It's a pretty well known fact that fast food is bad. It's fast food, right? It's convenient and you can drive up to it and pay for it with the crusty quarters filling your car ashtray and sometimes vegetable chopping for salads is too much of a pain in the butt when you have three disgruntled and hungry kids. Right?

I am normally pretty health conscious but I have to admit that I have eaten fast food and at chain restaurants with my pre-schooler on occasion. Since I'm a vegetarian, I usually stick to Wendy's baked potatoes, but I have bought chicken nugget meals for my son on occasion. There will be no more of that.

According to this article about the Twenty Worst Foods in America, McDonald's premium chicken breast strips (5 of them, with ranch dip) have 830 calories and 55 grams of fat. For those keeping track at home, that's more calories and fat than most kids need in an entire day. Gross.

The Twenty Worst Foods in America also lists the Worst Kid's Meal (hint: it's macaroni and cheese at Macaroni Grill -- like feeding your kid a pack and a half of Kraft Dinner! Most interesting to me is the Worst Food in America -- an appetizer at a well-known restaurant chain which holds the caloric equivalent to 14 Krispy Kreme donuts - and 182 grams of fat. Yech.

The article is useful in that it can help understand which restaurants should be blacklisted (hint: On the Border) and why some seemingly benign food choices are really very dangerous.

Yet another case for chopping and slicing at home.