CoasterBuzz Podcast #192 posted

Entertaining foodcast this week, guys...and lady.

Foodcast? I'm sorry...podcast...podcast. :)

I'm kinda with Mike and Carrie on the food issue. It's so much easier to hit the drive thru. This was especially true when I gigged regularly, when I had to leave work every Tuesday and head straight to rehearsal or every Friday to head to a show, and was sometimes on the road the entire weekend. Cooking was not an option (plus I can't cook, and have no desire to learn).

It may sound weird, but I look at eating mostly as an inconvenience. There are times when I love to eat, and look forward to a good meal; but most of the time when hunger hits, I have to drop whatever I'm doing and find sustenance before I start feeling like crap (the irony to this is, if that sustenance is McDonalds, I end up feeling like crap anyway :) ). Having to prepare food just means it's going to be that much longer before I can get back to whatever critically important (probably not) thing I was doing. I'm sure this means I have too much going on. That, and yeah, I'm lazy.

But honestly, since I'm no longer gigging I eat a lot less junk than I used to. I'm fortunate that I have a metabolism that allows me to eat junk and not gain a lot of weight. I'm also fortunate that my wife loves to cook, and is really good at it. :)

Vater, I identify with what you say, minus the wife part. :) I'm not a bad cook, and like experimenting when I have the time/motivation (an advantage of cooking for one), but I definitely view it as a chore, something that grinds life to a halt.

I'm in a show right now that has me rehearsing five nights a week, so I'm basically living on leftovers from what food I prepared over the weekend, and what can quickly be thrown together at home. For some theaters, where driving home first would be a huge waste of time/gas, I'll actually reheat the leftovers at work and eat at my desk. I grow tired of fast food quickly when I have it several days in a row, so that's why I try to rely on leftovers as much as possible in these situations.

However, one thing that has made cooking less of a timesuck is watching TV shows or listening to audiobooks on my laptop while I make dinner. Or this morning, I listened to the podcast while I packed my lunch. :) That way I feel like I'm getting two things done at once, and I can catch up on the shows I missed the previous night. (Except Big Bang Theory, which for inexplicable reasons isn't online.)

The Twinkie episode of Family Guy is on in the Cleveland market right now on WUAB. :)

http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/New_Quahog

The episode ends similar to the series finale of "Newhart"

Actually, it was similiar to Dallas. ;) It was on here yesterday too.

I'm afraid I really don't buy the arguments for eating fast food as more than a rare occasion. It's cheaper and healthier to pack a sandwich and piece of fruit for lunch (not to mention taking LESS time than going out somewhere), and similarly quicker and cheaper to reheat leftover Sunday dinner (or toss something on the grill and throw a salad together) than stopping for McD's on the way home.

It's really more about good PLANNING (or lack thereof) than anything...

I dunno, I can do lunch at McDonald's across the street for $2 or less (depending on if I want tea or water). Could I make a sandwich for less than a McDouble? The actual cost would be a bit less, but walking to McDonalds, buying a McDouble, and Walking back to work is going to work out to about the same time/money cost as buying the stuff for a sandwich, making it, packing it, and taking it with me.

Is it healthier? Well, depending on what kind of sandwich you make it could be. But I could also get a $1 salad at McD's with dressing. But if you're like Vater and plenty of other people that can't or don't cook, it can be a much easier and cheaper solution.

For $10 I get lean turkey at the deli counter and a loaf of good whole grain bread, and my wife and I are both set for lunch for the week. Even factoring in a few apples, some sandwich bags, and a few minutes in the morning to pack it, and I'm still saving money, time, and calories (and less sodium, fat, more vitamins and fiber...) over most selections in the cafeteria or nearest fast food joint.

It all comes down to choices, but I think too many people equate "fast food" with simple without realizing how easy it can be to do without.

Re: "It's a choice, you either do it or you don't."
At face value, this statement is clearly true. However, there are a bajillion examples (and probably a trillion dollars worth of industry) where we make the wrong choice to take the short term gain even with the larger long term loss.

Smoking, Gambling, Credit Card debt, watching TV instead of exercising, going back to an abusive relationship, shopping, cutting yourself, drugs, cheating on spouse, extreme anger, riding an SLC... ;)

I mean every 12 step group in the world (and there have to be a million of them by now) exists because making the right choice isn't as easy as "You either do it or you don't."

How many times do we all wake up in the morning and say, "Today, I am going to ______." or "Today I am not going to _______." Only to find that in the heat of the moment, we did exactly the thing we said we weren't going to?

Wait, but if you're spending $10 just on turkey and bread, then you're spending the same as the guy paying $1 for a Mcdouble a day.

I agree on the simple part, I pack my lunch around 60% of the time, and the other 40% of the time I tend to go to the downtown cafes and restaurants for lunch where I routinely spend $10-$15, but purely talking cost, a McDouble a day is a hard price to beat.

I think the problem is comparing a deli turkey sandwich to a hamburger.

Unless you like hamburgers and don't like Turkey ;) (I much prefer turkey, and in fact, I think I'll go home and fix a turkey and pastrami sandwich).

The guy eating a McDouble every day MIGHT be beating me on raw up-front cost, but at what cost in the bigger picture?

