Why do so many people eat fast food?

“Self destruction is like sex and candy and disco cherry pie” he answered, as he lit a camel and poured some more Canadian Club.

Crave it. It’s addictive. Convenience (drive through). Tastes good.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think it’s addictive. I avoid fast food, and we really never ate it growing up, but when I eat it.. I want to eat more of it.

ETA: @JLeslie beat me to it.

I think @DigitalBlue is right. I think I saw a study where the salt and grease makes you want more of it.

cheap and easy, formulated to be addictive.

It’s unbiquitous.
It’s convenient.
It’s cheap.
Some of it tastes good.

Salt and fat – what’s there not to like?

Satisfies a craving – can be addictive.

I am turned off by it anymore. It doesn’t appeal to me. Except for McDonald’s milkshakes.

People are overworked and overscheduled with activities. Add a long commute, then try to find time to cook a healthy meal. Who has time to cook these days? It’s easier to stop at a drive-thru.

Salt, fat AND sugar.

I don’t eat it. It is a last option available thing. If I do eat Maccas or the like I feel crappy afterwards.

I only buy fast food when I don’t have time to cook because any food is better than no food. As stated above, it’s cheap, handy, and quick. In all honesty I’m not a fan of it, but I get so many coupons for it that it’s a wicked good deal.

Food sellers have figured out what combination of fat, sugar, carbs and price maximize their profits.

How many businesses can sell you something every day or several times a day? The amount of money involved is HUGE!

They sell us what we buy. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s good business.

NY Times – The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

It’s cheap. It’s fast. It tastes good. You don’t have to tip anybody. And it can be foound on every corner. Some of it is even relatively healthy, although who goes to a fast food restaurant to be healthy!

Most people do not have the ability or time to cook real food. Also, fast food can be relatively cheap, as opposed to going to a “nice” sit down restaurant. Real restaurants don’t have dollar menus. A lot people don’t really care about, or truly understand, nutrition and all of that jazz. The fat and salt and sugar in most “fast foods” tends to be really tasty and addictive. You do the math.

Salt, sugar, fat. A lot of money is spent to figure out exactly what combination of these magical ingredients make fast “food” irresistible, so to maximize profits.

In other words: people eat it because they’ve been manipulated using their own taste buds.

Cheap? Not compared to cooking it at home. It is convenient and everyone is busy, busy, busy.

I agree that it is not cheap. It may be cheap compared to a sit down restaurant, but it’s not “cheap.” I do think the convenience factor is big for a lot of people. In fact, I think in most cases where we get fast food at our house it’s often because we don’t have time to cook or can’t cook for whatever reason.

I can get a cheeseburger and large iced tea from McDonalds for $2 plus tax. That isn’t cheap?

It’s cheap in the sense that it gives you a lot of calorie bang for your buck.

Ahhh, the dollar menu. I forgot about that. Cheap.

I suspect that for many people eating at even a low cost, convenient sit-down restaurant seems too demanding. There are too many decisions to make compared to buying something standardized that is always the same no matter which fast food outlet you choose. There’s less interaction with the server. People seem more comfortable avoiding unpredictable interactions.
Laziness is less challenging and people have become uncomfortable dealing with people except where it is necessary. Our entertainment and technology has isolated us from direct contact with people and its seems we are more comfortable with that.

Well, I eat fast food because I do not live on my college campus. Most days, I am up there for 12 hours. Therefore I have no access to a kitchen, fridge, or microwave, and having a cooler and ice and having to refill it etc takes way too much time. So I get fast food because it is tremendously easier on my pocket and it’s quick and right there. I don’t have a WHOLE lot of options in my situation. There is a healthy place called fresh to order near my campus, but the food is way too expensive. So when I go to get fast food, I try to make sure that whatever I order totals under 500 – 600 cal. It’s not as hard to do that though as you may think. My doctor says I’m in perfect health so whatever I’m doing must not be too bad lol. I eat well when I’m at home

Not everyone has “parents” that are home cooking for them. Not everyone makes time to cook.

