Michelle Obama Decrees Olive Garden And Red Lobster Will No Longer Make You Fat

[meegbear]

Cancel tomorrow's date night at Olive Garden immediately! The Darden Restaurant Group, which runs fine dining boutiques Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and other strip-mall destinations is getting itself healthy with Michelle Obama's help. That just ruins everything.

The First Lady has had enough of obesity in this country, and she is joining Darden and championing their new initiative to cut the calories and sodium in meals across their restaurants by 20% over the next 10 years. Baby steps, sure, but this also means that you'll soon have to go elsewhere to get your fill of buttery spiders of the sea (that's what old ladies in New England call lobsters) and spaghetti slathered in more milk by-products than at a butter sculpting competition. What's the fun in eating at one of these places if it's going to be good for you? Not fun at all! No one wants the promise of bottomless seaweed breadsticks.

http://gawker.com/5840672/michelle-obama-decrees-olive-garden-and-red-lobster-will-no-longer-make-you-fat

:woohoo:

[tularetom]

1. I can guarantee her it won't make me fat

I'd starve before I'd eat at either one of those fuckin dumps.

[DFab420]

2. Well it's nice you have the income and foresight to be able to choose. Some people aren't as lucky.

at least now they wil be provide a better quality meal.

[Ian David]

4. Some of us have a Five Dollar Foot Long budget or less. nt

[tularetom]

5. I live a half hour from a restaurant of ANY kind

Why would I drive that far to patronize these kinds of corporate ptomaine pits.

There are plenty of good locally owned mom and pop eating places the same distance away.

I'd rather spend what dining out bucks I do have at one of them.

[OriginalGeek]

7. I'm not trying to be deliberately argumentative

but there are several OGs and RLs in my city and for every single location I promise you I can find you a better, cheaper, usually family owned Italian or seafood restaurant within 10 minutes of the OG or RL.

Which is a shame because my wife and daughter LOVE RL so I get stuck there a lot. :/

So maybe Mrs. Obama will give me something good to eat since I gotta be there anyway.

[Ian David]

3. But they're still evil, right-wing companies. n/t

[Brickbat]

6. Twenty percent over 10 years? Nothing like aiming high.

[NeedleCast]

12. Thousands of Restaurants

DRG is fairly huge in terms of number of restaurants they control. Take it from someone who worked in the industry...making changes on this scale is hard to do. New recipes have to be written, tested, re-written, re-tested. Supply line changes have to be made on an international level. Training programs on a global scale have to be changed. You don't just snap your fingers and take out the salt.

[immoderate]

8. Red Lobster "greased" me out, shrimp slidin' away. Never again.

Olive Garden has some good qualities. My real complaint is that they can't cook spaghetti. It comes out with little more firmness than mashed potatoes. The meatballs, sauce, salad, bread, are actually better than I find at most of the independents here in S. Florida. More than passable, but not without good al dente pasta. They say they can't control it. (The best plate of MB&S that I've found locally is a pizza place. Fancier Italian restaurants always disappoint.

My yardstick is a restaurant that I grew up on, near my home town of Far Rockaway, in an industrial area in Inwood, SE Long Island. You had to know how to find it, (Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Inwood -- Bam!) but there were limousines in the parking lot from several states on any given night. Lots of cops also ate there, rubbing elbows, y'know. It was the place to go to connect with folks home from college on recess. And the best Italian food on earth! (I've been to Italy, briefly, but also lived walking distance from Little Italy for 20 years. So I claim some creds.)

I also had an Italian girlfriend for a few years. She marveled at how much I cooked Italian, more than her mother, who didn't talk to me because I am (born) Jewish. But that was manifest guilt, because she was Sicilian, and herself had "married out" to a Genoase. LOL!

--imm

[CTyankee]

14. Living in New Haven, I have no reason to go to Olive Garden.

However, I had to go to a meeting there and had one of their appetizers...some kind of flatbread with cheese. It wasn't bad, because it wasn't an imitation anything, just what they had concocted.

I have a little pizza joint right here in my neighborhood that makes their own soups and we occasionally get take-out. Phenomenal...and it's NOT Pepe's or Sally's.*


*If you know anything about New Haven you know what I'm talking about...

[immoderate]

16. Some of the limos were from Connecticut. Waddya think?

Admittedly, it doesn't take a genius, but hey, OG can't boil spaghetti!

