Get Cynical

It’s what’s for dinner. (Recipe and happiness here)

An entire thanksgiving dinner in cake form.

Artist Sally Davies leaves a Happy Meal from McDonalds out for 137 days and photographs the many changes it goes through during that time.

From TMZ:

According to a lawsuit filed today in L.A. County Superior Court, a former bartender and a former server at Mario’s famous Pizzeria Mozza restaurant claim Batali and his business partner ran a tip-stealing scheme.

So how did the scheme work? According to the ex-employees, Batali and his partner created something called a “Wine Program” — into which they funneled a certain percentage of tips that were paid by credit card … and kept it for themselves.

The employees claim the practice was also going down at Batali’s higher-end restaurant next door, Osteria Mozza. The employees go on to claim that they weren’t provided with adequate breaks and that they weren’t paid promptly upon being let go. They’re looking for unspecified damages … which means, ‘a lot.’

If you think you’ve heard this story before — it’s because Batali was just hit with a lawsuit on the other coast for allegedly running a similar scheme at his famous NY eatery, Babbo.

From SFGate:

Coca-Cola is out, and soy milk is now part of San Francisco’s official city policy.

Under an executive order from Mayor Gavin Newsom, Coke, Pepsi and Fanta Orange are no longer allowed in vending machines on city property, although their diet counterparts are – up to a point.

Newsom’s directive, issued in April but whose practical impacts are starting to be felt now, bars calorically sweetened beverages from vending machines on city property.

That includes non-diet sodas, sports drinks and artificially sweetened water. Juice must be 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners. Diet sodas can be no more than 25 percent of the items offered, the directive says.

There should be “ample choices” of water, “soy milk, rice milk and other similar dairy or non dairy milk,” says the directive, which also covers fat and sugar content in vending machine snacks.

(via Boing Boing)

From The Guardian:

This is just one act in an ongoing dramatic production, one small part of a larger campaign of psychological warfare. The target? A two-and-a-half-year-old girl. The stakes are high. As I see it, nothing less than the heart, mind, soul and physical health of my adored only child. I am determined that the Evil Empire shall not have her, and to that end I am prepared to use what Malcolm X called “any means necessary”.

McDonald’s has been very shrewd about kids. Say what you will about Ronald and friends, they know their market – and who drives it. They haven’t shrunk from targeting young minds – in fact, their entire gazillion-dollar promotional budget seems aimed squarely at toddlers. They know that one small child, crying in the back seat of the car of two overworked, overstressed parents, will more often than not determine the choice of restaurants. They know exactly when and how to start building brand identification and loyalty with brightly coloured clowns and smoothly tied-in toys. From funding impoverished school districts to the instalment of playgrounds, McDonald’s has not shrunk from fucking with young minds in any way it can.

But I want my little girl to see fast-food culture as I do. As the enemy.

The Daily Beast’s slideshow with 40 high cal desserts from chain and fast food restaurants.

Related:
The 40 Deadliest Fast Food Meals.

From CSPINET.org:

With two out of three adults—and one out of three children—overweight or obese, you’d think that restaurants would have some interest in keeping their patrons alive and dining out longer.

With mandatory calorie labeling on the horizon for chain restaurants, you’d think that restaurants would be dropping high-calorie items from their menus.

With close to 30 percent of young Americans too heavy to join the military, you’d think that restaurants would at least stop introducing new heavyweight items.

Nope. It’s business as usual in the restaurant industry. And that means it’s business as usual around here. Welcome to our 2010 Xtreme Eating Awards.

Here’s the calorie count for a typical meal at Five Guys:

Take the Five Guys Hamburger. Its 700 calories (with no toppings) makes a Big Mac (540 calories) or a Quarter Pounder (410 calories) look like kids food. And the McDonald’s numbers include the burgers’ fixin’s. A Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger has 920 calories and 30 grams of saturated fat (1½ days’ worth) without toppings. Think two Quarter Pounders.

And how many Five Guys patrons eat a burger without fries or a drink? Add 620 calories for the regular fries or 1,460 calories for a large. (The large is as big as three large orders of fries at McDonald’s.) Now your lunch of an unadorned Bacon Cheeseburger and large fries is up to 2,380 calories. Add 100 calories for every plop of mayo on your burger, another 300 for a large (32 oz.) Coke, and 300 more for every free refill.

From Epicurious:

When I went back and reread some of Pollan’s and Schlosser’s work, I discovered that they never actually said that replacing high-fructose corn syrup with sugar (as Hunt’s brand ketchup recently did in response to consumer demand) would solve the obesity problem. The problem with HFCS is more about the ubiquity of highly sweetened products as a whole. The corn crop is subsidized by the U.S. government, making HFCS much cheaper than sugar. This makes it easy for companies to produce extremely cheap, extremely unhealthy junk food, which then becomes the cheapest and easiest source of calories for people on a budget. This is why, in many underprivileged neighborhoods, you’ll find a glut of fast-food restaurants and bodegas selling processed snacks, but a dearth of (more expensive) fresh produce.