Best/worst fast food restaraunts? (burger, mushroom, meal, McDonald)

[Calibelle]

Originally Posted by Slater

McDonald's seems to be one that either you love or you hate, with little neutral ground. In the Western US, In-And-Out Burger is a favorite with Wendy's doing OK also. Opinions?

Ok.... for any of you who haven't watched Supersize Me..... Watch it!! Even though its an extreme situation... you will learn a lot about what is actually in not only McDonalds food.... but other fast foods, and what it does to your body, even eaten once per day on a lunchbreak. Did you know that in the past.... McDonalds chicken didn't even come from live chicken's, they were actually growing them in a lab.... they never had limbs or anything, they were just blobs of chicken growing in a test tube basically. They have passed laws preventing such things now, but imagine what your chicken nuggets where once made of... they were basically NEVER EVEN ALIVE. Disgusting. My cousin was a manager at a McDonalds, and he said after working there, he would NEVER eat the food.
I used to go to Wendy's and thought that eating their variety of fresh salads was a healthy choice. If you actually check out how much saturated fat is in the dressings there, you will find the salads at Wendy's are actually quite fattening.
One more thing... for those with weak stomachs... do not read ANY FURTHER, this is a true story.
I actually had a family member, who after they would go to the orthodontist, would hurry and stop through a Taco Bell drive through, and get something to eat, before the pain in their teeth started. It would always be the same Taco Bell. Well one month..... this family member started getting violent stomach cramps... went to the doctor, and found out that they had giardia, which is a parasite that you catch from contaminated drinking water, such as the water in Mexico. The doctor wanted to know if this family member had been to Mexico recently, the answer was, NO. So the doctor was flabbergasted, especially when the parasite was cured, and came back 3 months in a row(This family member went every month to the Taco Bell). Well finally, it was traced back to the Taco Bell, where some employees that were from Mexico, had the parasite, weren't washing their hands properly after using the bathroom, and where contaminating all the food. They found that atleast 5 employees had the parasite, and that Taco Bell was majorly fined by the health department.
Not all fast food places are bad..... but these are just some scenarios people might want to consider.

[chiroptera]

Originally Posted by Calibelle

I actually had a family member, who after they would go to the orthodontist, would hurry and stop through a Taco Bell drive through, and get something to eat, before the pain in their teeth started. It would always be the same Taco Bell. Well one month..... this family member started getting violent stomach cramps... went to the doctor, and found out that they had giardia, which is a parasite that you catch from contaminated drinking water, such as the water in Mexico. The doctor wanted to know if this family member had been to Mexico recently, the answer was, NO. So the doctor was flabbergasted, especially when the parasite was cured, and came back 3 months in a row(This family member went every month to the Taco Bell). Well finally, it was traced back to the Taco Bell, where some employees that were from Mexico, had the parasite, weren't washing their hands properly after using the bathroom, and where contaminating all the food. They found that atleast 5 employees had the parasite, and that Taco Bell was majorly fined by the health department.
Not all fast food places are bad..... but these are just some scenarios people might want to consider.

Giardia is common all over the USA - anywhere there's water, you can have giardia. Prevalent in the Rocky mountain west, and here in the upper midwest where there's lots of streams and lakes. Less common in desert-y, arid places. (Like, ummm, much of Mexico.)
http://www.dhpe.org/infect/giardiasis.html
No more common in Mexico than here, this is a bogus story. No doctor would ask if anyone was spending time in Mexico just to track down the source.
And the laboratory-grown chickens? Urban myth; it's also been attributed to KFC. Check snopes, or just google it.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/kfc.asp

[I'llSwanee]

Jucy's is good but the meat on the burgers are really just too thick for my taste.But it's the closest to a "real burger" I've found in a long time. McDonalds is just plain gross even the drinks. However I have a young child with a very limited appetite due to a stroke and the only meat he will eat are the chicken nuggets from McDonalds. Sonic rates right there with McDonalds except the drinks are better.
A bit of advice... a couple of months ago we picked up food from a Whataburger and after getting home I opened my burger to check for wilted lettuce ( can't do wilted lettuce) and there was a tiny worm lying there. I was so grossed out. I called the resturaunt and told them, not to be rude but just so they would be aware of it.The manager was nice enough and appreciative but I haven't had much of an appetite for fast food since. I'd never eat out again if I thought too much about it.

[elfyum]

It forces you to stop eating that crap! Though I must admit I do eat taco bell bean burritos or their 7 layer minus cheese & sour cream! After that post about the parasites though...BLAH!
But if not for your health, do it for the animals! I ate meat 36+ years & never REALIZED what was REALLY going on!!!!!! If people were SHOWN the cruelty, the grossness, the barbaric ways at a very young age, I think EVERYONE would be vegan! Sorry to "preach", but CHECK IT OUT!!!

[elfyum]

Oh-& Taco Bell is the only place where you can get the mighty Baja Blast!!! You want/need caffeine? FORGET the coffee! Baja Blast is the sh*t! Keeps me up way past normal everytime! (But I just love the stuff!)