Fast food is not cheap here (Alberta, Canada). For a combo meal, you are usually looking at around $7 or more. We don’t eat fast food every day or even every week. Probably 3 times a month at most.
Why so many people eat it? Well, it’s supposed to be fast and it is formulated to taste good. Much of it is also addictive. The only fast food places I really enjoy are Harvey’s and Peter’s Drive-thru (a local place only available in my city). My partner sometimes gets McDonald’s and KFC, which I bug her about.

Even if you can cook food less expensive at home, fast food still is usually cheaper than other restaurant food usually. I forgot to list price/cheap in my original answer, but I agree price is a factor. Even healthyish fast food is usualy less expensive than a sit down restaurant. If I get a salad at Sweet Tomatoes Express the price is about equal to what I pay to make it myself at home. At the most it is only $2 more and the tax, depending what I am adding to the salad, assuming no meat on the salad, which jacks up the price more. But, usually about equal price. Some states the tax is charged even on the grocery items.

For they are cheap and convenient. One is for save time, another may be for save money!

The fast in fast food refers not only to the time it takes to prepare it, but to the time it takes to gulp it down. Fast food is just not the kind of food that you are going to slowly chew, trying to extract as much flavor as possible. If you try that with a Big Mac you will make an unpleasant discovery. Beneath all that sauce, the burger is unpalatable, bland tasting meat soaked in grease. Yuk!

Because no one wants to wait a long time for a good meal, cheap, fast, tasty. But if you listened in Health class, it make some people…. obese…. because of all that grease adds up if you eat it too much. Hope this helps.

Convenient, delicious, cheap, and fattening. Yum. :)

Because its loaded with fattening ingredients that makes it taste so good. Plus it ‘fast’ food. People have little to prepare food. It’s also cheap, and advertisers makes that look appetizing.

The sad thing is: Even though I know all of this I still want some now :(

@JLeslie, we ate there tonight. Buy one, get one free coupons with four adults and a 3 year old was $32. Ours isn’t a Sweet Tomatoes Express. Just Sweet Tomatoes and we don’t have meat on the salad bar anymore. The cut that out a few months ago. Such a nice “fast food” meal. My husband has lost 25 pounds and I’ve lost 12. We don’t eat fast food anymore either.

For me fast food means some sort of asian takeaway! I love anything with lemongrass and chill or black bean. We usually get one of those with tofu, veggies and plain rice. If you go to a real place and not one of the chains, you get huge portions. My husband and I usually share and can both be filled for less than 10 bucks! The other fast food treat is fish and chips. Certain areas of Australia have their own kind of fish. In northern Queensland it is usually mackerel. In the territory it is usually barra. Down here, flake is the one. That is shark and it is good!

@bkcunningham Sweet Tomatoes Express isn’t a buffet like Sweet Tomatoes. You pay one price and then the person behind the bar puts it together (it’s still laid out with all the choices in a buffet style, but the person behind the bar is putting it all together, kind of like putting toppings on your sub at Subway or Publix). They measure out a certain amount of lettuce (choices of mixed greens, Spinach, iceberg, Romaine) I get a mix of different lettuce usually, and then walk down and tell them what to add to the salad. The salad is for two meals it’s so big. You can add a soup or mac and cheese for $2. I think the salad alone is $5.99, but it might be $6.99, I am drawing a blank on it right now. I almost never have a bad piece of lettuce in it. Dressing on the side which is plenty for the whole salad, sometimes a little extra. As long as I don’t put something in it that can get soggy, like those fried noodle thingies, I can keep it in my fridge a couple days and it is still perfect. Maybe longer, I never tried.

