Today I went to burger king for the first time in years. It was even worse than I remembered it. (had the vegetarian option, don’t know if it’s as bad with the meat burgers) Additionally it’s fucking expensive and not as quick as it used to be. So my question is why do some people go there regulary?
Sometimes a Culver’s cold custard just hits different.
Especially hits your wallet that shit makes burger king look like it’s still the 70s.
in the 1970s, bk didn’t suck nearly as much as they do now. but yea, culver’s is the good stuff–although they have dipped a bit lately. i think they’re expanding too fast in their quest for more dollars.
Stop calling it food
Stop gatekeeping food.
It’s not food.
It is only 80% food tbh
What is your definition of food? Because it certainly fits mine and the dictionary’s.
any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth
Fast food in general is neither nutritious nor does it particularly maintain life and growth. Arguably it does the opposite.
Mainly fast food is a profit center for the industrialized food chain. It’s designed to maximize the extractable value from cheap raw ingredients through extensive processing and to provide a sustainable revenue stream for large corporations by fucking with your body’s natural taste and diet control mechanisms.
If you want good food fast then you are far better making it yourself or if you are not able to do that, finding a taco truck or similar independent vendor who does not rely on highly processed crap disguised as “food”. In many parts of the world street vendors are common and personally I want to encourage that as much as possible.
People want to make my comments out to be some kind of elitist blah blah whatever when in fact they are the opposite. My desire is to strongly encourage people to maintain their food independence and health and to stop supporting huge corporations out of convenience and ignorance.
any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth
By that definition Burger King is food, you can survive on it and gain enough nutritional value to allow you to grow.
Fast food in general is neither nutritious nor does it particularly maintain life and growth. Arguably it does the opposite.
It’s not as nutritious as home made cooking, but claiming it has no nutrition is factually inaccurate.
I’m not saying it is good for you, or that you can survive eating only whoppers (but you also can’t survive eating the same salad over and over so it’s a moot point). But by any definition of the word Burger King and other fast foods are food, extremely calorically dense and filled to the brim with saturated fat food.
By that definition Burger King is food, you can survive on it and gain enough nutritional value to allow you to grow.
Technically, dirt contains some nutritional value. So yeah, you are correct that fast food does contain some nutrition. Eating a diet of strictly potatoes will, technically, allow you to “grow” but like industrial fast food, will come with adverse health consequences. So the question isn’t if it technically has some amount of nutritional value but whether it’s actually good for you. Does the “food” allow you to maintain life and grow to a degree consistent with the average seems to me to be a reasonable definition.
A diet with a lot of fast food is nutritionally poor and full of many things such as sugar, salt, and saturated fats that cause long-term adverse health consequences. It’s been linked to everything from a lower capacity for memory and learning to diabetes, heart disease and of course obesity.
There is simply no way that you can say that fast food is “good” for you or that it should be eaten routinely. Making the clear distinction that fast “food” is not food to the same degree as a healthful diet is one of the best things you can do for community health.
I never said it’s healthy or that someone should eat it regularly, so that’s a strawman. But it is still food, with much higher nutritional value than dirt, and it can definitely sustain you, which you yourself admitted, so by that same definition you gave fast food is food.
I feel slightly less dirty afterwards than at McDonald’s…
I can get two whoppers for about 5 dollars and they are full of flavor over here (Brazil).
Hi, that’s me. I get an hour for lunch during the week, and there are a handful of fast food places minutes from my work. I drive through, and sit in the parking lot eating my lunch and playing games on my phone. It’s my quiet time for the day.
There’s a bit of a game for some of these fast food places. Most people just roll up and order a #1 or whatever was in the commercials. That’s how they get ya!
Sometimes you need to download the app, or check the menu for a budget meal. A slightly smaller burger and less than a pound of fries is an adequate meal for around $5-7.
I used to order a kid’s meal, and it was more than enough food for an adult. My kids enjoyed getting toys at the end of the day, too, but they were all plastic garbage.
