Tell It To Al

If we truly live in a “fast-food nation,” McDonald’s is a reasonable metaphor for the entire U.S. economy.

It’s May sales bounced back from a decline in April, but to pull off this recovery, the Oak Brook, Ill.-based hamburger giant had to beef up its dollar menu and offer a two-for-one Big Mac promotion. (Did you know there’s even a Big Mac Index, measuring purchasing power parity between countries?)

McDonald’s is forcing its competitors to do the same. Business is booming in America – as long as it’s at a cut rate.

Click here to read more from The Associated Press.

Is it cheaper to prepare meals at home rather than eat out?

A new report from GoBankingRates.com concludes it is not. “With fast food restaurants continuously adding value menus and grocery costs rising, dining out for many families has become the financial preference,” the website writes.

Click here to read the report. Basically, we’ve got grocery prices rising at a time when restaurants are still holding down prices to compete. In many cases, eating out can indeed be cheaper than eating at home.

Of course, it all depends on what you eat.

There’s no way, for instance, that Whole Foods can compete on price with $1 double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s. But is this a fair comparison? And if you throw in the mounting medical costs from America’s obesity crisis – largely due to the ubiquity of fast food – the comparison breaks down further.

It still cheaper to prepare a box of macaroni and cheese at home than to buy it at Noodles & Co. – if that’s all your going to eat.

Lunch at home could mean a hastily prepared bologna sandwich versus an $8 burrito at the Chipotle Mexican Grill down the street. So I usually go with the burrito.

Like a lot of people, I eat out almost every day. Sometimes twice a day. Many people I know eat out a lot more than they did just 10 years ago. We are all pressed for time and we get hungry.

This is why America is just bursting with restaurants, and a sluggish economy hasn’t halted their growth. Nor has it slowed the growth of our collective waistlines.

I called Josh Stevens, CEO of a company that provides employee health solutions, to talk about CVS Caremark’s plan to force its employees to take medical screenings.

Instead we ended up talking more about kale.

Kale is what Medieval peasants ate in Europe, but now it’s a “super food,” served in trendy restaurants, and garnering the praise of celebrities. Mr. Stevens is CEO of Keas, a start-up founded by a former Google executive, and seems obsessed with kale.

Celebrity chefs and nutritionists claim it lowers cholesterol, prevents cancer, and decreases the absorption of dietary fat. If everyone just ate kale, maybe big companies like CVS wouldn’t have to make their employees report their weight, blood-sugar and cholesterol levels.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Stock of burrito maker Chipotle took a whack today after David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital announced at a conference he was shorting its stock.

Chipotle faces tough competition from Taco Bell, Mr. Einhorn said at the Value Investing Congress in New York. Yes, Taco Bell. I guess you try to eat from the value menu when you’re a value investor. Click here to read more on MarketWatch.com.

Another money manager, Damon Vickers, based in Seattle, emailed comments around to media calling Einhorn’s comment ridiculous, despite the toll they took on the company’s stock today.

“Regardless of the pretty pictures that fast food companies put on their ads, it’s still garbage at the checkout,” Mr. Vickers said.

Yes, comparing Chipotle to Taco Bell is like comparing apples to, well, road apples.

Mr. Vickers believes consumers pay for quality, which is why Whole Foods continues to do well, despite less expensive fare at Safeway. But I say the longer this spate of historically high unemployment lasts, the better Taco Bell is going to taste.

What do you say? Have you dined at either of these eateries?

Some of America’s most popular eateries may be underpaying their wait staff.

That’s the charge in a lawsuit recently filed against Darden Restaurants, purveyor of Red Lobster, Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, and other well-known restaurants.  Darden denies the charges, and it  appears to be a well-run company with a stock that continues soaring in our current economic malaise.

Miami Attorney David Lichter, who filed the lawsuit against Orlando-based Darden, told me he has heard from hundreds of current and former Darden employees, but his lawsuit has only named two people who no longer work there. Time will tell how widespread this alleged problem is.

