The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recently released new statistics outlining the prevalence of fast food consumption in the United States. A whopping 37% of adults describe themselves as eating fast food for at least one meal per day. With the standard fast food meal clocking in at approximately 1,000 calories including high levels of unhealthy fats and starches, this spells trouble when it comes to healthy living.

Surprisingly, the statistics also reveal that women, more than men, have a higher disposition to eat fast-food as a casual daily snack. Fast-food snacking has far more nefarious implications for your daily eating habits as it can be easy to convince yourself that a simple snack won’t derail your day. In reality, it is usually these small additions to your day that begin to really add up and stall your weight loss results.

Looking at standard snacking options for fast food shows us that even something as simple as a muffin from the local coffee chain can possess as much as 57 grams of sugar. Or a chicken sandwich from a drive-thru can start at nearly triple the daily recommended amount of starches for a healthy lifestyle.

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Fast-food is an attractive idea for ease and simplicity but if we’ve learned anything, it’s that things that are too good to be true, often are. Fast food may be simple but it comes with a high cost. Both in terms of your health and shockingly, your finances. It used to be that fast food was affordable which contributed to its meteoric rise into prevalence but looking at the costs in the current day, your McMeal is McDamaging your bank account. Average fast food meal price is approximately $9 per meal. That’s a 28% increase from 2012 and continually rising. Now, at a daily indulgence, that’s $279 funneling right out of your account and into fast food meals that are one and done.

We’ve written a lot about the economy of being unhealthy and sometimes it makes more sense to lay out the numbers so you can see. Using the most recent Department of Labor average food costs, $279 will buy you approximately 171 pounds of chicken. On the SlimGenics plan, we recommend 4 ounces of protein with each meal. That means your monthly fast food spend can feed yourself and your family chicken 684.5 times. In terms of strawberries, 378.8 servings for the price of your fast food fix. You can have 442 servings of broccoli for that price. If you were to choose all three foods, you could have 42 servings of all three things for every meal of the day for the price of $279 with over 30 servings of chicken left over for next month.  

The point being made here is that fast food possesses virtually no discernable nutritional value which is usually why you are hungry again only a couple of hours later and no real value in terms of your daily life. Purchasing healthy, nutrient-dense foods not only improves your overall quality of life, but it also saves you a boatload of money for the things that are important to you. And when it comes to weight loss, the SlimGenics Program was specifically designed to fuel your health and help heal your metabolism to make it faster, easier and more sustainable than you likely thought. By simply trusting the experts and following the plan, you can stand to save money, lose weight and improve your life for years to come.      

Resources:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db322.htm

https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/averageretailfoodandenergyprices_usandmidwest_table.htm

https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition/diet/percent-american-adults-eat-fast-food-daily-cdc-report/

http://www.center4research.org/fast-food-facts-calories-and-fat/

http://naturallysavvy.com/eat/the-real-cost-of-fast-food