When going on to Google search and typing “What are McDonald’s chicken nuggets made out of”.  Around sixty-one thousand, three hundred results are provided after clicking search.  The number one suggestion that pops up following those words is pink slime.  It’s no secret that there are many rumors about what is in the fast food we eat.  People have been talking about it for years.  What they don’t realize is that it’s not just fast food.  Many restaurants are just as bad as fast food places.  From the quality of meat cuts to the overpriced cuisine.  I feel that people should stop eating at restaurants so frequently because they aren’t as good for us as we think.  There are four primary reasons why I believe this: the cost, portions, sodium, and calories. 

First off is the cost.  When we eat out at a diner, we aren’t just paying for the food.  A lot of different factors come into play.  One of them is the service, unlike fast food, there are servers.  Besides giving them a tip, part of the food bill goes into the waiter’s pay, which is one reason we are paying a lot more at sit down restaurants.  According to PJ Goupil, a restaurant marketer, and entrepreneur, the following is usually how a restaurant splits up the price of our bills.  There are four different sections with the first one being the actual food cost, which takes up only thirty percent of the price.  Next is the labor cost which I mentioned before.  This includes all the servers, kitchen staff, and managers.  That section also takes up thirty percent of the cost.  Following the labor is all the overhead with twenty percent.  For example the rent, utilities, dishware, marketing and more.  Lastly, is the profit at twenty percent.  So in theory, if I were to see a twenty dollar dish on the menu, the actual food I would be eating would cost six dollars.  In my mind eating at home is worth saving the extra fourteen dollars.  Now a fast food place contrasts to that.  Most of the price we pay actually is coming from the raw materials.  As we can infer, the price is drastically lower which directly impacts the quality of the food.  But it comes down to what we are willing to pay for.  Another factor that is way bigger than it needs to be is the portions in restaurants. 

Carrie Latt Wiatt, a popular nutritionist in Los Angeles and author of "Portion Savvy”, states that in higher-priced restaurants a portion for a single person is more than enough to feed around two to three people.  She says it’s all built around the conception that “more is better”.  These well-known diners advertise these huge options off their menu to attract people.  The truth is no one is regulating quantities in these restaurants.  Some say the people are to blame, that they should be conscious of what they are eating.  “The truth is many people don’t know how big a single serving really is” claims Elizabeth Krok, a registered dietitian, and director of the Center for Sports & Wellness at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center.  In April 2010, a study was released in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.  It was an experiment with how much students think a medium serving size really is.  They were asked to find something that represented a normal serving size.  Most of them brought in items larger than the USDA definition, for example, a bagel or potato.  This proves that nowadays we are blindsided by these “norms” in reality, more isn’t better.  Another reason these portions are affecting society is the clear plate effect.  Going back to Wiatt’s theory, her studies show that it's natural to eat what's in front of us, regardless of our actual hunger and energy needs.  It’s due to “overwhelming neurological response” says Susan Roberts, a senior writer for the Journal of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.  She has found that when we see a huge plate staring right at us, our blood glucose drops giving us a feeling of hunger and our stomach muscles relax to make space for the meal.  Many people get hard on themselves because they don’t have enough willpower, but that’s not the case.  It is actually all do to biology.  Quoted from Roberts, “I don’t think anybody should feel bad that they get weak when there’s an excessive portion in front of them, because the problem is the excessive portion, not them.”  Wanting to clear the plate in front us of is normal, but how much food that is on that plate isn’t.  My last argument for this point is that at restaurants, that one plate usually turns into either two or three.  Starters are really common to order when at a restaurant.  Then we consume the main course and lastly the dessert.  People are a lot more likely to order an appetizer and dessert when at a nicer restaurant.  Along with more food comes more sodium. 

When eating out the food always tastes richer than if we were to eat at home.  Restaurants want to draw in customers and the food is intended for a special occasion, so they take foods with lots of fat and load them with salt and sugar.  Dining out at a haute restaurant leads to far more sodium in our diet than needed, maybe even more than we would consume at a fast food place according to a study done in 2015 by the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.  "People regard fast food as junk food and tend to believe that full-service restaurants are better in terms of quality and healthiness," claims Ruopeng An, a professor at the University of Illinois.  It turns out the majority of people are wrong.  The findings show that a so-called fancy meal contains more sodium than what a fast food meal consists of.  The National Health and Examination Survey took eighteen thousand adults and recorded what they ate in the last twenty-four hours.  Ruopeng then calculated the sodium intake of each of the adults.  A full-service restaurant meal has an extra four hundred and twelve milligrams of daily sodium intake compared with a home-cooked meal meanwhile, a fast-food meal has an extra three hundred milligrams.  A quote from Anthony Bourdain, the author of “Kitchen Confidential” says, “Salt is one of the irreplaceable ingredients in the kitchen. It's what makes food taste good," he says.  The restaurant business is always in competition for who can have the tastiest food that’s more exciting and rich.  Salt is what they go to when looking for that effect because it opens up our taste buds.  When it comes to food it’s basically a drug. It makes everything that goes into our mouths more interesting and fun.  Salt is one of the main causes of the sodium levels being so high when it comes to our food.  Just like the sodium level in eating out, the calorie level is way too high as well.

Ninety-two percent of meals from large-chain and local restaurants contain more calories than is recommended for the average person.  The Journal of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics authors concluded this in January 2016.   In my opinion, that percentage is way larger than it should be.  The scary thing is many people assume that only fast food restaurants are causing this problem but that’s not the case.  A study was performed in 2014 by the American Cancer Society about calorie consumption.  It concluded that when adults ate at a fast food joint they consumed around one hundred ninety-four calories more and when they ate in a restaurant they consumed two hundred and five calories more than if they ate at home.  The reasoning behind all these calories is because when we eat out, "They have more energy-dense foods and bigger portions” says Dr. Binh Nguyen the author of the study performed.  The restaurants do this because they take advantage of us not knowing what’s in the food we are eating.

In conclusion, there are four main reasons why to stop eating out so much: the cost, portions, sodium, and calories.  Both the price we pay and the serving sizes are unreasonable.  Sodium and calories are major components that have a pretty big role in our overall health.  When it comes to restaurants, appearance isn’t everything.  Most fancy meals look healthy but the truth is they aren’t.  Even though that pink slime is just a rumor doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Acknowledging that we don’t know what is in these meals we are eating is something that needs to be done.  We need to be more aware that all restaurants are bad for us financially and physically, not just fast food.  Going out to eat can be a fun time, but make sure to consider the cons and not just the pros.