Fast food breakfast: convenient & time saving or not?
Every morning I drive by a local Dunkin Donut (it’s next to the gym) and am always dumbfounded how long the drive thru line is at 8:45 a.m.
I decided to time a vehicle to see how long they really waited in the line before getting their food.
17 mins 43 seconds, that’s how long!
Now, if you ask someone who goes there odds are they’ll say they go through the drive thru to “save time”. How is sitting in your car, with it running nonetheless for that long “saving time”? Wouldn’t it have been faster to just eat at home and then leave to drive straight to work? Or, here’s a novel thought, get up earlier in the morning! Oh but wait, due to all the donuts and funky chemical food they’ve eaten, they’re not in the mood to get up earlier because of their lifestyle their health isn’t the greatest which could affect their sleep and make it harder to get up in the morning.
I know it’d save on your calories most likely, seeing how an average Dunkin Donut glazed donut is 180 calories. Note the break down, of fat, sugar, and sodium and nothing of nutritional value. Then we have their coffee w/cream & sugar which is only 90 calories but nothing of real nutritional value. So, for the average coffee & donut they’re using up about 270 calories, all of which are empty.
Now, if the person had eaten at home, they could’ve had something that was actually good for them. Let’s use blueberries for our example. One cup would be about 81 calories and full of antioxidants and vitamins & minerals. Plus how long does it take to prepare a cup of blueberries? 20 seconds? or over 17 minutes?
A smoothie, protein bar, bowl of cereal would all be better nutritionally as well as time spent to prepare and eat compared to the Dunkin Donut drive through.
Shall I even touch on the idling cars in the drive thru? You do the math, look at the below information and note the above time that one person sat in line. Then figure how many people do eat on way to work, lunch, dinner, all via fast food drive thru’s.
It’s shameful!
According to CarbonRally.com:
On average, each American car is idled 5 to 10 minutes per day. It is estimated that those cars idle enough each day to burn an additional 3.8 million gallons of gasoline. That’s right — 3.8 million gallons each day. That means that useless idling is responsible for Americans releasing an extra 40,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each day or 13 million tons of CO2 per year.
According to IdealBite: Idling 15 min per weekday can cost you up to $100 in wasted gas over the course of a year.
Which is probably more now that gas prices have gone up.
So, can someone please explain to me how it’s more convenient and time saving to sit in a drive thru rather than eat at home. Here’s an idea for those who go through drive thru’s on way to work…
get up earlier than you normally do (even if it’s only 10 minutes)
make yourself a healthy quick breakfast at home
then leisurely leave for work
You’ll ultimately save:
time
calories
your health
money
gas
the environment
possibly save yourself from having an accident since you won’t be driving and eating/drinking
Give it a try so people like me won’t feel compelled to time you at the drive thru from the gym window and come home later to blog about it.
UPDATE!!!!
My bud Dave Conrey, posted about this and more…Guilt Forces A Hungry Man Indoors, it’s a must read and goes along with this existing post
Topics: Eco Friendly, Recycling, Green, Ranting & Rambling |
August 29th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I don’t know if you have a Bojangles where you are but I feel pretty much the same way when I see people lined up to buy their biscuits and fried chicken. Who eats fried chicken in the morning???
August 30th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Beverly,
We don’t have Bojangles here and OMG to the fried chicken for breakfast
I feel the above nearly every time I see people in a line be it fast food, banks, etc. but it just blows my mind w/the whole breakfast fast food thing. Then people say they’re tired, worn down at work…well yea, you just ate garbage and wasted gas, contributed to polluting the environment. I just don’t get it.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:58 am
I totally agree about fast food but never thought about the waste from sitting idle in those long lines. Thanks for all the great info.
This family wouldn’t eat fast food if you paid us!
September 4th, 2008 at 10:12 am
[…] It turns out Tara Burner wrote a post last week about sitting in drive-thrus and I was neglect to notice. It extends on the first part of this post nicely. Go check it […]