You can also get some of the same premade salads that Sweet Tomatoes has like the Asian one. It’s still one big serving, not buffet style. I almost like better being able to take it with me, although the selection of ther foods besides salad is more limited. The pastas at Sweet Tomatoes aren’t very good anyway. Only dessert worth anything is the ice cream, and I am not an ice cream person much anyway. Plus, I’m trying not to eat stuff like that. But, Sweet Tomatoes feels more like a restaurant, while the express is fast food feeling from the decor to the fact everything is served in plastic containers so it is easy to take it to go.

Ihave never heard of Sweet Tomatoes. Must be an East Coast thing.

@Judi Must be a Southern thing, I guess.

I think they are based in San Diego, CA, of all places. ”...112 company-owned restaurants in 15 states…“http://www.souplantation.com/ourcompany/

It’s called Souplantation in colder states. I see @bkcunningham gave the link. The way I understand it, it is basically the same restaurant under a different name depending on whether the market would be more apt to like soups or salads.

The first time I saw a Sweet Tomatoes Express was here in Clearwater, FL.

I’m in CA and have never sen one!

@Judi Is there one near you according to the website? The negative about the buffet is of course it’s a buffet. So one tends to eat a lot at one sitting and you can not take home leftovers. But, they do often have coupons like the one @bkcunningham mentioned, so maybe you are less compelled to eat a lot. Possibly you can pay a flat price even at the regular Sweet Tomatoes and fill a take home plate? I don’t remember. The link reminded me they have baked potatoes too, that was another thing I can add for $2 instead of soup (you can load up the potato). The add ons are not cheap really, a potato or soup at the supermarket or from scratch is probably half that price.

I don’t see a link anywhere. I hate buffets so I probably wouldn’t go. We have a place here that’s called Garden Spot that sounds very similar.

Here is the link I just looked through and the nutritional information is very complete which is nice. I found it interesting that some items that seem vegan to me have cholesterol, which means they are not vegan. Not that they misrepresented it as vegan or anything. Just one of my pet peeves at restaurants is sneaking in butter and other animal fats.

Souplantations are all over Southern California. Super tasty! They have excellent broccoli cheese soup. What I like about it, is that they have themes that change monthly. For instance one month they will feature lemon and another month they will feature blueberry, or maybe chipotle peppers. I have tasted some amazing salad concoctions at Souplantation.

@JLeslie they don’t seem to list any items (at the buffet, itself) as Vegan, but they are kind enough to label them as Vegetarian, which makes my life a lot easier.

@Kardamom Exactly, they point out vegetarian meals and ingredients on the website. I think the nutritional information was very thorough, wouldn’t you agree? The cholesterol indicates animal products, only animal has cholesterol.

@JLeslie, yes I do believe that cholesterol only comes from animal products, so with regards to the Vegetarian status, it is most likely dairy, or possibly eggs, neither of which is Vegan. They do serve vegan items, but they are not listed as such.

What I love about Souplantation is that you can please just about everyone (except for the folks that have buffet-a-phobia). I’ve seen couples in which one person has their plate loaded up with eggs and cheese and bacon bits and chicken strips and it’s dripping in bleu cheese dressing, loaded up about 8 inches high with another plate loaded up with about 10 muffins and pizza slices, and a big bowl of fettucini alfredo, the other person has a delicate plate of spring greens, shredded carrots, radishes, cucumbers and a sprinkling of sunflower seeds with a light vinaigrette (on the side of course) and a bowl of vegetable soup and a bran muffin.

Last night at Sweet Tomatoes there was a fantastic lemon mousse that was only 40 calories for one half a cup. That was my dessert. The tomato basil soup was delicious. I didn’t eat any pasta since I’m counting calories, but my granddaughter loves their mac and cheese. I have been getting my salad dressing on the side and I’ve found that I really don’t even need to use it to enjoy my salad.

Did you know you can get a salad at Subway? I just found out you can and they are really, really good.

@bkcunningham On the site it says it is lemon month.

