Here are a few interesting junk food-related stories from the past week. Enjoy.
Why the Purple Skittle Tastes Different Outside America (via Atlas Obscura)
I ate nothing but vegetarian fast food for a week (via Business Insider)
The Unrecognizable Genius of Guy Fieri (via Esquire)
9 Things You Might Not Know About Sbarro Pizza (via Mental Floss)
Image via flickr user Luke Gray / CC BY SA 2.0
I could live off of blackcurrant fruit pastilles and ribena.
No wonder she felt kind of ick after her vegetarian fast food week experiment. Except for Taco Bell, it was so heavy on eggs and dairy as the protein and so deficient in vegetables and fruits.
Real veggie eating is far more diverse even for someone kitchen-challenged like me. I think most of my meals are fast food even though prepared at home… Plenty of protein in a wide variety of grains and beans, and veg and fruit, nuts and seeds can also contribute quite a bit of protein in normal amounts. Just a quarter cup of roasted pumpkin seeds will give you close to 10 grams protein at about 160 calories. Heck, she could have picked up an extra few grams of protein from a small serving of rice&bean chips or other high protein quick grabs.
I have no trouble hitting my protein goal and higher even at times when eating vegan and avoiding beans other than peanuts and processed soy in veggie burgers… I never eat eggs and only occasionally have small amounts of cheese due to allergies. And I hardly ever cook anything other than toast or sticking a prepackaged meal in the microwave or sticking some processed veggie burger-sausage-whatever in the toaster oven. I might occasionally cook up some pasta or millet or rice in a Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave at my fanciest. Many days I never turn on the kitchen devices, too much work. I do have an enviable collection of nut and seed butters, as well as a wide variety of chips and crackers, so I’m set for a prolonged power outage.
Another thought: people think McDonalds when they think fast food, but it actually doesn’t take any more time to zip into a grocery store and pick up prepackaged salads and fruit cups, single fruits and even bottled protein smoothies, individual string cheese, etc. They even have single serving cups of 3 bean salad, corn, beets, hummus in my local grocery store. The deli section can plop some baked beans into a small container for you along with a bunch of other real food combinations. She really was too limited in her vegetarian fast food week choices by sticking to the restaurants. The key word is “fast”.