Revelations

Prior to my married years, I ate a lot of Taco Bell. I'd always had my "food" covered in the magical Fire Sauce.

Today's dental surgery's post-operative care instructions said "no spicy foods" and soft foods like "ground meat". So, I decided to stop by Taco Bell. I ordered some ground "beef" soft tacos. I was amazed at how utterly bereft of flavor Taco Bell's tacos are when not slathered in fire sauce. In fact, were it not for the taste of bandage in my mouth, the meal would have been utterly flavor-free.

Fmeh.

Lunchtime Atrocities

Where I work, most days of the week, there are very limited food choices. Basically, you have the option of eating down in the building cafeteria, walking over to the commisary (that's ½mi. walk from the exit of the building, which, itself is a ⅓ of a mile from my desk) or going off campus.

• The building cafeteria has several "food" options: Subway, a Chinese food place (it's a chain, too, I just can't remember it), two other sandwich shops, a hot foods concession, a burger stand, a salad bar and a pizza concession.
• The commisary is a ½-mi. walk from the exit of my building. And, since I work in a large building, the walk from my desk to that exit is ⅓-mi. walk). Down there, there's another subway, a pizza concession, a Starbucks, an icecream shop and a couple other low-grade concessions. If I wanted to walk further still, there's a Burger King
• The closest off-campus location is a ten-minute drive ...and that's after you've walked out to your car. And, given the parking situation on campus, you could easily have walked a half mile or more to get to you car (and, if you're in one of the "close" spots, you won't want to lose it over lunch, any way). That location is full of higher-end chains, but still chains

I'm not a big fan of chain food, in general. So, if I'm going to eat chain food, I try to minimize the insult by at least restricting myself to cheap chain food. Subway's cheap and it's convenient. Notice, I don't use the term "good".

Usually, what I get is the seafood sub. I order the 6" sandwich made with the Italian herb&cheese bread. I get it with American cheese, lettuce, tomato and a ton of hot peppers. Frankly, the hot peppers are the only thing with any flavor on it. Yes, I could order something with more flavorful ingredients, the problem is, those other "flavorful" ingredients have an awful flavor. So, I go with the filling but flavorless wonder.

Now, under normal circumstances, the combination I choose would at least have some flavor

• Seafood normally has flavor, but Subway's seafood salad is just chopped up faux-crab with no discernible spices and flavorless mayo (I assume it's mayo, but it's just as likely some kind of semi-edible bonding agent).
• The bread I choose claims to be "Italian herb and cheese". As near as I can tell, the "Italian herbs and cheese" Subway uses were chosen more to provide texture than flavor.
• American cheese, while normally mild, typically has flavor. Subway's? Not so much. It's mostly just a textural thing that provides a bit of filling - a very small bit of filling, given that they take one small square of cheese, cut it into two triangles and lay the triangles end-to-end, long-sides on a common axis, so as to give the appearance of covering the whole sandwich. Much as Mario's cake is a lie, so is Subway's cheese.
• Lettuce can have flavor, it's just that most sandwich places seem to choose to use iceberg or other basically flavorless lettuces. I don't know what token greenery Subway actually uses, but it's flavorless.
• Tomatoes... I loves me some tomatoes. As a kid, it used to boggle my mind that they were technically fruits. As an adult with a very nice garden in my yard, I almost find it hard to believe that I was ever confused about whether they were a fruit or vegetable. With Subway's tomatoes, the only confusion I have is, "is this actually food?" I mean, today's tomatoes were literally white (granted, it was a pinkish white, so, it had the suggestion that they were distantly related to the bright-red, flavorful tomatoes I've had elsewhere, but it's only enough of a hint to make you buy into them maybe being tomatoes). Their texture and flavor, however, I could replicate by cutting the bottoms off a styrofoam coffee cup, splashing them with ink from a red pen and tossing them on my sandwich.
• The only saving grace is the hot peppers. I don't know why the sandwich makers always boggle at me when I ask them to pile them on (sometimes saying things like "take what you think is an obscene amount of hot-peppers, then double it" to try to give them a picture of how much I want). Now, you'd think that canned sandwich peppers were canned sandwich peppers. Growing up, it didn't so much matter which brand was on the jar, the crushed hoagie peppers were zesty. I dunno where Subway gets theirs, but it definitely isn't from Talaricos. Yes, they too are gutless versions of the food substances they pretend to be.

Oh well. It saves me the hassle of having to go off campus and it makes my stomach shut up. Though, in truth, I don't know whether my stomach shuts up because it's been sated or because it fears that I'll assault it with another wave of utterly indifferent food.

In or Out

Ok, so, everyone knows that fast-food is bad for you. Everyone knows that fast-food has some questionable "food" properties (e.g., the various web pages dedicated to "how many years does it take for this McDonald's meal to decompose").

I think that, at this point, it's probably a safe bet that fast food is just as healthy for you coming in as it is going out. You can take that as either "your body's immediately better off as soon as it's pushed the fast food out" or as "what you're eating isn't much better than fecal matter."

Food for the (Mentally) Feeble

I've been to McDonalds. When you're broke or just in a hurry, it's not a bad option. The food's utter shit and you feel awful, the rest of the day, after eating their food, but it's still an option.

Unfortunately, you have a non-trivial percentage of people who eat there regularly. I think that, not only is it killing their bodies but their brains as well.

Then again, I consider how stupid the average person I run into is, and then have to remember that "average" is a mid-point on a statistical spectrum. Clearly, the woman in this article falls somewhere on the dumber-side of that midpoint.

As I said, I've been to McDonalds. And, not just one of them, but pretty much all over the US, parts of canada and even Europe. They're all pretty much the same - construction-wise. While I don't generally like using public restrooms, sometimes, nature's call is a bit urgent, and I've had to relent. Any of the McDonalds' restrooms I've had the misfortune to use (most public restrooms, actually) have been pretty much the same: flimsy, lightly-constructed aluminum doors and walls, lightly anchored to the floors and walls, with ill-fitting locking/latching mechanisms and just barely clean enough to pass local healthcodes.

That said, the injuries reported in that article just don't seem reasonable. The stalls, themselves, even if they completely collapsed on her, don't contain enough weight/materials to cause those kinds of injuries. And, she's not claiming a total collapse, only that the door came off and fell on her. So, unless she was at some medieval-themed McDonalds where the stall doors were constructed similar to the drawbridge on an old castle or keep and a 500lb gorilla was jumping up and down on that door as it laid atop her, I have my doubts on the veracity of her claims.