Nutrition and healthy eating

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• February 2, 2012 12:25 p.m.

  THIS WEBSITE WAS VERY USEFULL, THANK YOU

  - Drew

• February 1, 2012 10:44 a.m.

  I think mario is right...It is alot more cheap to just stay at home and cook your self a nice healthy plate I really hope that this article can help people out and make them change thier minds and live a healthier life :)

  - Evelyn

• January 28, 2012 11:07 a.m.

  I find that cooking is not only cheaper, but it's much healthier since you control what goes into your dish. Great article and thanks for bringing awareness to this issue. Mario

  - Mario

• June 5, 2011 10:22 p.m.

  I'm surprised by this article. I honestly expected much better from such a trusted name as the Mayo clinic.

  - James

• November 3, 2010 10:49 p.m.

  I am working on a paper, involving the convenience, nutrition, and emotional impact, of fast food veruse home cooked meals. I just need a little more info on the emotional impact can some one help

  - Rachel

• August 16, 2009 8:27 p.m.

  I am working on a cost analysis: home made meals vs fast food. In my heart I know that my homemade minestrone soup or my cabbage casserole is cheaper for a family of four than the burgers/sodas/fries from any fast food. All it takes is a mother who is willing to chop the veggies and turn ont he burner. The path to a healthy family and put the seed mongers out of business.

  - Dee

• May 20, 2009 8:47 a.m.

  I'm amazed at reading that a typical American meal should be a hamburger. No wonder we also read that obesity is a great problem in your country. In Scandinavia, we also enjoy hamburgers, but quite seldom. Our typical dinner could be for example: pork cutlets, cooked potatoes, suitable sauce, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, piece of rye bread with vegetable based margarine, a glass of milk. Another example: Soup (casserole) made of mixed root vegetables, broth, lean meat of beef, a couple of pieces rye bread with margarine, a glass of milk. Well, in our countries young people go more often to the McDonalds or similar, and they tend to obesity as well.

  - Kirsti

• April 23, 2009 4:13 a.m.

  If I go to Whole Foods and buy hamburger it was made from one cow at a low plant. If I buy a hamburger from McDonalds the meat came from 8 or more cows and from who knows which plant in whatever state the feds don't monitor. I get local lettuce that I wash or lettuce that may come from a field and plant with ecoli contamination, or tomatoes with salmonella contamination shipped up from Mexico. Since the days of Secretary Butz under Nixon with taxpayer subsidies to big corporate grain farmers we have gone from grass feed range cattle to cattle crammed into feed lots and stuffed with corn and been told this high fat beef is actually a good thing to eat, along with all the antibiotics, e-coli, sulfites, MSG, and anything else that will disguise the true nature of the meat they are selling. I love the term all-beef as it is quite accurate as one does get all of the cow including parts that we don't expect to be eating.

  - ZeeBruce

• March 31, 2009 4:34 p.m.

  I 100% agree with this because we need to spend more quality time with family.

  - zamzam

• March 18, 2009 5:13 p.m.

  While I appreciate the intent of the article, what will separate RDs as nutrition experts is when we decide to tell consumers the cold hard facts about what they are eating. Many will read the chart showing fast food has less fat and costs only a few pennies more, and stop reading. What consumers need to consider beyond the pennies and total fat content is the consumption of trans fats of which fast food is laden and the huge health risks and cost to their pocketbooks when they get sick from it. If we are the nutrition experts, we will give people reasons to make changes, such as the fact the FDA has stated there is no safe level of trans fat to consume, researchers suspect a possible 75% increase in breast cancer risk posed by trans fat consumption, and there are many others. A strong stand on whole, healthy, clean food, rather than equivocating on cost per ounce and total fat (ignoring fat composition)does not help the public make better choices. The bottom line is fast food across the board is the lesser choice. Let's help people make the best choices and stop helping them justify a less healthy lifestyle.

  - Linda Illingworth, RD

• March 16, 2009 4:03 p.m.

  Hi there, To some other posters, the point was a price-comparison -- the article noted that viewing burgers purely on a cost level isn't seeing the forest from the trees. Otherwise, my cooking style is geared for versatility and buying simple ingredients and making the most out of them (a la infusions and the like), so my food costs are already pretty lean. The two best home cooking deals are garlic and rotisserie chicken | I peel the cloves, put them in a pan of olive oil and roast them for 30 minutes or so at 350. I keep the garlic in the fridge for salads, sauces and any number of items. Once it's cooled I reserved the garlic-infused oil for my sauteing, salad dressings, etc. As for chickens, you can make multiple meals with the meat, and also use the carcass for chicken stock. Hope this helps! Best, Russ Lane Second Helping, www.secondhelpingonline.com Life after Weight Loss | News, Cooking, Commentary

  - Russ Lane, Second Helping

• March 15, 2009 10:49 a.m.

  Thank you for show your topic. I have been learned it more. Your information is useful Eric Lam 1nutrition.blogspot.com

  - Eric Lam

• March 13, 2009 7:41 p.m.

  I'm sure the fast food burger is NOT made with lean ground beef, so the difference in calories between it and the home mad eone is much bigger.

  - creagastro

• March 13, 2009 7:30 a.m.

  hi i am lorrie from california ..... I gather more information from this website..... Your website is really informative for me........ I enjoyed reading this article.. Drug Intervention Arizona

  - jenny

• March 13, 2009 7:26 a.m.

