Too much fast food

[Lorenzo]

With five kids and no maid, everyone in the house has his or her own set of chores. While my wife and I try to provide home-cooked meals for the kiddos, we always end up ordering or eating out in the neighborhood fast food restaurants. While this set-up makes things easier for all of us, I am concerned about the amount of "bad" nutrients I'm giving my kids.

 

[Victor Leigh]

I think it would be more a case of lack of nutrients rather than an excess of bad nutrients. You need more than what you can get in fast food. So try to make time for some home-cooked meals at least once a week.

 

[collin]

As a fitness professional, I would have to say try for healthful home-cooked meals more like 7 times per week. Even at that, with the state of most store bought foods this day you are lucky, and not likely to get enough actual nutrients even in the best case scenario, so eating from fast food restaurants kills your families chances of getting proper nutrition to almost 0.

Modern over-farming and pesticides and over-utilization of the land has even what most would consider to be the healthiest of foods are now lacking in the nutrients they once held. The land is being stripped of it's nutrients, and hence, so is your food.

Eating as healthy as possible, with supplementation with a good whole food multi-vitamin and mineral supplement is needed to try to make sure you are getting everything you need to be healthy.

 

[Victor]

Perhaps you can cook several meals once or twice a week, then freeze them. On busy nights, pull a dish out and reheat it for a quick dinner.

 

[Donald]

Make a couple of huge pots of soup every so often. Throw everything into it. Buy some of those plastic cups like barbecue comes in. They're cheap at the food warehouses. Fill them up, slap a label and a date on them. They thaw in a few hours or overnight in the refrigerator. It's a great hurry up meal with a sandwich.

 

[Bear]

I would suggest looking into freezer cooking. There are a lot of great resources out there for that, and it leaves healthy meals already cooked in your freezer. Another option you could try is using the slow cooker to cook dinner while everyone is at work and school.

 

[Andersson]

Cut back, its the only way to go. I ended up counting the calories in fast food and most of them are not good. One day I was actually quite hungry, I had skipped breakfast for some stupid reason and ended up at McDonald's of all places for lunch. It was easily a thousand calorie meal.

 

[Timothy]

For a while there, we were eating out too much, as well. Fast food is a great "quick fix" for occasions when you're too tired to cook, but anything over once or twice a week is really too much, because the meals are high fat, high calorie, high sugar, low fiber, low protein, etc. It's like they're exactly the opposite of what they should be. What we decided on instead was to eat out once a week and plan easy meals for the rest of the time. We make full use of our toaster oven, microwave, Crockpot and grill and cook in bulk so we have enough to last us a few days.

 

[Bobby]

If you are doing the fast food route, maybe choose a place like Subway where at least the choices are fairly nutritious, or order a pizza with less meat toppings and more veggies. And for other fast food places, go for a salad instead of the fries.

 

[polamalu43]

How often are you doing this? I hope not every night. I think the key is getting your kids involved in cooking. Make it a family event so you have the help and you also have good cooked meals.

 

[Andersson]

You are giving everyone a ton of bad things honestly, once in a while is okay but not all of the time. Its just like parents letting a television watch their kid, instead of watching the kid themselves. You are giving them something that most people (back in the earlier days) only did "once in a while", now people are relying on it to feed the entire family.

 

[Clay]

What are the ages of your kids? If they are old enough to cook, then have one of their chores be cooking. If not try to do the freezer method. My wife makes more than we will eat and freezes the rest. On rushed days we can eat those leftovers. Chili is superb the 2nd go round!

 

[joeldgreat]

If going out or ordering a meal for your family becomes a habit for you and your family, then I would advice that you should be more careful about what to order. I know that its becoming a convenient these days about eating in a restaurant rather than cooking the food yourselves, but we parents do always have the choice of food we order. Simply ordering those foods that you think will have nutritious value for the family is the least thing you can do.

 

[Sinbian]

You just can't look the other way when it comes to food you are eating, or more simply said, things you're putting in your body. Set your priorities and cook your own healthier food.

 

[Lieutenant]

It can be very bad. It can lead to obesity an set a very bad example for your kids. I know that I often go the easy route as well and it is not easy to make the change but if you make an effort, you'll notice a difference pretty quickly.

 

[agoodwriter]

That's fact. Some kids does eat too much fat food and that you can notice when almost 2/3 of all kids are fat. You should not take your kids to McDonals weekly or not even monthly. Once in year is enough.