How do we stop the fat epidemic in America as long as companies continue to put these concoctions together and, even worse, as long as people actually purposefully consume them?! Of course the restaurants aren't entirely to blame since they are responding to poor consumer response to healthy offerings and greater demand for this crap. From an article in the NYT:

Wendy's experienced the discrepancy between what people say and what they do last year when the chain put a fresh fruit bowl on the menu. Despite a $20 million marketing push, the fruit did not sell. "We listened to consumers who said they want to eat fresh fruit, but apparently they lied," said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's. "On paper it sounded great, but it didn't work."

The same thing happened at Hardee's. "We've tried to sell salads, and nobody wants them," said Andrew F. Pudzer, chief executive of CKE Restaurants, which owns Hardee's and Carl's Jr. Instead, the chain went in the other direction and introduced the immensely popular Thickburger, a product decidedly not for what Mr. Pudzer calls "the romaine lettuce raspberry vinaigrette crowd."

A 1,410-calorie extravaganza, the Thickburger is 70 percent of the average person's daily caloric intake.

Speaking of fast food, I just discovered Noodles & Company the other day. They offer pasta & noodle dishes. It's more of a Panera Bread kind of place except instead of sandwiches they offer pasta. Also they offer three categories of food -- Asian, Mediterranean, and American. I tried the Pasta Fresca, a white wine & garlic sauteed penne which I thought was pretty good. I don't know how healthy it was but there's no question in my mind that it was healthier than any fast food burger. Check them out if you've never heard of them. I need to go back there with my wife. The real proof will be in the Pad Thai. She'll be the judge.