(And personally I find anything at McDonald's to be plain nasty anymore anyway :) )

I'm afraid I really don't buy the arguments for eating fast food as more than a rare occasion. It's cheaper and healthier to pack a sandwich and piece of fruit for lunch (not to mention taking LESS time than going out somewhere), and similarly quicker and cheaper to reheat leftover Sunday dinner (or toss something on the grill and throw a salad together) than stopping for McD's on the way home.

I'm a huge whole-food fan. But, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Add in the time to go to the store, shop, prepare, etc. etc. etc. and the five minutes in the drive-thru to grab your gut-buster-with-cheese pales in comparison.

On a semi-related note, this was tonight's dinner. Wow. Just wow. Took a little more time than my usual dinner, but wow.

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRe..._id=336518

(Edited: I only used 1/2 of the pepperoncini, but it still had a nice bite to it.)

Of course the other issue is that at lunch time, it is important that I get *out of the office* and as often as possible, *off campus*. I could save money by packing my lunch, but at the very likely cost of my sanity. Furthermore, I have more time to eat out at noon than I have to pack a lunch in the morning.

That said, "going out for lunch" doesn't usually mean a McSandwich in my office, either. About the closest I get to that is Chipotle. I happen to like burgers, but they're hard to get in that neighborhood...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I think one of the bigger cultural problems is that we prefer convenience over health. There is no universe where you can claim the crap at McDonald's is good for you. If you can't take the time to eat right, as far as I'm concerned, you've lost time at the end of your life from the problems you're creating by putting that crap in your body. To me, it's not worth it.

I think that, while McD's is certainly not good more than occasionally, the whole "you're gonna die sooner" argument isn't all that convincing. I mean, we live in a time where human life expectancy has never been higher, right?

So, if going to McD's for lunch, as opposed to packing the same turkey sandwich every day of your life, makes you happier and gives you more time for other stuff over the course of a few decades, is it really so bad if that behavior shaves a few weeks off the end of your life (when you'd probably be incontinent and senile anyway)?

Oh, and while on the subject of food... I recommend this:
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/recipefinder/mojito-rubbed-chicken-...ple-recipe

Brian Noble said:

I'm a huge whole-food fan. But, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Add in the time to go to the store, shop, prepare, etc. etc. etc. and the five minutes in the drive-thru to grab your gut-buster-with-cheese pales in comparison.

I wonder about that, though. Unless one NEVER goes shopping for household items (even at Walmart), the time spent buying ingredients shouldn't be terribly relevant -- generally actively buying food instead of, say, laundry detergent, adds about 20 minutes to my weekly shopping run. Granted, there are weeks where I have to go out JUST for food. I'm also not a parent, which changes things as well.

Preparation for a healthy sandwich takes 2 minutes (timed myself this morning :) ) So, for 5 lunches I'm up to roughly 30 minutes out of my week. I can still get away from my desk during lunch and take a walk (and often do for sanity)

A true home-cooked meal takes longer, of course, and IS a factor for many people, but to me it's worth setting the time aside to prepare at least one good home-cooked meal, intentionally making it large enough to provide leftovers during the week. Items that take a "long time" to cook, like roast chicken, can be done in the background, say while doing laundry or watching a Steelers game.

Meanwhile, everywhere I've lived, a trip to a fast food joint "on the way home" requires a conscious side-trip which adds time to the commute. YMMV on that, of course, but for me at least the "quick stop" adds time and gas consumed. Don't get me wrong, I do still eat fast food on occasion -- usually near the end of the week when we've eaten the leftovers from our Sunday dinner and didn't plan ahead for something else to prepare during the week.

Of course, there's that word "plan" again. THAT'S where things really change. But I still think getting sucked into the fast food cycle takes a decision in the first place. In my case, it's one I've never really made, because I've spent my entire life fighting with Type 1 diabetes and so have always tried to make "healthier" choices. Maybe that's an "advantage" in this case, because it forced me to learn how to fall into a different set of habits.

As long as we're sharing recipes, I highly recommend this.

There is no universe where you can claim the crap at McDonald's is good for you.

I'm not claiming that a McDouble is good for you in any universe, in fact, the things taste terrible and you're probably eating more preservatives than actual food.

But then there are the $1 salads, which consist of lettuce, carrots, cherry tomatoes, and if you ask nicely, onions. Which is a lot better for you, and still cheaper, when the Mcdonalds at work is closer to walk to than my vehicle :).

I personally don't eat at Mcd's a lot myself, I much prefer Cookout, Hardee's, or Taco Bell if I'm going for fast food, and I don't even do nearly as much fast food as I used to because the drive home is an hour and I don't feel like stopping for food, and at lunch when I do go out, I prefer one of the nicer cafes or restaurants with outdoor seating in downtown Winston.

But still, you can eat cheaper, and even eat semi-healthy, with a quick stop at a fast food joint.

Yeah, but you still have to watch. There are a lot of people who simply think salad=healthy and that's not always the case.

McD's Grilled Chicken Salad w/ Ranch: 600 calories, 40g/fat
Big Mac: 590 calories, 34g/fat

Of course, you could always wash it down with a nice chocolate shake: 1150 calories, 33g/fat (damn!)