Fast Food by Christian Cable, on Flickr
We have been slowly unplugging ourselves from fast food over the past several years. We’ve gone from four drive-thru meals a week down to one, two if there’s an emergency. And the emergencies have been fewer as we become more accustomed to prepping our meals days and hours ahead. Meat not taken out of the freezer used to be an emergency, now it’s an opportunity to stretch my culinary imagination. I find I am craving that unique McDonald’s flavor less, the less frequently I have it. I thought I would experience an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” reaction, but instead it’s been much more like “out of sight, out of mind.” Because we are financially limited and have what passes these days for a large family, we tend to go for the least expensive options: McDonald’s, Taco Bell and very rarely Subway.
But as I’ve learned more and more about where my food comes from, I find fewer and fewer menu items I’m willing to purchase. Burgers? No, CAFO meat. Tacos? No, GMO corn (actually, that applies to every single menu item, but in some places it’s more obvious than others.) Fries? No, bad oil. Deli meat sub? No, nitrates and MSG. Salad? No, flavorless and full of pesticide residue. Soda? Ooh, tempt me why don’tcha? No, GMO corn, chemicals, preservatives and darned addictive to boot.
After (permit me brag just a little) John got the highest Honors Chemistry 2 score in his entire school, took the SAT and the ACT and put away his school stuff for the summer, I took him out for a sundae to celebrate. He knew just what he wanted, but there I stood looking at the menu for what must have seemed like an eternity to the kid behind the counter. I ended up getting nothing, and just popped a Godiva chocolate pearl in my mouth to suck on. I couldn’t find anything to eat at Dairy Queen. How weird is that? I felt like a space alien. I came home and made myself a nice little salad and kicked myself for not having the ingredients ready for a homemade sundae instead.
My problem, however, now lies in my traditions. We have always gone out as a family, to a sit-down-inside fast food meal on our way to church on Saturday nights. We have to leave the house by 3PM, so we just have a light lunch that day and skip the dinner dishes. It gives me a nice rest from the non-stop cooking and dishes routine, gives us a chance to sit down and chat with each other, and a chance for everybody to eat something they enjoy that is forbidden within our own four walls. But I no longer enjoy it. I can taste chlorine in the drinks, I can envision the CAFO, miles of monocropped corn, and see the butterflies dying after landing on the GMO corn silks. We can’t afford more expensive places: fast food already costs about $35-40 for one meal for all of us.
As I see it, we have four choices.
- Skip the meal out. Eat at home and let the dishes sit until we get back from church at about 9PM. I don’t like the idea of losing my rest day, but…
- Let the family eat whatever they want out. I’ll eat at home before we go where I am comfortable with my food choices. The spoiled brat in me cries foul at the idea.
- Fast. Just skip that meal entirely. As you can imagine, the kids and hubby don’t like that idea.
- Just eat. One meal won’t kill me, and it will prove to the hubby that I’m not the orthorexic (obsessed with eating only healthy types of foods) that he swears I’m becoming.
I’ve borne the consequence of our new foodstyle most joyfully. I’ve cooked, cleaned, prepped, menued, listed, shopped, researched, studied, read, asked, investigated and plan to continue. This one change—not eating out—threatens me most. My mom hates that she is now of retirement age and no one is letting her retire from her cooking duties. “You could always retire from eating, I suppose,” I tell her. As humorous it is when my mom rails against having to cook yet another dinner and clean up after, it is not quite so funny when it’s my own Sabbath rest we’re talking about!
So, be careful, little brain what you learn. Knowledge, once yours, is a bell that can’t be unrung.
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted this week by Cheeseslave.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
9 comments
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June 17, 2009 at 12:36 pm
motherhen68
I feel your pain. We stopped @ Taco Bell last week for lunch. What was I thinking? The food was H.O.R.R.I.B.L.E. Granted, Taco Bell was never the best tasting fast food, but sheesh it was just inedible. And my stomach rebelled all day long!
Our big thing is breakfast out after Mass on Sunday morning. We all usually eat such a large breakfast that I don’t have to cook lunch. But by the time supper rolls around, I’m still full, but the guys want food. I’ve tried fixing my Sunday dinner on Friday and putting it in the fridge, but the guys found it and ate it! I’ve done the crockpot thing, but, I have to remember ahead. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve just had to suck it up and cook on Sunday nights.
