What doesn't kill us.....we eat!

In the last class some students commented that fast food was too much for them to handle, or that they felt bad after they would eat it because of what went in to making the food. I didn't really understand why they chose to say that, considering the majority of campus food is fast food itself. In class big name fast food chains were discussed like McDonalds and Taco Bell but nobody mentioned anything like Uncrustable PBJ's, fountain drinks, or Bosco Sticks. Those foods are terrible for you, students just don't take notice of it because its not in a bag marked with the golden arches or a bell. I work in food service on campus at Lafollette and every day I make food that is bad for them and they keep coming back every time I work. Other times I will see someone look at a bag of chips containing 180 calories, then they will turn to their friend and say something along the lines of "this is disgusting" then they will get an Uncrustables sandwich which has 30 more calories and much more sugar in it. I just don't quite understand why people judge food by the label. They seem to have never heard the term "don't judge a book by its cover". These people are constantly ingesting crap into their system thinking that it is healthy when really it is worse than the things that they are trying to avoid. A way to fix this would be to promote looking at nutrition labels instead of looking at packaging that shows persuading healthy words to draw in the customer. Salads are one of the big foods that seem healthy but can actually be terrible for you. If you put too many things on the salad or too much sauce the calories can easily become very high. Salads may not always have nutrition facts on them because they're ordered at a restaurant or made at a salad bar, but the restaurants that serve salads should have a list of the calories in all of their menu items, or at least a close approximation. So next time when you're trying to decide between a bag of chips and a salad or Uncrustable remember to check the nutrition facts before throwing the chips back with disgust.