Thank you, thank you thank you for this posting! The reality is that the food industry, whether grocery store or eateries – WANT us to be FAT. The fatter we are the more money we spend on food. Please, please – we must understand that these people do NOT care “how we are”, although they ask “how are you?” – they really just want to make sure we spend more and more $$$ on food. We must view them as enemies of our health and our pocketbooks.

Well….duh! If it says fried, cheezy, smothered in gravy or sour cream, or boasts a mountain of bread, it’s probably not health food. The sodium is the tricky one, unless it’s made by you, personally, it’s probably over-salted. Educate yourself! If you’ve read a few food labels and researched the basics, you can figure this out! If people didn’t order it, it would disappear from the menu in a hurry! Don’t blame the food industry…they’re just giving the people what they want. If everyone ordered the healthier items on the menu, that section would be expanded to accomodate their tastes.

Ugh! Reading those descriptions made me feel nauseous!

Wow… I bet you no one has any idea how many calories are in those foods. That’s gross.

I love CheeseCake Factory – OMG the food is sooooooo good! Sigh!!! I have to limit myself – if I could I would eat there everyday, but I would be so huge. The point is you can have yummy tasting food, but you just can’t have it everyday. And it should not be a necessity everyday to eat these kinds of food as it no longer would be a special treat, would it?

Hi Janice, It’s even worse than you write about. The food companies have scientists that found out that we have a pathway in our brain that remembers where to find fatty, salty, sugary food. Once that pathway gets going it always wants us to go there again and again. It’s left over from caveman days when there was a limited food supply, and the rich food was a matter of survival. Now that we have abundant food available we don’t need to stuff ourselves with rich food anymore to survive. But…we naturally will crave fatty,salty,sugary food once we taste it. That’s why restaurants and fast food companies deliberately put it on the menu. It’s a money maker. It’s addictive too. That pathway in the brain is the same one that makes us crave nicotine and narcotics. Controlling food is much more complex because we have to eat to survive, and we have to learn to override those primitive urges to eat food that is tasty, but not healthy.

Seriously people! Who is forcing you to drive to the store or restaurant and buy this fatty, greasy stuff? Do the servers and grocery cashiers take the spoon and stuff it in your mouth? You COULD buy healthy food, prepare it, and enjoy it from HOME or brown bag your lunch. Maybe you could CHOOSE the healthier item on the menu. How can you seriously think you have no options here, it’s NOT the food industy’s fault…YOU are the one making horrible choices. Accept the responsibility for being unhealthy! The cave man is long gone or maybe YOU forgot to evolve! (sorry but this really annoys me! I’ve been in the food industry a long time, if you’re fat, don’t blame me!)

Marianna, Nothing personal against you, nobody is blaming you, and it’s not the servers and the cashiers who create the problem. It’s at the corporate level. The CEO’s hire scientists to study human physiology so they can create tastes and textures and flavors that are not just yummy, but are addictive to the human brain. I have articles from professional dietetic magazines that are revealing this. I’ll be happy to forward them to you if you want to read them. A lot of research scientists are getting fat, and they want to know why. So they are studying this subject intensely, and publishing their results. In fact the former head of the FDA actually wrote a book about it. He’s addicted to certain fast foods, and it is embarrassing to him that he can’t control his eating urges. It’s not a level playing field anymore. We are being tempted below our radar screens. It takes more than will power these days to resist the temptation. A lot of the time people don’t know their choices are horrible because they don’t have the nutritional information at their fingertips when they go out to eat. I wish the caveman part of my brain was gone, but it’s not. And it loves fatty, salty, sugary food, and I have to use every bit of my impulse control to resist the temptation of grabbing for it. Weight control is very complex, it takes a lot of vigilance and knowledge to both lose the weight and keep it off. The bottom line is the profit motive. It’s to get us hooked on the food so we come back time after time to repeat that pleasure. They get rich while we get fat and broke! Janice is trying to make us aware of what’s going on–to take a good look at what we are eating when we eat out.

I would love more info Nathanne. I see it the way I do because I have always worked in family owned restaurants, and there are all kinds of choices! When we make up the menus and specials, we’re not trying to hook people on fat! There’s a ton of info out there on how to save fat and calories at a meal, I RARELY see people do any of them. Today I went grocery shopping, when I had to go down the “cookie” aisle to get to the nuts I just said to myself “not for you, not for you, not for you” until I got to the nuts, which I buy still in their shells. It’s all about making rules for yourself and sticking to them, education is part of figuring out the rules! The more you know, the better you are at making the right choice. We’re not all helpless when it comes to feeding ourselves, but I’m willing to read the info you’ve got.