The next mini-pledge is a two-fold challenge where we are asking people to avoid both fast food and deep-fried food for a week. I think this
will be another one of those pledges that is hard for some and easier for others. First off, according to Wikipedia, fast food is defined as “food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a packaged form for take-out/take-away.” Hopefully I don’t need to go into too much detail about why it would be beneficial for you to avoid fast food meals, but let’s take a moment to discuss the reasoning behind deep-fried food. The problem with something being deep-fried is that the food absorbs a great deal of oil during the cooking process. So when you eat the end product you are consuming far more oil – an unhealthy fat in most cases – than is recommended.
So here is next week’s pledge that officially starts on Monday:
Mini-Pledge Week 4: April 4 – April 10 – No fast food (as detailed below) or any foods that have been deep-fried in oil.
For this challenge you must avoid:
- Restaurants with drive-thru windows
- Convenience stores that also typically sell gas
- Places where you watch them assemble your food through a glass wall
- Restaurants that are situated in a “food court” setting
- School lunches (most schools do not have a fully functioning kitchen and simply heat precooked meals)
- Airplane food
The places where you can eat during this challenge:
- Restaurants with waiter service (which aren’t always ideal when it comes to food quality, but we just had to draw the line somewhere)
- Grocery stores (we recommend hitting the salad bar, vegetable sides and brown rice sushi)
- Your own kitchen!
- Friends’ houses
Even while you are eating at the “allowed” places you must still of course avoid deep-fried foods, which is trickier than it sounds. If it is crunchy and crispy you need to question it. We were even fooled fairly recently by some hard taco shells not realizing at first they probably got their crunchiness from being deep fried in oil.
Some other examples of deep-fried foods to be on the lookout for:
- French fries
- Sweet potato fries
- Potato/tortilla chips
- Chicken fingers
- Chicken wings
- Donuts
- Corn dogs
- Egg rolls
The goal of this challenge is to force you to figure out alternatives to a Big Mac even when you are starving and on the go. And the key to success is planning ahead. Don’t wait until the last minute to figure out where and when you will have your next meal. Consider packing some whole food snacks to hold you over including bananas, apples, oranges, nuts, popcorn (with minimal oil/salt), dried fruit, store-bought Lara Bars, whole-grain crackers, cheese sticks, etc. Also take the time to pack lunches for work, school, long car rides, and airplane trips.
To take the pledge: Please leave a comment below with the number of adults and kids in your household that will participate, and also share if you will do it for one day or for the entire week. Put it in writing to make it official!
Good luck!
With the holidays nearing to an end and the mad frantic rush to go here and there almost to a close, we plan to hop back on our whole food lifestyle change. This was a lot harder than we originally realized but with some better planning on my part, this will be a success. Three children under 4 and 1 adult for all three meals and 1 extra adult for at least one meal. Nave the movie Food, Inc, in our Netflix queue so will hopefully watch it later this week and we are FINALLY going to visit our local farmer’s co-op this week. Wish us luck!
starting this challenge this week. I don’t do fast food anyway… but will have to pay close attention to things I buy. I love tortilla chips, so maybe I will make some baked ones of my own
starting mini pledge 4 tomorrow! I think it should be pretty easy for me to avoid fast food since I have been for a long time now. However, I will have to be really aware of things deep fried in oil like chips! every once and awhile I’ll have one if someone offers but this week i’ll have to say, no thanks! : )
2 adults, and 3 kids in…permanently. I’ll have to do better about packing a lunch if we’re going to be out all day and watch out for the hidden things-like taco shells.
Accepting this challenge for my in-laws. Three adults and two children.
Taking this pledge for myself just now, but I’ll do my best to get the rest of the family on board. Hubby’s not going to be happy about those chicken cutlets for a while!
Did this one without too much trouble…went out for Thai food for date night-and skipped the eggrolls and had Spring rolls instead. Lived to tell the tale! We are also trying to eat well on a budget-and are learning what a “treat” is…so much of the things we were “treating” ourselves with were really habits.
[...] Week 4: No fast food or deep-fried foods – No fast food or any foods that have been deep-fried in oil. [...]
[...] days? With just one focus? That I can do! I debated which pledge I wanted to do first. The no fast-food pledge is pretty convicting for me right now. But, for that exact reason, I chose not to do it. [...]
What about baked tortilla chips?
Hi Mallorie. That you make yourself or buy? I would say it just depends on the ingredients. But, if they are all whole and you bake them they’re probably fine. Jill
Two adults and two children will begin this tomorrow. This would usually be pretty simple for us as we hardly ever eat fast food, but we are going on a road trip this weekend, so it’s going to be a bit trickier.
We’re in for at least a week. 2 adults 1 kid. I’m tracking our journey with you on Facebook at “Meredith’s The Pampered Chef”
Last week’s “meat” challenge was easier than I thought, which gives me the motivation to continue on for this week’s “Fast food/fried food” challenge. This one will be more difficult for me, primarily due to the nature of my work forcing me to be on the road throughout the day. I’m committed to looking for places that have no drive-thru and no cafeteria-style glass cases for at least a week. Here we go!
Have been doing all the mini challenges with my roommates! 3 college ages students, working on getting healthy and eating local. This is such a great resource for us. Thanks!
[...] Week 3: No fast food or deep-fried foods – No fast food or any foods that have been deep-fried in oil. [...]
Two adults joining in this week. We’ve been feeling great and losing weight with the last three pledges! Can’t wait to take this to the next level. Like previous posters, I think tortilla chips will be my Achilles heel.
This will be an easy week for us (two adults). We never/rarely eat fried food and I plan my meals at the beginning of the week and it never involves fried food. Last week, we only ate lean meat 4 times this week. We were unsuccessful with finding a local farmers market that one was open and two that existed on Long Island. All of our meat came from Wild By Nature. (If anyone knows of any in Suffolk County, please let me know!) But onto the next weekly pledge while continuing the new habits we’ve gained from beginning this journey.
I just want to mention that we rarely come across fried food and of course during this weekly pledge, my husband and I did today! (On day two!) We unfortunately had to go to my husband’s aunt’s funeral today and afterwards the whole family and friends joined at a diner. And at this diner, we had a choice of four meals (yikes!) and everything was served with french fries!! (YIKES!) And my husband took it upon himself to ask the waitress if there was any substitute to these horrible french fries (lol) and the waitress at first was like “ehh…it’s part of the meals your family purchased for this, what would you substitute it for??” and my husband suggested a side salad!? (is that too much to ask for?!) so the waitress took it upon herself and gave us free salads instead of the french fries. And, she gave it to us before hand and helped fill us up before our sandwiches came out (that I ordered on whole wheat bread…I do not know if it’s truly “whole” wheat, but its better than the white I would have gotten! I also want to give kudos to my husband as his meal accidentally was served with french fries, and he did not touch one! Talk about will power!! Okay…just felt like sharing!
2 adults, 2 kiddos (age 5 and 2.5ys). We are working to integrate this as our norm, rather than going to fast food as the norm. Tipping the scales! I’m loving the challenges.
Been able to tackle all the other pledges but this one….this is our ultimate challenge but it SHALL be vanquished. 2 adults and 3 children (2, 3, 4).
Can’t wait to tackle this one. The most difficult time will be running from school directly to gymnastics when subway has traditionally been a stop. Been enjoying the other week’s challenges and can’t wait to tackle this one (2 adults, 2kids 16 & 6)