All I know is that it’s not difficult to find a disgruntled former waitress – even one from a Darden restaurant. Kim Stahler, who used to work at Red Lobster, was so angry when she left, she started a website called The Stained Apron. It’s a place where wait staff complain about their customers and their managers. She hasn’t updated it in a while, having moved on with her life. But the site is there for posterity and worth a read.

You know what you think of the waiter. But guess what the waiter thinks of you.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.com

The beef industry is doing it’s best to counter a term coined by activists, “pink slime,” with T-shirts that read “dude, it’s beef.”

I’m not sure this is going to work. All controversy aside over whether pink slime is bad for you, it’s disgusting.  And the inescapable truth is that they’re selling us a lower-quality part of the bovine – to put it nicely – and telling consumers it’s a great product.

Maybe they should have called it “Wholey Cow,” since they are so insistent upon getting consumers to eat almost every single part of the animal.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.

You are not what you eat. You are what certain powerful people tell you to eat.

The Daily Meal has once again compiled a list of the 50 most powerful people in food, from top chefs  to government officials, the CEO of Weight Watchers and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Click here to read the Daily Meal’s report.

Not all of the power in the food world is nefarious. I was glad to see a man on the Daily Meal’s list who I profiled in my column last year, Milwaukee urban farmer Will Allen.  Click here to read that column. Allen is truly and inspiration. I think he has a solution for what ails America, beginning not from the ground up, but from the worms up.

“In the food world, the people with power are the ones who affect what and how and where and why we eat, or could if they wanted to,” the report explains. “They’re the agribusiness moguls who decide … what crops are planted and how they’re harvested and sold. They’re the representatives of major food processing and distribution concerns and retail food outlets, which is to say the people who actually put food on our tables. They’re the scolds and nannies — and admirable consumer advocates — who tell us what we should and shouldn’t eat and why, sometimes upending whole industries in the process; the key figures in the governmental agencies concerned with the economics and the safety of our food supply; the media stars and public figures who sway our food opinions and stimulate our appetites; the chefs and restaurateurs who introduce us to new raw materials, new dishes, new culinary notions, and establish the standards we come to expect for the preparation and the serving of food. They’re the journalists, online or on television or even still sometimes in print, who report on all of the above…”

Hey, I’m a journalist. I’ll tell you what to eat. Less.

Here’s one for you: Tell your wife you’re going to Hooters. And then tell her you’re bringing the kids.

Yep. Hooters has a kids’ menu and even hosts kids birthday parties.

Somehow, I could not get my lovely wife to sign off on this idea, but she understands that I a very demanding job that requires plenty of research. So I had to go.

At the Hooter’s near I-25 and Colorado Boulevard in Denver, I met Chante Rivera, who I truly believe would be a fine role model for the kids. She’s putting herself through college with the money she earns at the restaurant.

Click here to read my profile of Rivera. And check out the other wonderful role models I met. ( Left to Right: Anon, Carrie Conley, Chante Rivera, me, Mya Izzolena, Brittany Twining.)

Despite the rising costs of almost everything consumers need, many economists say deflation is the thing to worry about, not inflation.

Either they are being paid so handsomely that they don’t care about the price of anything, or they must be refering to the trend detailed by Consumer Reports.

There has indeed been considerable deflation in the size of the products we consume. Instead of raising prices manufacturers are shrinking package sizes – hoping you won’t notice. 

Click here to read more from Consumer Reports.

“Companies often hide their handiwork when they shrink their packages,” the publication reports. “Indenting the bottom of containers, making plastic wraps thinner, or whipping air into ice cream are a few subtle ways companies downsize their products.”

Consumer Reports found packages reduced by as much as 20%. “Ivory dish detergent shrank from its 30 oz. bottle to a new 24 oz. bottle due to increased costs for raw materials. … And Häagen Dazs ice cream’s 16 oz. container shrank to a 14 oz. container due to the cost of ingredients and facility costs.”

I remember the last time this happened. It was the 1970s, an era of inflation so rampant even shrinking the packages could not hide it. One bright side: Maybe this can aid America with its obesity problem.

I am thankful the global economic collapse didn’t totally unfold – at least not yet.

Click here to read my column.