I Get It, You're White, You Eat Kale.

I was having a really hard time putting my finger on why it bothers me so much when people bash McDonald’s. I mean, sure, it’s really bad for you, and in general the company makes a profit off of serving poor people in food deserts who are desperate for cheap calories, but what is it that is intrinsically bad about their food?

            So, I went to McDonald’s and bought a Bacon Ranch Salad, which came in at 330 calories, with the dressing. It looked fine. The lettuce was crisp, the bacon bits were real, the cheese was some kind of yellow shredded substance, and the chicken – which I had ordered grilled – looked properly cooked, albeit there were no grill marks on it, so the claim of it being grilled held little water.

            I ate about half of it before I bit into some kind of weird, gristle-fat, substance, which I spat out, and nearly puked because the texture was not of this world. It was spongy and crunchy at the same time; much like a human ear might be if it had been steam pressure cooked, and then sealed in a bag of solution for a week. It was truly one of the most revolting experiences of my life, and you can be sure that I will not be doing it again.

            That being said, I was amazed by how fast friends were to comment on how they would never eat at McDonald’s. The smugness was palpable, and it was clear that so many comments were designed to demonstrate their superiority. I could tell the comments were designed to make the person feel better about their life choices, and something about that rubbed me the wrong way. Sure, it’s fine to endeavor to eat locally and pick organic ingredients, but this wasn’t that. This was something different. This was purely speculative attack upon the ingredients of the salad. Friends said things that suggested the items in my salad were not unlike science experiments gone horribly wrong. As if my salad had been created by Dr. Moreau himself. As if, given half an opportunity, the cherry tomatoes would have sprouted legs and made a break for it, or even worse attacked!

            I have trouble with this because I know a lot about food and the food service industry, and it bugs me because the wholesale dismissal of McDonald’s seems to be less about their food being bad, and more about people making themselves believe the food they eat is better.

            It’s not.

            One of the things I do in my line of work is pay close attention to price volatility of high priced ingredients. For example: last summer – 2013 – the price of beef in the United States went up. Not all cuts of beef, but the ones most people know about: Strip Steak, Prime Rib, Tenderloin, etc… This is because of prolonged drought across the Midwest and throughout large parts of California, which drove up grain prices over the last few years, and all the fast food chains decided, instead of getting caught with their pants down again, to run lots and lots of chicken products. Chicken prices went up a little too, but nothing like beef, so they were hedging against future volatility by pushing consumers towards chicken. Anyone who’s familiar with McDonald’s – and you don’t have to eat there to know about their advertising – will have heard of the McRib. This is another price volatility hedge. Every time beef goes up, they run the McRib, and talk it up as “It’s Back! For a Limited Time Only!” Yea, it’s back for as long as beef prices are up. Last summer was particularly hard, and just rolling out the McRib wasn’t going to cut the mustard, and besides Burger King doesn’t have that option, so all the chains went for chicken.

            What happened?

            Well, the price of chicken went through the room, but not just any chicken. Specifically, what we in the industry call the “Random Breast.” Even more specifically, we call them “Ten Up Randoms,” because what we’re going to get is a forty-pound case of chicken breast, where each breast will weigh no less than ten ounces. In professional kitchens you can order pretty much anything you want. You want a case of perfect 6 oz breast? Sure, not a problem.

            Five ounce, butterflied? Yep.

            Four ounce, portion controlled, individually cryo-vacced? Sure, you can have that.

            Chef and kitchen managers all over the Country order these products every day, but what we mostly order is random ten ups.

            When McDonald’s got in on the game, and all their buddies to boot, chicken prices went up. That, in and of itself, is not that big of a deal, but what is interesting is what we learned from it: that McDonald’s is using the same products every other restaurant in the Country is using.

            I can’t imagine that McDonald’s goes to any trouble to have farmers grow any produce that is different from what the industry calls “conventional,” which just means it is not organic, local, or what have you. It’s the same stuff you buy in a grocery store when you just grab a bag of Dole mixed greens and some carrots, tomatoes, and cukes, without bothering to walk the extra ten feet to the section with the organic items.

            It’s the SAME stuff!

            Yet, in droves, people pile on to talk about how the salad was just as bad as the hamburger, that the product is suspicious, that the company is gross, and all for the sake of making themselves feel better.