Last summer, I made a dinner salad on Sunday nights. This might work for you. Everything can be made, chopped, and prepped before church. You could even double up the extra duty on Friday night’s dinner prep.
June 17, 2009 at 1:01 pm
FoodRenegade
We’re in a similar boat. We eat out about once a week. I’ve discovered a couple of places that I feel less guilty about eating out at — places that serve up local food, humanely raised meats, etc. But in a couple of years, when our kids eat adult sized portions, they’ll be too cost prohibitive.
For now, I just give myself the free meal. If I’m eating well 90% of the time, I don’t fret about the one or two meals a week that suck.
June 17, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Betsy
I’m with Kristin in the “eat well 90% of the time and don’t sweat the other 10%” camp. I eat out every Saturday afternoon with my husband, and I eat one lunch out a month, at a women’s group function at work. I think that’s decent.
Besides, my husband mentioned a couple of months ago that our dinner out on Saturdays was the high point of his week. Can’t be messing with that!
June 17, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Alyss
Motherhen – If someone found and ate the meal I had prepared before hand they would be in deep deep doodoo
That’s when you say “Sorry buddy, there’s no dinner tonight because you ate it for lunch. There’s some crackers, there’s some cheese. Have at it!”
Speaking of have at it.. what about having your kids do the cooking on Sunday? Have them prep a simple crock pot meal in the morning and do the dishes either before or after church. If your kids are older than 6 they can open cans and make a crock pot chili or soup! Have your husband help them load the dishwasher and set the dirty crock pot insert in the sink until after church. People have made long simmered meals for their day of rest for centuries before the advent of taco bell!
June 18, 2009 at 9:18 am
localnourishment
We are on a regular rotation of cooking here. I do most of it, but there is almost always a kid in the kitchen helping or learning. One of our big rules is that if you cook, you don’t have to do dishes. It started out as a way to keep me from having to stand on cement floors with my tenuous knees for more than a couple hours a day. But it’s backfiring on me. I had no idea I was training messy cooks! So, we’re gradually switching over to an everybody cooks, everybody cleans type routine instead. Sadly, my crockpot died a couple months ago (a victim of the everybody cleans regime) and I’m still saving up to replace it.
June 18, 2009 at 8:35 am
motherhen68
Alyss, sounds like a good idea! I was sooo mad when I opened that fridge to pull out Sunday’s dinner and it was 1/2 gone! My sons’ just slunk away.
June 18, 2009 at 9:36 am
Jessie
The thing that strikes me most is just to encourage you to pray & ask God to help you decide what to do. There are so many things in life that are not clear-cut decisions. But God does give wisdom to those who ask. There are a lot of good things invovled here – nutritious eating, rest, time with family, and enjoyment of food. He will help you sort it all out. And likely you will figure it out over time – it won’t come to you all at once.
I have been reminded recently that no matter how great I cook nutrient dense food – our health comes from God – like everything else. My control is just an illusion. So even if you cook everything perfectly all the time, we are subject to a fallen world and you and your family will still have health problems. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be good stewards & take care of ourselves as best we are able – but we should never think that our care is what keeps us safe. This thought helps me when I am anxious about getting everything done the very best way – when I am just not able to do the very best way.
All that being said, one idea that comes to mind is to have a smallish breakfast & then have a brunchy thing at home before leaving for church(egg casserole – easy to do & easy clean-up) and then have something light when you get home.
June 18, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Claudia
i love how you closed the post.
i remember clear as day three years ago when my friend christina said “you don’t know what HFCS is?” my life has not been the same ever since, and i thank God he put her in my life for that eye opening moment in time.
June 21, 2009 at 8:06 pm
elaine
I am struggling with the same things. Fast food is one of my last hold outs and it is a tough one. I am so encouraged by so many of the ideas shared in your comment section and will share one I gleaned from somebody’s blog (forgive me for not being able to recall which one!). In addition to the crock pot idea, the salad idea and the cook ahead idea — all of which I am trying to incorporate — this one gave me such a paradigm shift in my thinking about what dinner was really supposed to be. One brilliant blogger schedules “snack night” with things like popcorn (!), apple slices, cheese chunks, fruit, etc. At first my mind totally rebelled but the more I thought about it the more I liked it!
It is going to become a regular on our menu and it fits the Sabbath rest idea perfectly … a very easy Sunday lunch or dinner … especially if you already had one big meal that day. Hope that will bless someone as much as it did me!