This all started so simply. It was such an innocent day. All I wanted was a sandwich. A simple, healthy sandwich. A friend was going out for lunch, I placed an order at a popular bistro, how much more harmless could this be? Apparently, lunch time bliss was not to be. When my sandwich (a turkey and artichoke panini) arrived, I was less than thrilled. From the description, my panini had sounded healthy and fresh and wonderful. It boasted fresh spinach! Artichokes! Carmelized onions! Basil Focaccia! Health food! What arrived, dear friends, was a soggy, wilted, grease bomb.
A few weeks later I found myself in a different bistro chain, ordering a salad that also claimed to be healthy. What I received was an over-dressed, wilted mess. I tossed it out and ate a cookie instead. I figured that my figure was safer that way.
. . .
Which leads me to my rant. What kind of a world is it that we are living in where a girl can't order health food at a 'healthy' restaurant? Realizing, of course, that it is my own responsibility to look into the nutritional value of what I am eating before I eat it, at what point can we start suing these people for false advertisement? Organic! Low fat! Diet Friendly! I'm sick of these phrases being tossed around. Really, what is it on your menu that is any of the above? Perhaps my Panini ( containing 820 calories per sandwich, and 106% of my salt for the day), prior to being soaked in grease and then fried in more grease would have qualified. By the time I got it, I doubt there was a speck of nutrition to be had in the blasted thing.
The worst part is that most of these foods don't even taste good!
Let us consider the salad addict. You know the type, the ladies who cannot possibly go out to eat without ordering a salad. That way they appear dainty and mindful of their eating, as they simultaneously make the rest of us non-salad eating oafs feel fat and clumsy . Dear salad-addicted ladies, do you realize that some of your precious vitals, when examined, contain up to 900 calories? Ladies, your one, dainty, lady like salad that you ate because you are so self conscious and careful to watch your weight has just used up almost all of your calories for the day. You would have been better off to order the steak and potato. At least that way you would be full and happy. Like me.
It makes me sad that we as the public are so deceived about our food choices. It makes me sad that we allow ourselves to be. It makes me sad that supposed healthy chains lure you in with vacant promises of a better food option, only to feed you the most disgraceful of all food-products imaginable. I hate that these places are able to stamp the word "gourmet (a term that I have decided is now being used to refer to a dish made up by someone who may possibly have a relative who may have once visited France/spoken French or perhaps just read Les Miserables, but really has no food authority to speak of) on any slightly unusual or exotic sounding science experiment of a dish that the dining industry minions can concoct (I assume that some of these places have to be more like a witch's lair than a kitchen).
What's wrong with simply serving, well, food? You know, the real kind. Fresh, unadulterated vegetables, quality cheeses, fresh bread, fresh salad. Not the things that are pre-packaged and simply unwrapped and flung at you upon ordering. I'm sick of wilty lettuce and over processed sludge. Is our only option moving to California to eat at Chez Panisse and the like? As attractive as that option sounds, I really hope that it is not our only hope.
Blog Archive