            The problem I have with this is that it’s not about what McDonald’s does wrong – and for fuck’s sake, there is plenty to legitimately condemn them for – but rather, it’s about giving oneself a pass on the ingredients already in the refrigerator at home.

            If McDonald’s is really, supper, icky, bad, then it is easy to sleep at night with the knowledge that we have done our part for good eating by staying away from them. Never mind that the salad you have at your favorite locally owned restaurant is the exact same thing, and anyway, it’s the dressings that are the real problem, and the dressing I had today was Newman’s Own. If I whipped out a bottle of that same dressing my naysaying friends would gladly eat it with gusto, and probably commend me for purchasing a product that gives all profits to charity. Newman’s Own is a good company, that is about doing good work, and anyone who supports them is good, right?

So why not McDonald’s? Shouldn’t they be commended for their choice to work with such an ethical company as Newman’s? Of course not, they’re pure evil.

This is about smug dismissal of facts, and ignoring what is really going on with American food. We see a trend towards Whole Foods Markets, and purchasing local, organic, ingredients. I know a lot of people who rejoice because they go to the local farm stand, where they speak with “their farmer,” who they count as a friend. Like they’ve known them from childhood, but I’ve never seen the same famer at their house for cocktails.

So proud these folks are of their positive choices, and oh how they rejoice in putting down those who don’t follow their lead.

            Want to know something else about these friends I mention? They’re all white, college educated, professionals with good incomes, who live in the country, or in super upscale city communities, with fresh markets all around. They condemn the fast food salad because it makes them feel good about themselves, but in a way, they’re also saying, “Look how successful I am.” It’s a fucking status symbol, and if that’s true, then they’re also saying, “Suck it poor people!”

            Think about it: if the ingredients that McDonald’s uses are the same as those found in the vast majority of restaurants and grocery stores, and as such, the ingredients consumed by most of America, to dismiss them as in some way beneath, or foul in nature, is to say that the vast majority of Americans are gross in the choices they make in what they eat. Often times, the person making such outlandish claims about food products doesn’t know sweet fuck all about food, and indeed, they’re insulting themselves.

            I guess what I’m saying is, I get it, you’re white, you eat kale.

Too Much Information About The Color Of My Urine

I don’t ever “treat” myself to anything. You hear people say that all the time: “I’m just going to treat myself to…” whatever guilty indulgence they have deemed themselves to have earned through denying that object for some period of time.

            I don’t do that.

            I eat whatever the fuck I want, and don’t view anything delicious as a “treat.”

            In fact, I’m a little weirded out when people use that kind of language because the implication is that some foods are “good” or “bad” when really all foods are good, and bad. Even water, if you drink too much, is harmful. Now, I don’t know much water a person would need to drink to cause bodily harm, but I can promise I’ve had the kind of hangovers that justify gallons upon gallons of water, and when you work in kitchens you can drink and drink and drink… Water that is. Still, I’ve never had a problem with drinking too much water. Of course, 90% of the time my pee comes out as a dark yellow, almost orange/brown, substance with a consistency more like a solid than a liquid, so I imagine I could stand to drink some more water.

            This idea of treating oneself to some kind of food is foreign to me. We didn’t have discussion like that at the dinner table growing up. My parents made great food, and we loved it. We had “salad” that was sliced Hanover Tomatoes – capitalized on purpose to show respect to the greatest of all tomatoes –, cucumbers, and blue cheese dressing. I could eat that salad all day and all night if I were given the change. To this day, I can’t eat a breakfast sandwich without thinking of my mother, cooking fried eggs, while I sat on the kitchen floor, in front of a small floorboard heater, because the pesky kitchen would never get warm enough in the winter. She would cook the eggs over easy, and put them on toast with, American cheese, and bacon. I’d eat them on the floor, in front of that heater, and it was pure heaven. I don’t even like toast, but when it’s part of a breakfast sandwich that’s a whole different story. It has the power to instantly transport to back to my childhood.

            My childhood where dinner might be bacon wrapped chicken, baked in a mixture of cream of mushroom soup and sour cream, on top of a bed of chipped beef. This was always served with rice so we could mix it up with the sauce and eat it with a spoon. My mother does pot roast the same way: sear it, cook it SLOW in sour cream and cream of mushroom soup.

