When you are in a rush and hungry, we’re all guilty of turning to fast food. It is quick and convenient. However, it’s anything but healthy.

People hear the horror stories about fast food chain employees who tamper with food. Just last week, one diner found a finger at Arby’s. Yet, we rarely get to hear about what is actually in our food. Most employees are preparing food in a harmless fashion for consumers. They get to see all the content that goes into a one-dollar hamburger. This isn’t another article about the terrible things employees do to food, instead it is about how people are blinded by marketing tactics and advertisements.

A recent thread on Reddit asked restaurant employees to share what they know about the preparation, ingredients, and processing of the foods they served.
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A commercial for three new sides at Wendy’s caught my attention this weekend. They lead with macaroni and cheese, my “desert island” food of choice; then, chili cheese fries; and rounded out the trio with a baked sweet potato. Now we’re talking!

Baked sweet potatoes are one of my very favorite foods. Particularly, I love them for lunch. In fact, they are a staple around the DietsInReview.com office; someone is always warming one up at noon. I usually bake two or three over the weekend and then take halves to work each day (perfect with my black bean turkey chili). Now, it’s good to know if I forget and really need something healthy and quick, Wendy’s can take care of me.

Leery of even the healthiest foods at a fast food restaurant, I went straight to the restaurant’s web site. There I learned I have nothing to fear, except maybe the cinnamon butter spread.

The potato itself is listed as just a sweet potato, no other additives. They bake this for an hour in each store, and then serve it to you piping hot. It has 260 calories, 0 grams of fat, 9 grams of fiber, 6 grams of protein, and more than 1000% of your daily need for vitamin A. These are the nutritional stats for any sweet potato. The ten-ounce sweet potato that they serve (or .6 pounds) is a whopper of a potato; it’s a full four ounces heavier than what is considered a large sweet potato.
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Applebee’s, the world’s largest casual dining chain, just announced good news. The restaurant will be joining Kids LiveWell, a great program that helps parents and children make more healthful choices when eating out at a restaurant.

The company has received the Kid LiveWell endorsement on their children’s grilled chicken sandwich with steamed broccoli and 1 percent milk or apple juice. The side options can also include orange juice or a side of applesauce.

Menu items can get a Kids LiveWell endorsement if they meet the nutritional criteria, which were created from the standards set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The Kids LiveWell program was created by the National Restaurant Association and Healthy Dining.
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Restaurant industry, we have had enough! Are you deliberately trying to gross us out? Do you get a kick out of making grotesque concoctions in your test kitchens and then send them out to mass market as a punch line?

This Hot Dog Stuffed Crust pizza from Pizza Hut is about the nastiest thing we’ve seen come from a restaurant in quite a while. While we’re glad it’s not available in the U.S. (at least for now, just give it time), we feel for the residents of the United Kingdom being subjected to this culinary nonsense.

Jillian Michaels coined the term best when she started describing this over-processed junk “Frankenfoods,” meaning they resemble food but calling it that would be a disservice to all of the things that are actually food.

Dressed like any other pizza with cheese, pepperoni, peppers, and onions, the Hot Dog Stuffed Crust pizza has the slimy little sausage tucked inside the crust and comes with a free mustard drizzle. The chest pains for dessert and gastric bloat are also free.
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Fast food giant Burger Kingis launching 10 new menu items as an attempt to gain back their place as the number two fast food burger chain after being edged out by Wendy’s last year. This is the first time since opening in 1954 that Burger King has undergone a menu expansion of this size. When you see the new items on Burger King’s menu, you might think you wandered into a McDonald’s. The new items Burger King is offering bear a striking resemblance to items that number one burger chain McDonald’s has introduced over the past few years. Burger King now offers chicken strips, caramel frappe coffees, Caesar salads and strawberry-mango smoothies.

There’s no denying that Burger King’s previous stance to cater to young men in their menu offerings has seen a struggle recently. Between a down economy and people looking for healthier options, Burger King’s focus on big beefy burgers has helped contribute to lax sales. “Consumers wanted more choices,” said Steve Wiborg, president of Burger King’s North America operations. “Not just healthy choices, but choices they could get at the competition.” The new menu items offer consumers those choices as well as some healthier options than the standard Whopper and fries.
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