Next to drinking and texting, ordering these is the most hazardous thing you can do in a car

The staff writers at Men’s Health magazine may have jeopardized their own health in the process, but they did the legwork, and more heroically, the stomach work, and came up with a list of the Worst Drive-Thru Foods in America. Here are a few examples fit to give your life insurance company the willies.

• Worst cheeseburger: Hardee’s Monster Thickburger (1,420 calories, 108 grams fat, 43 grams saturated, 2,770 milligrams sodium).
• Worst value-menu item: Burger King Spicy Chick’n Crisp Sandwich (450 calories, 30 grams fat, 5 grams saturated, 810 milligrams sodium).
• Worst hot sandwich: Sonic Chicken Club Toaster Sandwich (742 calories, 46 grams fat, 11 grams saturated, 1,742 milligrams sodium).
• Worst kids’ meal: Burger King Kids Double Cheeseburger, Kids Fries and Small Coke (950 calories, 42 grams fat, 17 grams saturated, 4.5 grams trans fats, 1,410 milligrams sodium).
• Worst breakfast sandwich: Jack in the Box Sausage, Egg & Cheese Biscuit (740 calories, 55 grams fat, 17 grams saturated, 1,430 milligrams sodium).
• Scariest factoid: The Hardee’s Monster burger oozes with as much saturated fat as 43 strips of Oscar Mayer bacon.

Also, their priorities may differ from yours

While we’re on the subject of drive-through bests and worsts, it may comfort you to know that the more-or-less official trade publication of what they call the quick-service industry, QSR Magazine, does extensive research each year to grade the country’s top twenty fast-food chains and rank them accordingly.

Your sense of comfort that QSR is on the job may diminish somewhat, however, when you learn that the chains are ranked not on the nutritional quality or wholesomeness or freshness of their food, let alone its effect on the consumers’ weight, but on four criteria: quickness of service, order accuracy, appearance of menu board and the vocal clarity of the speaker you use to place your order.

Consumed on a daily basis, some of the items they sell might ultimately kill you, but hey, if they get it to you pronto and you don’t have to repeat yourself when ordering it, that’s what counts. Just for the record, Chick-fil-A came in number one, but our basic suggestion regarding most drive-throughs remains the same: do yourself a favor and just drive through.

7-11: Honest to a fault?

7-11 doesn’t exactly fall into the drive-through category, but nearly all its customers arrive by car, so this is as good a place as any to take note of the chain’s new TV commercials. Given that sugary, fatty, salty and otherwise unhealthy snack food items are 7/11’s major profit center, their commercial tag line is either strikingly forthright or blithely clueless: “Too much good stuff.”

At least you can’t say they haven’t warned you.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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Still more reasons to drive past drive throughs

By robert

A highlight of natural foodie Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food is the list of rules for good eating that is included therein. There is lots of great advice in those pages, including the rule not to eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food, always eating at a table and only choosing products with five ingredients or fewer.

Early last year we shared some of our rules of healthy eating that we thought should have been included in the book, such as:

• Don’t eat anything you have to shoo flies, or coyotes, off of
• Don’t eat anything thrown away by Michael Pollan
• Don’t eat anything that Donald Trump has called “too rich”

We thought our list was pretty great, but the New York Times has compiled another list of healthy rules to live by from the 2,500 responses received with Pollan requested additions to his list. Here, some of the highlights.

If all else fails, resort to prayer

One reader, Marta C. Larusso, offered up advice from her Italian parents, that you can’t leave the table until you have finished your fruit. Emma Fogt added that if you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re not hungry.

Donna David advises people should avoid foods with an “oh” sound in their name, such as Doritos, Ho-Hos, Cheetos and Fritos. Lorene Lavora says people shouldn’t eat anything they aren’t willing to kill, while Kirk Westphal says people should consume foods in inverse proportion to how much the food’s lobby spends to promote it.

John Forti, with more advice from Italian relatives, said it’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor, meaning that eating good food prepared well and with love is the best medicine out there. In a similar vein, Carol Jackson says “you don’t get fat on food you pray over,” suggesting that food prepared at home, eaten at a table and given thanks for tends to be both more nutritious and more appreciated than food eaten on the run.

Two final pieces of advice are worth considering for everyone: Make and take your own lunch to work (Hope Donovan Rider) and don’t eat egg salad from a vending machine (David A. Wilson).

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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More dietary dos and don’ts a la Michael Pollan

By sarah