Restaurants That Post Nutritional Information: A Nevin Barich Blog Experience

Earlier this week, I visited my good friends at Chili's Restaurant in Northridge, meeting up with a couple of old high school chums for dinner. And as we were catching up and reminiscing on old times, I started looking at the menu and noticed all of these damn numbers next to the food items.

The nutritional information.

Now: I understand the reasoning behind this new phenomenon. In today's restaurant society, there are -- quite frankly -- some fattening food items out there. And no doubt some big wigs from the health food industry got together with some head honchos from the fat farm factory and conspired to pressure Congress to make people feel bad about the Texas cheese fries they want to order.

Fine. Whatever. But I have news for those who hatched this evil plan:

It doesn't work.

No one loves fattening food more than me. Now I'm not fat and I work out daily, but I'm still a prime target of health and organic food advocates. They want people like me to feel guilty. To take stock in what I'm eating and ask myself: "Is it worth it?" They want to get me to take a good, hard look in the mirror and ponder serious life changes.

Yeah, good luck.

I'm like a smoker: I don't bother reading the warning labels. I know this food is bad for me and I don't care. Why? Because it tastes good and it makes me happy. When I eat it, I smile. And I like to smile.

Just being honest here, people. :-)

My point is: I already know that the fried onion and jalapeno stack that my friends and I ordered at Chili's as an appetizer was loaded with tons of fat, calories and sodium. But it didn't stop us from ordering it. We ignore warnings. We're Americans!! We think we're indestructible!! And if we get heart problems later on, it's nothing a little open heart surgery won't fix.

Plus: Bad food is cheaper. You ever see a value menu of health food? No. Why? Because health food costs money. And times are tough. Bad food is cheaper and I like to save.

To sum up: I am winning the fight against the evil health food and diet tyrants. This whole "Hey Nev, those steak nachos from Baja Fresh you're about to order contain 108 grams of fat in them, which is about 1 1/2 days' intake" campaign is failing. And as long as I continue to eat this food, it will continue to fail.

It's a war, people. And I'm doing my part.

:-)

And now for this week's:

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE

As if "The Hangover" franchise couldn't get any cooler.

Bill Clinton has reportedly just filmed a cameo for next year's "The Hangover 2."

Oh.

Hell.

Yeah.