One of my coworkers lost a lot of weight, and when I asked him what he was doing to lose weight he said he was ordering kids meals.
for a time during the 1990s they had an ‘all american meal’ which was small burger or cheeseburger, small fries, small drink. was cheap, too. basically a dollar-store happy meal without the toy or box. this was before those went ‘kids size’ and swapped in “healthier” items.
then they jacked the price up so far, it literally cost more than ordering a la carte.
Honest question: Why not cook a bunch of meals once or twice a week and eat that instead? It can be cheaper and it’s way less likely to get you sick in the long run.
Honest answer: Because that sounds terrible.
I’m not going to waste my time cooking food that I won’t eat at it’s prime, just so it can take up my fridge space until I inevitably ruin it with a microwave later in the week.
Also, storing and reheating good creates MUCH more potential for contamination and food borne illness.
I can pay for my lunch with the money I make in the first half hour of the day. It’s not breaking the bank.
sdfhjlaks;fjlk;asfjkl;sfjakl;
And meal prepping is 2 hours of your week every week, plus however long you have to work to pay for the ingredients, which is probably another 2 hours
sdfhjlaks;fjlk;asfjkl;sfjakl;
You are missing the point, it’s not “4.5 hours a week of work” vs “absolutely nothing”, it’s 4.5 hours of work vs however long to have to work to pay for the ingredients, plus the time to make the food. If I spend an hour meal prepping and it takes me an hour and a half to pay for the ingredients, eating out at lunch only costs me 2 additional hours of my time, not 4.5
I also don’t know what meal you are preparing where chopping veggies, searing meat, packaging and cleaning up afterwards only takes 20 minutes. Even making chili, which is the prototypical “throw everything in a pot” recipe takes me north of an hour when all is said and done
sdfhjlaks;fjlk;asfjkl;sfjakl;
This is what I do - make a big pot of chili or soup for the week. But I recognize that this might not work for everyone. At my work there’s a conveniently located fridge and microwave, and I can eat in my office with the door shut for a quiet meal. If any of those things weren’t there it might not be worth it.
I also enjoy cooking, and don’t mind spending time making my meal for the week. If the prep work was a real chore then it’d be much more tempting to buy something premade every day.
I tend to do it by cooking extra portions for dinner each night and taking in that portion/leftovers the next day, that way there is no meaningful extra work.
And if we have time to plan on a weekend i like to do a meal that i can cook a big batch on a sunday that will reheat well, ie: chili (as you said), lasagna, spaghetti bolognese, thai curry, stir fry with rice, etc.
Edit: also wanted to note that yes buying lunch occasionally is super tasty but i feel much worse afterwards that afternoon, and it has also pushed me to step up my cooking skills and think i am quite good for a home cook now.
Same, when I ate fast food a lot it was because there were places next to work. Eat in my car and read for the short amount of time I had.
When I used to it was because it was cheap, and I didn’t have time, energy, or money for cooking very often. When you work 12 hours of physical labor and then commute, there’s not much time or energy for anything other than fast food and bed.
I’ve stopped going to fast food chains. Local fast casual or Sheetz/Wawa is better food, faster, and cheaper. McDonald’s et al don’t have any fucking value prop left.
At McDonald’s, with a coupon I can get a soda, medium fry, and burger for under $4
Enjoy your burger made from sawdust.
Because when its good, its so fucking good. They spend literal millions developing their menu to give you a dropkick to the balls of dopamine. FAT! SALT! MSG! HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! REPEAT!
But that requires the stars to align. You need the buns and salad items to not be stale, the chips and meat for the burger to be hot and fresh, the burger to be assembled by someone giving half a fuck, the postmix machine to be set up correctly and give you the right mix, actually fizzy and ice cold. You rarely get the whole meal “just right” but when it is, that one perfect meal sticks in your brain like a catchy song and will carry you through the next half a dozen so-so feeds while you chase the dragon.
These days I only allow myself one trip to KFC a month and I go in and sit down in the restaurant because if something isnt right I go complain and ask for a remake because I spend 29 days a month counting every calorie and tracking every macro because you are not gonna fuck up my blowout meal.
