Idiot of the Day

Recently I posted about my new breakfast regimen: oatmeal, plain and simple. Ok, maybe not plain and simple because I add some fruit and a pinch of sugar. But in either case, I'm doing swell compared to our Idiot of the Day, McDonald's.

As you will read in this article, McDonald's has taken something as pure and simple as oatmeal and fucked it all up. Not that anyone should be surprised about it, but it's still kind of shocking to see them take a dish with a supposed max of five ingredients and jack it up to 15 without even blinking.

My favorite passage: The aspect one cannot argue is nutrition: Incredibly, the McDonald’s product contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin. (Even without the brown sugar it has more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger.)

I have to admit that when we drove back from Kentucky over the holidays, the wife ordered the oatmeal because she figured it was oatmeal and how bad could it be? Well, it took one bite for her to beg me to switch breakfast meals with her and I choked it down while she enjoyed my meal. Damn McDonald's, I knew I hated that place.

Idiot of the Day

I'm a notoriously slow eater. Friends of mine were even making fun of me again this weekend when a buddy's girlfriend (who is relatively new to the group) said, "Wow, Chris, it's taken you like 25 minutes to eat that bowl of chili." Yeah, I can't help it, I just eat slow. Don't know if I always have, but it's been something that was pointed out to me in college and has been that way ever since. I just can't shovel the food down like some people can.

This brings me to today's Idiot of the Day. Or I should say, idiots. And honestly, you are a free-thinking human, so you eat whatever and how much ever you want however fast you want to do it. But I gotta pick on people for a moment.

The deli down the street from my office is my go-to lunch spot when I forget to bring my lunch to work or I'm in a rush or I'm just damn lazy. They make a good grilled vegetable sandwich, so it's a solid fallback (unlike the uber death machine that Kelly and I know of as the SizzEx Lone Star, but that sandwich is a whole post on its own).

Anyway, on Fridays this deli decides to unload its salad bar stock since it's closed on the weekends. The result? A promotion where as long as you buy a pound or more of items on the salad bar, it only costs $6.99. Now, I've eaten at that salad bar before, and atr no time have I ever hit a pound worth food from it. You gotta go oozing rivers of ranch dressing or something dense like that to get the weight up, but people attack this salad bar like the zombie war is coming.

It's sick to watch, honestly. I took this picture a couple weeks ago, and people were getting chappy with each other over how much croutons and shredded cheese they were piling on. As one them said, "I gotta get over a pound. It's cheaper." Why the hell are you going to out of your way to overload yourself on food like that? It's sick, really. People just piling on the grub, which they'll never eat, (or worse, hork it down because they bought it, a classic psychological ploy by the food companies) and just stuffing themselves and we wonder why their are diabetes cases skyrocketing and obesity. And it doesn't count that you're on the salad bar when you skip the beets and tomatoes and just go straight for the creamy pasta chicken salad that really should just be Cream Dressing, Accompanied by Enough Solid Objects To Make You Consider Having to Chew. And don't let that photo fool you, the line wraps around the staircase and the damn near out the door as people wait to have their own personal Kobayashi moment.

Eating food is good. Eating more than a pound's worth of food at lunch just so you can pay a flat price whether you eat 1.1 pounds or 5.6 pounds is just idiotic.

My Fear of This Food

Look, I try to eat well. I'm not the best, and I have my vices (pretzels, pretzels and pretzels). I also like to partake or my ribs recipe and the good taste of bourbon. I also like to enjoy the fact that living in DC allows me to never (in the 10 years I've been here) have to eat at a chain restaurant and if that makes me sound elitist then I'll gladly take that bullet. But there are times that I honestly don't understand people and the food they eat.

Today I learned of four new foods out there on the market, and they go beyond the pale of just laughably disgusting. Because just like that piece of shit chicken sandwich that KFC came up with, you have to remember that these places research and focus group the hell out of this stuff. And there is no way they are putting out this horse feces (which is what this stuff reads like) without already knowing there is a heavy dose of jackasses (probably all in Kentucky and Ohio) that will lap it up and ask for more.

Here are the offenders that make me weep for the human race:

Denny’s Fried Cheese Melt with wavy fries and marinara
1,260 calories
63 g fat (21 g saturated, 1 g trans)
3,010 mg sodium
CALORIE EQUIVALENT: 18 T.G.I. Friday’s Frozen Cheddar & Bacon Potato Skins

Fried cheese inside a grilled cheese? Come on, that's just ruining a perfectly good grilled cheese. Not that I can imagine a Denny's grilled cheese being particularly good (definitely not better than the ones my mom makes), but why throw soggy fried cheese inside of it? That is just messed up.

Friendly’s Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt
1,500 calories
97 g fat (38 g saturated)
2,090 mg sodium
CALORIE EQUIVALENT: 15 Snickers Kudos Granola Bars

This is one of the biggest offenders I have ever seen. This almost puts that KFC chicken sandwich to shame. Looking at that picture, you want to smack whoever sees this thing and says, 'hey, there's 1/8th an inch of tomato on there, that's healthy!' Or maybe they use wheat bread on those grilled cheeses, but I'm doubting it. Plus, I love anything that makes you say, "wow, I might as well eat 15 snickers bars in one setting."

Uno Chicago Grill Lobster BLT Thin Crust Pizza
1,530 calories
87 g fat (30 g saturated)
3,480 mg sodium
CALORIE EQUIVALENT: 51 Nabisco Ginger Snap Cookies

Again, go ahead and sit down. Then open up a pack of Nabisco's and eat 51 straight in an hour or less. Go for it. I love lobster, and DC right now is loving this lobster truck that makes apparently fantastic lobster rolls (people wait in line for more than an hour for one -- I bailed after waiting 30 minutes and the line never moved), but there is no way I am taking this on.

Applebee’s Provolone-Stuffed Meatballs with Fettuccine
1,550 calories
97 g fat (46 g saturated)
3,910 mg sodium
CALORIE EQUIVALENT: 148 Whoppers Malted Milk Balls

Applebee's, the food your arteries fear. Because much like the Olive Garden, you know this place's goal is to pump you full of stuff you don't need this much of, and can't properly digest either. Kelly loves Sour Patch Kids and Skittles, but I don't think even he could eat 148 of either in less than an hour. I think that's a challenge actually. I want to see Kelly devour 148 Skittles in less than an hour. I know he can do it, but I think seeing it might make me throw up.