Fast Food...It's no longer fast and very rarely food.

I love to eat. I'll admit it. Good food is one of life's simple pleasures. The idea of "fast food", on the surface sounds good too. Think of it; a hot nutritious meal, quickly. You won't have to take a lot of time out of your day preparing this wonderful meal and it would serve your nutritional needs.

Well, that's the theory, isn't it? Certainly, that is what the fast food chains try to make you believe. Well, most of them try to make you believe that. Some just blatantly create meals that even the most nutritionally naive among us would never believe are good for us.

Years ago, you would go to a fast food restaurant and get a double cheese burger with fries and a drink. That was pretty much the largest meal you could get. Later, extras were added. Deserts, like ice cream or pies appeared on the menus across the country. Even with the deserts, an occasional trip to the roadside temple of calories was a treat.

Even with my military school upbringing, I remember going to the burger place and hanging out with my friends, enjoying some fries and a shake. Great times! But, not every day.

But, things have changed. The fast food purveyors make very little effort to disguise the fact that their food is killing us. It's killing our children. Not only is the nutritional value of most of the fast food questionable but the quality of the product has fallen so low that I rarely eat any of their products.

It's hard enough for me to eat out. As a diabetic, if I want to eat out I have to plan in advance and scrutinize the menu to ensure I do not do unthinkable damage to my blood sugar. I further have to be concerned with the salt content and the various types of fat in the foods. For the most part, for me, it's easier to eat what we prepare at home.

Let's just put my particular health issues aside and discuss what a normal person may encounter at the local fast food restaurant.

The commercials for a particular drive through place advertised a hot dog that looked delicious on the surface. Think of it! Who wouldn't like a foot long hot dog on a pretzel roll with cheese and bacon bits? Remember, we are not accounting for health issues...

The hot dog is a hot dog. No complaints there. The bun is a fairly decent device. It holds the food together. That's all I'll say about it. But, the cheese "Sauce" is neither cheese nor sauce. It was some kind of processed "Cheese product". My son advised me that it tasted like a can and was worse than MRE cheese. (For those who don't know: MRE is Military rations in the field; fed to Marines and Soldiers. The initials stand for "Meal, Ready to Eat. Notoriously bad.)

Back to our hot dog. The "Bacon bits" were indeed bits. Of what , no one knows.

All in all, the famous hot dog failed in taste and nutrition.

Another food chain had a burger called "The Baconator". I don't know how to describe this monstrosity. You had your choice of up to 4 burger patties with some ungodly amount of bacon and cheese. My Marine son brought one home once. I had to leave the room! He paid 12 dollars for the entire meal which included what had to be a bucket of fries and a tankard of some triple sweet soda. Yumm! Yumm!

There was enough food to last me a week. If I had watched him eat this monstrosity of a "burger" I would have needed another cardiac surgery!

The other day, my son wanted to buy me breakfast. I was thrilled. I love spending time with my children and to have breakfast with my son would be a real treat. He ran out to the golden arches and picked up two breakfast meals. I took one bite of the "hash browns" and had to fight the urge to spit the food out. It tasted rancid! I don't think the oil in the frier had been changed since Ray Kroc opened the first McDonalds. Never again.

There are not a lot of healthy alternatives out there for "Fast" food. I have discovered that you can go to some of the chain restaurants like Chili's or Ruby Tuesday's for lunch and spend just a couple of dollars more than what you might spend at a fast food restaurant and get a healthier, better quality meal.

Maybe I'm just an old Sailor who likes to complain but, for my money, I'll take a nice salad for lunch or a home made tuna sandwich with a good pickle spear on the side. If I eat it with my daughter or my spouse, it's even better. I certainly can't get that good company and pleasant surroundings at a fast food restaurant and it is after all, the people you spend time with that make the food taste better.

So, skip the fast food and have a light lunch with someone you care about. Your disposition as well as your waistline will benefit.

As Always...