            My father makes green beans, which are cooked all day, with bacon, until they are soft and mushy, in the best of ways. He finishes them off with a little Lawry's seasoned salt and cayenne pepper. We always fight over how much cayenne he puts in – my mother preferring them milder, and my father always going a touch over board. As I’ve gotten older I’m tending to agree more with my father on that one.

            My father makes a meat sauce that is like a Bolognese, but he creates it in a miracle like way, with a deep, fierce, and unrelenting hatred of… Oregano. Seriously, he hates the stuff, and says there’s nothing that spice can’t ruin. Now, I love it, but I prefer my father’s spaghetti sauce to all others, and I make a pretty dang good Bolognese, but my dad wins the prize. Hell, I used to take mason jars of it back to school in the north, to eat late at night with crackers like a dip. What I’d do is pour a bunch of this into a bowl, heat up in a microwave, then fold in a bunch of American cheese, so it made almost like an Italian queso fundido type sauce mixture, and then I’d dip Pepperidge Farms butterfly crackers into it while watching late night T.V.

            To be clear, in my family, no one ever questioned this practice. It’s the way I liked it, and it was one of my favorite things in the whole world, and only my father can make that sauce. He gave me the recipe once, and I tried to make it, but it wasn’t the same.

            It was not a treat.

It was a snack.

And when I took the jars up North, I would eat that sauce, an think of home.

            Treats are for three year olds. My son Porter gets a treat when he poops in the potty. What I get is a handle bottle of Bourbon and a quart of my dad’s sauce with crackers and cheese, and I call that a damn good fucking Tuesday.

            I think these folks who talk about “treating” themselves are misguided, but I can see how thinking certain foods are bad can be beneficial. After all, I did recently learn how bad a potato chip is for you, and now when I see those tempting delights in the store I turn my back on them like the girlfriend who cheated on you in college and then acted like her shit don’t stink. (Yea, you know who you are bitch!)

            I still don’t treat myself to thing, even while doing this salad challenge. Even the salads are great. I smother them in creamy dressings. I cover them in bacon. I eat them with sliced steak. And still… Still… They come in at half the calories compared to what I would have eaten.

            Let the haters say what the haters are gonna’ say: that I don’t understand how to eat healthy. They’ll be right, but I’m learning to eat healthier, and that’s a good thing.

            Also, I dropped a pant size in two weeks!

Day 14 - Those Pants Are Judging Me With Their Eyes While I Sleep

It has been two weeks.

            No one would have ever guessed that I would have made it this far, but I have stuck by my vow – like a good Southern man – and have eaten a salad a day, every day, for the past fourteen days, and in that process, I’ve dropped an entire pant size. My 44s are now falling off me, and I fit comfortably in my 42s, and I’ve got a pair of 40s sitting on a chair that I just know judge me with their eyes while I sleep for how I’ve abandoned them for so many years.

            I’m going to keep this post short, mainly because I’ve got another one that I already wrote; not realizing this was the two-week mark. I’m so comfortable with this that it was not even something I was thinking about any kind of mile markers. I just ran right past the two-week mark.

            I’m pretty proud of that.

            So, in honor of this momentous occasion, I’ll tell you that I did not have a salad for lunch today. Instead, I had date lunch with Allison, and we went to the newly opened Mexican restaurant in Brattleboro. I had a HUGE burrito with Pork carnitas, a mango soda, and I didn’t think twice about the amount of sour cream I put on that bad boy. I fucking slathered it in the shit, and I have no remorse.

            I’ll have salad for dinner.

            Fuck it man! An entire pant size in TWO F’ING WEEKS.

Day 7 - I Should Be Dead

Let’s just get this out of the way: I am a disgusting, awful, gross, slob of a man. I mean, I knew I was unhealthy, but I really had no idea how bad it was.

            I am seriously learning, and that was not the point of this, but it’s happening no matter how hard I try to keep my eyes shut.

            You’ll recall that the point here was not for me to get all health nutty but, rather to focus on what would happen if a person like myself just laid off one big meal a day, and replaced it with a salad. Not a complex in theory, and something I knew, and know, I can do.