[Calibelle]

Originally Posted by travelling_paws

Giardia is common all over the USA - anywhere there's water, you can have giardia. Prevalent in the Rocky mountain west, and here in the upper midwest where there's lots of streams and lakes. Less common in desert-y, arid places. (Like, ummm, much of Mexico.)
http://www.dhpe.org/infect/giardiasis.html
No more common in Mexico than here, this is a bogus story. No doctor would ask if anyone was spending time in Mexico just to track down the source.
And the laboratory-grown chickens? Urban myth; it's also been attributed to KFC. Check snopes, or just google it.
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/kfc.asp

ok.... I read the website you suggested... I got it wrong about the laboratory grown chickens.... I did hear something about it on the news years ago.... but you have proven me wrong on that, no doubt about it.
But please don't say the story about the giardia is a bogus story. I was trying to save myself some embarassment by saying it was a family member of mine, but it actually happened to ME. I was 12 years old, and every time after my mom took me back from the orthodontist, she would hurry and buy me some Taco Bell, while I could still chew. This was in Southern California, I had not been to the Rocky mountain west, or any of the other areas you mentioned. Giardia does exhist in Mexico, even if its not as common as other parasites, (although it is rarer to catch giardia from mexico, but not undeard of), from mexico drinking water, that is why you don't even have ice cubes in your bottled water when you vacation down there. People in Mexico drink from the same water that they rinse their kids dirty diapers in, in some areas down there. I have several friends from Mexico who have told me of what can happen down there.
I was cleared of the parasite, 3 different times, and every month after I went to the Taco Bell, the giardia would occur again. The doctor DID ask if I had been in mexico, because he couldn't figure out why it kept re-occuring, because this parasite was unheard of in the area in which I lived. Perhaps as you mentioned, he shouldn't have narrowed it down to just Mexico, and done his homework about other sources in the U.S. where a person can contract giardia.
I was put on several expensive kinds of antibiotics for this parasite, each time it re-orrured, some of which the pharmicist actually had to order in, because they didn't even carry it on a normal basis. My parents finally got smart, put 2 and 2 together, and decided to check out the Taco Bell I had been eating at. When this Taco Bell was inspected, it was found out that there were employees carrying the parasite, and they had recently returned from Mexico.Whether Mexico was where they actually contracted the parasite is unknown, but it was proven that they did have giardia, and this info was kept out of the papers, and the feed back received was given only to my parents, just because we were the ones that prompted the investigation.

I don't know if you just read my first post incorrectly, and thought that the giardia thing was something I just heard... but I can assure you, it wasn't. It was a personal experience that I actually went through 13 years ago, but I remember the humiliation of what was happening, and all the facts of what the doctor asked me, very well. I wrote my experience just to let people know that stuff like this can happen, even though it is rare and almost unheard of. Perhaps you work in the healthcare field, and I don't doubt that you know a lot about the subject, but cases like this do exhist, whether they make it to an official website/newspaper, or not.

Sorry for anyone who is grossed out by this, if it got a bit graphic for you... I just didn't want my story to be called "Bogus" because it really happened to me. I would normally not share anything so personal on the world wide web, but in this case of being told that such a humiliating experience in my life couldn't be true.... I felt a need to defend my story.

[Calibelle]

Originally Posted by elfyum

Oh-& Taco Bell is the only place where you can get the mighty Baja Blast!!! You want/need caffeine? FORGET the coffee! Baja Blast is the sh*t! Keeps me up way past normal everytime! (But I just love the stuff!)

Cases like the story I told are rare. It was never stated that Taco Bell was the only place one could get the Baja Blast from. And this was only one Taco Bell location.... 13 years ago. I can't bring myself to eat there to this day, just because my Taco Bell experience, was pretty traumatic for me, but it doesn't keep me from eating fast food once in a great while from other restaurants.

[chiroptera]

Originally Posted by Calibelle

But please don't say the story about the giardia is a bogus story. I was trying to save myself some embarassment by saying it was a family member of mine, but it actually happened to ME.

Sorry, I must have been in a cranky mood last night!
I didn't mean to say the whole story was bogus, just to point out that giardia is common all over the US, as well as Mexico. Point taken about the worse water quality there
Nothing to be embarassed about...I had dysentery once in Egypt, which is pretty gross too! (Dysentery being gross, not Egypt; Egypt is cool.)
I don't like Taco Bell either, though I've never gotten sick from it. And, I don't like hamburgers and most fast food, but I admit to liking the McDonalds salads, and those cinammon melt things are downright addicting.

[mystree]

Do you guys remember Hardees? I think that was the name, and they might still be going. They had this sort of replusive 'roastbeef' sandwich my brother liked.

We have Hardees down south,they do mostly angus burgers. Pretty good most of the time

[Calibelle]

Originally Posted by travelling_paws

Sorry, I must have been in a cranky mood last night!
I didn't mean to say the whole story was bogus, just to point out that giardia is common all over the US, as well as Mexico. Point taken about the worse water quality there
Nothing to be embarassed about...I had dysentery once in Egypt, which is pretty gross too! (Dysentery being gross, not Egypt; Egypt is cool.)
I don't like Taco Bell either, though I've never gotten sick from it. And, I don't like hamburgers and most fast food, but I admit to liking the McDonalds salads, and those cinammon melt things are downright addicting.

Thanx Its all good. The website you gave to clear up the chicken thing was actually really interesting. I appreciate you being cool. I just didn't want anyone to think that I made that story up, cause I totally didn't. Cool of you to write back.