  When in business I learned that lunching out, fast food or slow, put weight on. Serving sizes were double on the breads and greasy stuff. Nutritious vegetables were rarely considered. Today, I read the labels on the prepared foods and then purchase fresh. Nutrition is the key for me. Have you ever walked into a public kitchen?

  - Ginny

• March 9, 2009 1:15 p.m.

  I like your article here. I think if more people would cook at home and study the chemicals in our foodchain here in america we wouldn't need so much healthcare. It would also help diagnose real problems if people were honest with the REAL way they eat. Mostly organic is now getting important because of the anti-microbials and anti-mitochondrials found in foods. The use of these should be checked against antioxidents to make sure they aren't affecting them. It's even hard to know if you are really eating healthy these days. I wonder how they found out that when you put a piece of lettuce with high nitrogen in your mouth, the salt and saliva turned it into sodium nitrate. Did someone sample their experiment because they were hungry? does our body automatically do this to disable the chloraphill's toxic effect this early on? Do people who don't chew their food well avoid lettuce by default? so many questions

  - rickymouse

• March 6, 2009 11:23 a.m.

  For me and my family the decision to cook at home is more about quality time than value or convenience. We do have to watch our food budget and between homework and basketball practice, sometimes it is tempting to go for convenience food. We have learned that planning ahead and preparing some meals ahead of time on the weekend helps to keep the panic down when it comes down when meal time rolls around. As much as possible we also get in the kitchen together with the kids and yes, we do put knives in their hands. One other benefit of cooking at home is that you do have to move around a little bit so you do burn some calories. I can't say that we are getting a workout but we do occasionally break into the chicken dance while we are waiting to stir the pot. Hard to do the chicken dance in the drive through. Chef Richard

  - Chef Richard

• February 27, 2009 9:55 p.m.

  I'm surprised Fast Food fared equally with home cooking! (How about the fact that most people order fries and soda too?) At home, we press our cooked hamburger(or soyburger)patty between papertowels to eliminate as much fat as possible, use whole wheat buns and mountains of fresh veges with fatfree mayo. A far cry from a MacD burger. It's things like these that make us opt for eating at home, where we can eat healthy yet delicious, cooked as we like it, plus do a quick check of our plates to make sure we have all our needed food groups, and have leftovers for another meal without cooking again. Weight management and finances are also a big factor for eating at home: We can eat so much more, for so much less $$. By more, I mean healthy bulk foods: fruits, grains, veges. These are usually the cheaper foods to buy, if you buy 'in season' or a grocery overstock or mark-down. We love baked potatoes topped with steamed broccoli, topped with cheddar cheese. Or fruit salad with fresh fruits on hand, mixed with any kind of seeds/nuts, a little Stevia sweetner and yogurt as dressing. (Get creative!) We shop at Winco because we can buy only the amount we want/need of pasta, dried beans & peas, rice, seeds and nuts, granola, cereal, grains, baking supplies,& dried fruits from their scoopable bulk bins at low prices. Good prices on fresh veges too. (Walmart has better price on canned and boxed.) Remember: food's our body's fuel and building blocks. Your wearing what you eat, li

  - Chele

• February 25, 2009 7:57 a.m.

  Here is an essay on this topic which I wrote recently. You're welcome to use any part of it. 2008 saw quite a kerfuffle about eating a nutritionally sound diet on a tight budget. I would like to add my “two cents”. In 1971, my husband and I embarked on what would become a ten year odyssey of “voluntary poverty”. We wanted to “live lightly on the earth”, but we were young and inexperienced. Our student days had taught us to live frugally, but our new experiment necessitated much more expertise. We bought land in rural Nova Scotia, put up a tent, and plowed up ground for our first real garden. We learned from books, and we learned from older neighbors. Over the years, we gained many excellent skills. T Although we were “back-to-the-landers”, much of what we learned about food translated easily when we returned to urban life. It is possible to eat well with minimal expenditure. Protein is a major challenge for poor people. We ate beans, especially soybeans, and mixed them with grains and milk, to form what the book Diet for a Small Planet taught us about complete protein. We ate mackeral, smelts, and sardines—the cheapest and (coincidentally?) most healthy fish. The cheaper cuts of beef, pork liver, stewing chickens and turkey necks formed a part of our protein intake, along with milk enhanced with powdered milk, and eggs. Peanut butter, too: healthy and filling. Our veggies came from the garden, and that taught us to eat what was local and in season. In the wint

  - Jane Schlosberg

• February 24, 2009 3:17 p.m.

  I too am amazed that anyone would ask this question! I would have assumed that most (if not all) people would know that eating fast food more than once in awhile is not healthy. Fast food is convenient and satisfies our craving for grease, salt, etc but healthy? No. Thank goodness the economy is pushing people towards eating home-cooked meals......

  - Janet RN

• February 24, 2009 10:25 a.m.

  I am amazed that you published this post. I am almost speechless. Is it a better deal? Have RD's not been on a campaign for the last twenty years to get people to eat more at home? Study after study shows the physical and emotional benefits of eating at home, yet, now that more people are eating at home, whether for economic reasons or not, you are debating whether it would be a better deal to eat at McDonald's? You also failed to list the sodium content of one tiny McDonald's hamburger (520 mg). But that really does not help your argument, does it?

  - Bonnie Minsky MA, MPH, LDN, CNS