But there are people who know how to do it (and put garlic in the sauce, sheesh!) and New Haven is such a place. "If you've heard of New Haven..." :hi:


--imm

[CTyankee]

17. It's interesting but instead of being LESS popular, I think OG HAS popularity

because of the prevailing pizza culture in New Haven. I know that sounds strange and I think it is, too, but I saw a study sponsored by some frozen pizza company that revealed that if the pizza is really good where you live, there are healthy sales from frozen pizza, too. It is counter-intuitive but there it is...

Actually, in New Haven, pizza has traditionally been dubbed "apizza" and you still see it on signs of some pizza places in town. I found out (from a Sicilian) that that is because the term is actually "La pizza." Somewhere in the transition "La Pizza" got shortened to "apizza." I haven't seen "apizza" anywhere else but New Haven...

[immoderate]

18. I'm in the Fort Lauderdale area. You can get good pizza.

And I think it can be done anywhere. But not from any of the chains. I don't know how but they just fuck up what should be a simple thing.

Some of the frozen is edible, though. :)


--imm

[CTyankee]

20. When we were visiting in the midwest in 2009, we ate in an "authentic" Italian restaurant.

I asked for oil and vinegar to be put on the table for my salad and the waitperson said they didn't have it! I could get only the bottled variety selection (and you know what that meant)! I misunderstood and said "Oh, you can just bring me the oil and vinegar separately and I'll do it." They literally didn't have it!

In Northern Italy, that is all I got on the table with my salad. It was mix it yourself or eat the salad plain. Nobody there had a problem with it...

[immoderate]

21. there are places where the Chinese restaurants put bread on the table.

My friend managed some pizza places in Boulder, CO in the seventies. He and the owners cincidentally were from New Jersey. They made excellent pizza. Shows it can be done anywhere.

BTW, rattling some memories, I have made many trips to New Haven to see the NRBQ at Toad's. Had Italian food there several times. I'm sure it was never less than good, I would remember.


--imm

[CTyankee]

23. I've only been in New Haven since 1985. Toad's has been an institution.

Don't know, never went to see them.

We're regulars at the Yale Bowl every football season, watching Yale lose to Harvard...ack...not good...

[immoderate]

25. Yale and Harvard have football teams?

I know they do, but I don't think of them that way. :)

--imm

[pstokely]

24. Who goes to the Olive Garden in Times Square?

Probably the same people who would go to a Red Lobster in a coastal area

[Renew Deal]

9. Michelle Obama has finally crossed my line!

Don't mess with my free breadsticks Michelle! I'm not open to voting for a primary challenger, or Ross Perot!

[dtexdem]

10. Come on, Michelle, hit it out of the park:

decree that Krispy Kremes will no longer make one fat. ;-)

[NeedleCast]

11. Good on Darden, This is a Good First Step

Aside from the fact the one generally shouldn't go into a nationwide chain restaurant and expect that all the food is healthy, the fact that DRG is making changes for the better is a good thing. It's not going to change the eating habits of Americans overnight, but a move away from super-sized portions with healthy (or healthier) sides is where the industry as a whole needs to be going. Not that there isn't room for occasional gluttony, but making it something rare instead of the norm is the direction we need to be going.

[truebrit71]

13. Fat I can handle, it's the insane amount of salt in the food that needs to be addressed...

..it is almost lethal in some restaraunts...

[calendargirl]

15. So the OG chefs are finally switching from Hungry Man meals to Lean Cuisines? nt

[Shandris]

19. Did you just call Red Lobster a frickin' STRIP MALL DESTINATION?!

Holy Jesus Christ where the fuck do you people eat?!

Maybe where you live it's a 'strip mall destination' that is laughable, but that's a once-a-year 'Please God Hold The Family Reunion at Red Lobster' place around here. Fifteen dollars a meal plus drink? Where the fuck is your strip mall, next to Nordstrom's and Tiffany's?!

Sometimes I wonder if we all live on the same planet. :( I'd like to see where some of you live, but I'd hate to invite ya over to my little place that's for damn sure. :)

[socialshockwave]

22. I applaud her efforts, but

You cannot FORCE companies to make healthier products. If someone wants to eat junk and get fat, that's a personal choice. Legislation like this will only lead to things such as "JAIL TIME FOR FAT PEOPLE" - and coming from someone who's been overweight since age 2(genetics and a possible thyroid problem) what kind of exemptions will there be?

[Broderick]

26. Would like her to take on education degradation with the same zeal

SAT scores in reading set new records in futility this last year.