something like 2 of the double cheeseburgers at McDs and throw out either half the bun or all of it. I'm 3 weeks from retirement and getting home permanently and out of that apartment. I suspect my fast food dining will go down considerably then. My wife usually makes me a week's worth of lunches, supper actually since I work nights, that are real home cooked food. I've always liked Taco Bell but I've really had to cut back on that. I can eat it for one meal and be tore up for 2 days! Hutch

I am afraid that as I have said before, that since I now live on my own, I do tend to snack-eat rather than cook a proper meal. If I do cook then it is usually to put something quick in the microwave, cheap meals from the garage. I am not into salad very much, but do have it when there is a barbecue, but probably would not bother otherwise. I have recently bought a juicer, because I don't eat a lot of fruit, but I really ought to concentrate on having more vegetables, trouble is, I am not really interested in food now. When Rick was alive, we certainly ate better than I do now, though it was quite difficult then as Rick was a celiac and food had to be looked at carefully for what it contained.

Ice Queen said:

When Rick was alive, we certainly ate better than I do now, though it was quite difficult then as Rick was a celiac and food had to be looked at carefully for what it contained.

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You made me look that one up. I've never heard of celiac disease before.
I've been "lactose intolerant" (some would say I'm more of a bigot than intolerant) for years. Its tough to find prepared foods that don't have all sorts of addatives in them like milk solids, whey, etc. I think it would be much harder to go on a wheat free diet. The bizarre thing is that I never heard of lactose intolerance before I got it and now find out it is actually very common, something like 10% of the population? I wonder if the same is true for celiac disease?

As for being a browser who eats all day, that is what I was several years ago. I've slowly changed away from that, but I work in a building where we get new flavors of candy, snacks, pastries, etc before they are made available to the public. It is hard not to snack when you are in that situation.

I'm in my car way too much and on the road fairly often. I'd say that I have my fine dining in my car 3 to 5 times per week. It may be more because sometimes I eat breakfast as well as lunch in my car. Maybe that's why, as mentioned in another thread, my body fat has risen to 14%.

Oh well, my grandparents who just passed away within the last year didn't have exactly the best eating habits according to what we "know" now. They all lived into their mid to upper 90's and, by their own estimate, they ate bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning for at least 85 years or more of that time. Also, when a doctor told my grandfather that he had to cut most all of the fat out of his diet a few years ago, he refused. He said that the diet prescribed by the doctor was awful and that he wasn't a goat or a horse.

I figure I'll worry later. According to the tests I took, my strength and cardio was still in the excellent range for a 25 year old. If I fall out of that category then I'll worry more.

Since I work from home, I don't get into town much. I would say I eat at fast food places maybe 2-3 times/month. I do it mainly as a treat for the kids. We've switched from the BK/McD/Wendys to Subway as the food is slightly better for you.

B_Skurka said:

The bizarre thing is that I never heard of lactose intolerance before I got it and now find out it is actually very common, something like 10% of the population?

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Bob - If you think about it, lactose intolerence is really more natural and those of us that can/do drink milk are the ones that are a freak of nature. Of all the mammals on earth, humans are the only one that drinks milk after weaning. (for those of you thinking of your cat, they do like the taste but it's bad for them).

To digest milk, your body needs to produce lactase. For most mammals, that production stops very early in life.

Also, it's primarily western caucasions that can drink milk. Most Asians, Africans, Indians, Mexicans... are lactose intolerant.

Once per week. Slyders. Four double cheeseburgers and a medium diet coke. For me - almost as good as bone-in tenderloin at Mastro's. Was raised on slyders and I have the crave. Don't know what I'd do without them.

Living 30 miles from the closest drive up window promotes good eating habits. The normal once per week trip to town does not allow very much fast foods. We do like the market fresh sandwiches at Arbys and eat there probably once a month when on the run in town. When traveling away from home the fast food opportunity does increase as we like to try new things in all kinds of food. We average twice per month at the fast food restaurants. We do eat frozen pizza at home once per week as an easy to fix meal when the cooking ambition is low.

I work at home now so I eat pretty well most of the time. If I do a big outing with the girls (2 and 3.5) then we often get fast food as it is easy for them to eat out of cups in their car seats. So I'm eating lunch at BK or McD at least once a week now.

Friday night is mandatory Pizza night. I love Pizza.

I just did back to back red-eye's on a trip to Toronto (there for about 8 hours). I ate really bad: BK, Taco Bell, + others.

PB

PBinWA said:

I just did back to back red-eye's on a trip to Toronto (there for about 8 hours). I ate really bad: BK, Taco Bell, + others.

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Been there...done that. There are times that I come home from a work trip, and the wife wants to go out for dinner. All I usually want is a PB&J sandwich and to sit and relax. Eating out every meal, even at nicer restaurants, gets really old, really quick.