Two of the best things you can do with a fast food meal are leaving out the soda and the French fries. Have you ever tried to do that? Have you noticed that the prices sometimes go down by a little as a dollar? Have you noticed that if you try to assemble your meal using healthy alternatives for the soda and French fries that suddenly the piece parts of the meal get exorbitantly expensive and you end up paying a dollar or more over the price of the prepackaged combo meals?

Notice too how little they charge for a little extra fried grease and sugar? You can have even more fries and an even bigger soda sometimes for just pennies.

I have heard the food preparation shows on the eating channel on TV referred to as "food porn." However, think that term is more appropriate for the obscene way in which fast food joints super-size the fattiest parts of their meals.

There is one area of the typical fast food lunch where I can not go along with the chorus. That is in their criticism of the burger. As the all protein all the time diets have shown, you can eat a mainly protein diet and still loose weight. While I myself choose not to eat that way, I do not feel the need to be overly critical if others do it.

On the other hand, feeding extra fries and soda to a kid is a near crime. One of the problems with the unspoken agreement Americans have on child rearing is: most Americans agree that it is okay to give a crying kid some sugar to quiet him down. I can already hear parents screaming all over America: Not Me!

Sorry Mr. And Mrs. American and all the Ships at sea, I was there behind you in the shopping mall when you shoved that candy in your kids mouth. I was there walking past you in the grocery store when you stopped to shove a cookie in your child's mouth. Hey if you want to say you were not aware of how often you do this, or how often the babysitter does it, or how often Grandma does it, or how often day care and the kindergarten teacher do it, then fine. But I have, while minding my own business and not knowing you from Adam or Eve, inadvertently watched you shove sugar in your kids mouth-or potato chips-to keep him from crying. Until we all get to the point when we can stand kids crying, or parents get to the point where they shove an apple into a kids mouth rather than some processed garbage, America's kids will get fatter.

By the way, you can feed your kid at McDonald's. Buy him a burger off the dollar menu. Don't buy him any fries. Buy a salad and split it between the two of you. Have water for a drink. A perfectly acceptable meal with no excess sugar. There is after all no minimum daily requirement for refined sugar.

Learn more about this author, Michael Skinner.
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