            But then the haters started in with their, “Yea, that salads really bad for you,” and the laughing about how I think I can just put a steak on top of a salad and call that salad, which I never said. I did say that a big salad with steak – as in some sliced beef – on it would be much better for me than what I was eating, but that’s a whole different thing, but you know, everyone’s got a fucking opinion, and boy they were letting me know. Right in the middle of me trying to do something good for myself.

Still, I knew in my heart they were wrong.

I think their wrongness stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how poorly I was eating. I think the vast majority of people I know could not conceive of the level of gross I have been willing to consume over the past few years. I mean I’ve always been a big eater, but I’m also a big guy. This is different from being a bad eater, and I am really seeing it. But, since you have no idea what I was eating, let me give you a little compare and contrast of today’s lunch.

I went to Friendly’s and ordered a turkey tip salad with avocado, bacon, and blue cheese dressing. The waiter asked me what I’d like to drink and I asked for water. I could see the disappointment in his eyes as I did so, but I’ve also cut out drinking soda – except when it’s ginger ale mixed with Bourbon – and I’ve yet to figure out what people who don’t drink soda drink when they drink something in a restaurant. For those who don’t know, a single guest to a waiter sucks, but one who orders a salad with water is the kiss of death. This kind of person paints an image of a person who is as cheap as cheap can be, and anyone in the business knows damn well this person’s going to go 10% on a tip.

If that.

Fuck him though. If he plays his cards right, and is a smart guy, he can flip me faster then a ninety pound cheerleader with a hankering for landing on the one hunk on the squad’s upstretched hand, and if he does it right, I’ll go 30%. Fuck, pull it off just the way I want and I’ll even shoot a sawbuck to the guy who makes my salad. I’m in the business, and I know how it works in the kitchen where no one ever gives you an ounce of credit. You don’t even have to talk to me. I know what I want when I sit down, and I don’t need any kind of spank and tickle. So yea, push me, rush me, get the food to me real quick, and I’ll get out of your way so you can bump yourself up in the rotation and pick up that eight top of drunk-in-the-middle-of-the-day college kids, and you’ll have picked up an easy extra ten bucks for doing sweet fuck all.

That salad, by the way, 850 calories.

Ahhh, but what would I have ordered?

I would have gone to Taco Bell, and I would have ordered the following items:

2 each: Big Beef Meximelts	240 Calories
1 each: Big Beef Burrito	240 Calories
1 each: Three Piece Extra Crunch Chicken Strips	290 Calories
2 each: Bacon Ranch Dipping Sauce	280 Calories
1 each: Pepsi – filled twice	760 Calories
Total Calorie Count:	1810

I would have eaten every, last, damned, bite, and would have loved every second of it.

          You see, I don’t eat like everyone else, and when I try to explain the one hundred salads plan, people don’t quite get how it could help me. Perhaps you now have a better understanding of what’s going on here.

          Hey, in case you didn’t quite grasp that chart above, look again at the calories from the freakin’ soda. Sure, I would have filled it up twice, but even if you have the willpower to just drink one, when there’s all that wonderful American free refill action going on just ten feet away, you’d have chugged down 380 calories from the soda alone. Put that shit in perspective: the soda has more calories than any single item I would have eaten. Ever had a big beef burrito? No? Well, look, they’re really big, and only represent 63% of the calories one gets from a large Pepsi. Get your head around that, and while you’re doing it, remember that, while a Big Beef Burrito is not a salad, it’s still got some nutrients in it. For example: it’s got 7 grams of fiber and 17 grams of protein. Sure, it’s also got a whopping, 1140 grams of sodium… Wait. DaFuq???

          No… No… I’m not making the sodium discussion a part of my life right now. I’m sure we’ll get into it in the next ninety or so days, but not now. I will say this; my heart doesn’t pound so loud it wakes me up at night anymore. So there’s that. 

          This has been eye opening to me, and I’ve learned something really important: I must have an amazing metabolism because most people couldn’t eat like that, every day, for five or so years, and still only be two hundred and eighty pounds. I should be a fucking five hundred pound monster. I should be one of those people the NYFD has to cut a hole in the apartment building’s exterior wall, and extract me with a goddamned forklift.

          Shit, I should be dead.