Obscene Breakfasts and Sandwiches
On way restaurants attract patrons is by offering huge and in some cases gigantic portions to provide the biggest value to the customers money. They also can provide a days worth of calories and several days worth of saturated fat and sodium all in one meal.
Large portions are common in the United States. For a restaurant, the cost of food represents about 30 percent of the meals cost. The remaining 70 percent pays for real estate, utilities, taxes and wages. So increasing portion size doesn’t dramatically increase costs.
On Christmas Day 2012, the local PBS station ran two programs. The first highlighted restaurant breakfasts throughout America and the second American fast food and restaurant sandwiches. Both emphasized the obscene portion sizes served and the overweight and obese customers dining at these restaurants. Ironically, many of the restaurant owners were neither overweight nor obese but they felt they had an obligation serving meals providing several days worth of calories in one meal.
One restaurant served pancakes that over hung a large plate. They had to be at least 10 inches in diameter. I like pancakes, but they’re not the healthiest food and certainly not in that size. One 4-inch diameter buttermilk pancake has bout 90 calories. Two 10-inch pancakes have about 1,100 calories before you add syrup. Add butter and syrup and the number of calories can easily increase to 2,000 or more. That’s a days worth of calories for some people.
Other breakfasts featured in the program made the egg and bacon breakfast picture anemic by comparison. Breakfast is important, but breakfast should provide one-third to one-half of your daily calories. Eating a 2,000 calories for breakfast doesn’t leave much for lunch or dinner.
The program about sandwiches in America was no better. Sandwiches were piled high with roast beef or processed meats which are high in sodium and saturated fat. An inch of meat is much more than most people need. Three inches of meat is obscene. You are better off eating an 8-ounce beef tenderloin than several inches of highly salted processed meats. There was no mention of vegetarian sandwiches. Like this roasted bell pepper sandwich.
Or this stewed bell peppers and onion sandwich.
Many restaurant owners apparently do not feel a moral obligation serving healthy, wholesome foods.