@Kardamom Raw salads actually are very difficult for me to digest. I can eat a small-medium sized one once a day at most. I wish I could eat more. The side effects mimic other very bad conditions, and then I have to worry about what is going on. So, having other items available is a big plus. It’s so difficult for me to try and be vegan and watch calories. Cooked veggies and soups are the saving grace. I am not worried about being 100% vegan, but I hate hidden unnecessary cholesterol.

Like when you order steamed green beans at a restaurant and they are actually covered in butter, or ordering steak or salmon and they are brushed with butter. Worse, when you ask the waiter if there is butter on it when ordering and they say no, and then it is obvious there is when served, and they say, “oh, well the seasoning is in the butter.” You don’t know how many times that has been said to me. Or, if I order a burger and the bun is brushes with oil or butter the meat has enough grease already! But, I am not talking about Sweet Tomatoes on this last rant.

Once on a Q here an ex McD’s employee said they sprinkle sugar on everything. Hamburger buns, and other stuff. I don’t know if that is true?

@JLeslie That is one thing that frustrates me at restaurants, when the wait staff either have no idea what is in the food, or end up lying inadvertently about the ingredients because they are too lazy/stupid to find out. Good restaurateurs not only know their ingredients of their dishes, they are more than willing to take the extra step to find out, if they don’t happen to know (all you have to do is go back and ask the chef).

We went to a Thai restaurant one time and I asked if the soup had any fish broth in it (since I’m a vegetarian, I don’t want fish in my soup) the waitress who didn’t speak very good English said there was no fish broth in the soup. So I said, “I sure hope not, because my friend Mary here is highly allergic to fish and she could die if she ate any fish broth.” Next thing I know, the waitress tells me that there is in fact fish broth in the soup.

She didn’t give two sh*ts about it when I was asking as a vegetarian (because she probably doesn’t care) but when it came to Mary possibly dying in her restaurant, or bringing a lawsuit against them, she was readily able to tell us that there was fish broth in the soup.

@Kardamom That is disgraceful.

My daughter had a friend who died at the Garden Spot ((the place that sounds like the same kind of place.)
They asked if there was any peanut oil and were assured there wasn’t. She was allergic.

@Judi That is horrific. She didn’t carry an epipen with her? I would think restaurants keep them on hand. Even with one it sometimes is not enough.

How does that waitress sleep at night?

Did the family sue? Not that any amount of money matters.

@JLeslie, I don’t remember the details. My daughter was in High School and she’s 32 now. It was a big deal on the news at the time.

I’m deathly allergic to cabbage, of all things. I have given up on ordering any type of salad except a Caesar from a menu because of the purple cabbage that is put in with the bagged iceberg lettuce as a filler most places use. You can’t even imagine how many times I’ve asked and they say, ‘oh no, we don’t use the bag lettuce,’ or ‘we don’t use cabbage,’ and they look at me like I have two heads when I say I’m deathly allergic to cabbage. Well, why would you put cabbage in a salad they ask. The salad comes and viola, cabbage.

@bkcunningham I have never heard of being allergic to cabbage before. People can be allergic to anything. My sister worked in a burn unit at a hospital for a while and a woman had TENS (which is basically a skin reaction to medication, they go to the burn unit because their skin basically peals off). They finally narrowed it down to Tylenol from the multiple meds she was taking. Everyone was kind of surprised, but as I said, you can be allergic to anything. The lady died.

People with thyroid problems are supposed to not eat a lot of cabbage, and a lot of people have thyroid conditions.

Do you think the waitpeople don’t know what cabbage is? I once went to a bagel place and the girl did not know what margarine was. How someone gets past the age of 18 not knowing what margarine is I don’t know.

I have trouble with garlic, I probably would not call it an allergy, but I feel terrible. So much garlic in everything! It’s ok if there is a little bit, but most waitpeople seem to have no perception of what a little bit is, so I often order no garlic. It’s hit or miss whether it works out or not.

what I have now learned from this thread is, thank God I don’t have any food allergies lol.

How do any of you that do actually feel safe going out to eat?