It’s not because it doesn’t taste good. Because it does. My first and only bite of a Big Mac was nothing short of spectacular. I sometimes crave chicken nuggets so hard I disgust myself. Those McDonald’s fools are no fools. Immoral humans maybe, but smart immoral humans. Yes, I know it’s bad for you, but so is drinking alcohol, not getting enough sleep, and intravenous drug use, and that doesn’t stop me from doing two of the three.
But here is what stops me from making every meal a value meal:
1) Michael Pollan’s Food Rule #20: It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car. If it’s not real food, it must be fake food, and I prefer my fake food in the form of tiny strawberry and banana-shaped candy Runts. He most definitely has a rule that applies to candy too, but kind of like how some people choose which passages of the Bible to preach and which to ignore, I shall pick which food rules I choose to live by. Nobody’s perfect.
2) I won’t even touch chicken nuggets without the Hot Mustard sauce, which tells me, I don’t even really like chicken nuggets, I just don’t know what else to dip into Hot Mustard sauce, and I’m not sure I can go through the drive-thru and JUST order Hot Mustard. I’d test that theory, but that brings me to my next problem:
3) I have this thing where I’m convinced the people at the fast food drive-thru window are judging me. I roll up in my tonka truck, they peer inside and see me by myself, and laugh about how I’m eating fast food alone in secret. Yes, I am aware this is completely irrational. But is it?
4) I never feel glad I ate it. I hate that I just ate it. When I eat good food, I can’t help but make noises expressing how delicious each bite tastes. After I eat fast food, I can’t even remember eating it. It’s like this huge PLC I just pretend never happened. All I can do is brace myself for the
5) Instant diarrhea. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care if you think it’s not physically, biologically, digestively, ethically, morally, possible to digest food that fast. It IS possible, and my body can prove it. Within five minutes of eating fast food, I need to crap it out. Fact.
I hear people eat fast food because it’s convenient, but turns out, it’s terribly inconvenient for me.
Unless I am sitting on a toilet, munching on Hot Mustard sauce dipped in chicken nuggets, delivered by someone else who doesn’t mind the glaring judgment of the drive-thru.
the other fork in the road 
I could not agree with you more regarding FF. There is however a benefit you can only know and understand when you age another 30 to 35 years. While in Homer last week, the people I met wanted to have breakfast at Mickey D’s. I told them I’d already eaten at a great French restaurant across from my lodging. It was the best breakfast I’d has in years but when I told them it cost $11 for the breakfast they drove to Mickeys.
They asked why I didn’t eat there? I explained I do eat at Mickeys when the need is there. At my age it is common to have parts of my body go on strike, the process of deposits slows down and everything begins backing up, so to speak. Enter Mickey’s, I order a #6 Burito Breakfast, within two hours, yep not 12, just two, my system gets completely flushed out and the all systems go.
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Bahahaha! Best reason I’ve heard yet!
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I used to eat a lot of take out, until a second chin almost emerged. Fast food is really tasty, it’s in comparison to alcohol where it feel good now it’s what happen after. There was video somewhere, it showed what chicken nuggets are composed of. The nuggets looked like a pink slurry, didn’t know it was suppose to look that way.
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Ugh. So gross. The weird thing is, I KNOW it’s the worst thing ever, so bad I can’t even digest it. But sometimes I’m still like, meh…luckily my fear of drive-thrus saves me from too many pink slurry mistakes.
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