Downsides to Eating Out

 A downside to hanging out with fancy office workers who are always working: I often wonder, "do they ever cook anything themselves?" Breakfast was ordered from a bagel place, lunch was at the office park, and then we unanimously agreed to go to a Mexican fine dining/alcohol place for a nightcap. Quick math indicates that there's no room for a home-cooked meal in there. This was kinda me when I went to the office everyday: there was a small lunchtime-cafe who specialized in taking money from people like me, cooking up a mix of cubano, reuben sandwiches, and their specialty, the chicken and bacon wrap. (For some reason, all restaurants all have a healthy portion of bacon sitting around to put in their foods- my theory is that bacon is very easy to put in small doses like salads, other meats, eggs, even pancakes and breakfast foods- bacon mixes well with everything, and nobody complains about it. It's also when of the highest- cholestrol foods out there and adds nothing nutritionally and contains mass amounts of the thing that I DON'T want, salt). 

Yup, salt. I'd been desensitized to it until I started cooking on my own, but salt is like the universal ingredient for most restaurants to make their food taste good. Sure that's MSG, hot sauce, butter, mayo, some other small secrets, but overwhelmingly salt is the thing that restaurants can sneak in there and people just keep flocking back to. It's terrible for our bodies (MJ's the one who tuned me into this). Every time I have something really salty I think of the Meghan Trainor song, "It's all about that salt, 'bout that salt, 'bout that salt, no healthiness....it's all about that salt, salt, salt salt." And it's pretty clear why the girl in that song is "no size two," cuz she's ingesting all that salt. There's nothing inherently wrong about eating out 3 times a day especially when duty calls and work is running late (well, it does tend to flatten your wallet more quickly), but restaurant foods and bar food and Chinese takeout and Mexican foodtrucks and "urban food courts" all tend to have salty options, except maybe like "Sweetgreen" or "Joe and the Juice" or something. Even the Mexican fine dining place I went with my co-workers to at the end of the day: looked high-end, had chips and guacamole brought out, didn't skimp on the margaritas, but the food? Tasty but completely supported by how salty it was. For someone who's used to making tofu and mushroom dishes at home and having a rather light palette, it was like seeing the ocean for the first time: realizing all that hype about restaurant food where people give free advertising to restaurants through word of mouth by saying, "I heard that place is good...." it's mostly just because they've been brainwashed by the salt intake. Their minds cry out to them for more of that salt injection. Next to Big Sugar and Big Corn, the next biggest cartel in the American food industry that I'm slowly understanding: Big Salt. 

Luckily for me, MJ realized this early on and pointed me towards restaurants that are lighter and rely more on light ingredients that fit well together to create tasty food rather than just tried-and-true salt, so I've been able to ween off and escape Big Salt. I consider myself a survivor and hope to rescue others from the dietary hell of Sodom Sodium.