Their chicken sandwich is like crack. No one else gets the melty fat flavor just right.
the og chicken +cheese +bacon +pickles was pretty popular when i was in high school (80s).
Never had that one unfortunately.
Fast food is pretty gross if you don’t eat it regularly. I think a lot of it is how addictive it can be. A hit of caffeine, sugar, salt, and fat when you are hungry and tired hits the spot.
People get stuck in these routines, and the companies have apps and reward programs to gamify people into coming back.
Yeah I was just reading through these comments totally confused what was going on, I might get a KFC once a year and that’s it. All the rest of them make me feel slightly ill just from the smell.
I do have a great Indian place locally I use fairly often and a couple others, just can’t imagine buying the chain stuff.
Yeah I remember being in my twenties and absolutely salivating over a $2 Tuesday lunch special near my work, which is not something I could stomach now that I’ve got some years of home cooking in me.
I think this is the only answer that I can understand
It’s fast and McDonalds is one of the only places in my city that is open 24/7
I don’t go there regularly anymore after I stopped working as a service technician who had to travel a lot.
I used to “love” running in to McD when I was in a hurry and ask “what burgers do you have that are ready?” and just take whatever was available. More often than not, it was a cheese/double cheese.
Now I have to wait 5-10 minutes before its ready, and its more expensive.
The trade off of cheap and fast vs quality have disappeared.
I visit some fast food chains but I avoid Burger King at all costs. Some of the worst burgers I have ever seen and eaten in my entire life have come from that dump.
Prices are getting out of hand, though. Fast Food is quickly reaching price parity with actual quality restaurants which is insane.
I know this is a bad reason, but I’m lazy and don’t feel like cooking, so it’s convenient.
Honest question, have you tried other places that were not fast food (ie. Chilli’s) or cooking quick meals that didn’t work out for you? If so, what?
A lot of areas don’t have other restaurants. It’s a sea of fast food that can only be driven to.
City is different, but before I had the savings to move, I u didn’t have much choice
I find it fascinating that places like that exist. Where I grew up I had to take the bus for like 20min for my closest fast food joint. Where I live the go to food is döner (I’m from germany). That’s usully faster, healthier and in my opinion tastes a lot better than fast food. Most other countries in europe I’ve been to have some kind of similar food. So in my opinion it’s crazy that there are still places that haven’t developed some kind of quick good tasting food and that fast food has such a tight grip around a whole community
Oh, that is a fair point. We did have a donor kebab place, Which definitely blow Burger King and McDonald’s out of the water.
But variety is nice and in the absence of that there was nothing other than KFC and Burger King.
I don’t really bother with the middle of the restaurant industry (and it’s not just me, as chains like Chili’s and Applebee’s have complained about the trends hollowing out the middle). It’s just not enough of an improvement over fast food or fast casual to be worth the higher cost, slower service, etc.
If I’m hungry and don’t want to cook/clean, I’ll grab fast food.
If I want to sit down at a full service restaurant, it’ll probably be an expensive trendy place with recognition from James Beard or Michelin.
I always find it humorous that people treat places like Chili’s or Applebee’s as if they are somehow better than fast food in value for money.
I only do real fast food, or a more serious sit down restaurant of better quality. Not this overpriced garbage in between.
Oh for sure, fuck those places. I rather order from a small mom & pop restaurant than from some corpo chain. I just mentioned Chili’s because OP sounded like convenience was important and ordering from an app and just going to pick up seems universally convinient. I rather cook for myself, but when I feel lazy I treat myself at a restaurant, but then again I’m not the audience this post is targeting
Not the same person but fast food is way faster and cheaper than some place like Chili’s as long as you stick to the more value focused options. I can get a full meal with leftovers for $5-6 bucks usually
It’s also cheaper than a lot of home cooking unless you plan very well, make large batches, and are cool with eating the same leftovers all week.
I’m vegan and we have a local vegan fast food joint. Sometimes I just want some. It’s a small business so I’m supporting them.
