Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

ChristineB Wrote:

4) You pay for internet at home. Why shouldn't you pay for it at a coffee shop?

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Because I don't pay $5 for a cup of coffee at home... that's why.

The bottom line is, it's just not very good coffee. I take strong exception to the commenter above who stated that it wasn't burnt, it was just a dark roast. I love a strong, dark roast - the stronger, the better. Starbucks' blends have a bitter, burnt taste to them. The fact that "plenty of people like it" is far from a ringing endorsement. Plenty of people like lots of things - doesn't mean any of them are any good.

Start by getting back to something novel: offering decent coffee at a fair price. You're a coffee shop. Get out of the friggin' music business and focus on your core.

Offer simple pastries that are fresh. You certainly charge top dollar for pastries that are - at times - stale and dry.

Two words: customer service. Your baristas are often misanthropes who think they are too good to be making my beverage because they should be working on their novel or something. And they're slow.

Clean your stores up. I know they all see a high volume in the mornings, but they shouldn't look like a tornado just blew through.

Free Wi-Fi. Free Wi-Fi. Free Wi-Fi.

I agree with the commenter above - a SB employee - who said that there should be nightly entertainment. What a terrific idea. Our local coffee shops do that, and they bring in customers around the clock, while fostering a feeling of community.

For those of you rooting against Starbucks in favor of the local shops, check out the recent article on Slate discussing the ameliorative effects on the mom-and-pop places when Starbucks moves in. Many local operators - fearful of Starbucks moving in down the street - found that their business actually increased.

Very cute!

In most cases, fresh-sliced, pre-packaged and prepared fruits and vegetables have a nutritional content comparable "whole fruit." I can't understand the reasoning behind prepared fruit being "the problem." It's simply a matter of convenience for many, and often it makes fruit more desirable to eat (which is a good thing despite what this article says). It is simply not realistic to assume that everyone can eat locally and/or organically. We should be so grateful that we have the variety and abdundance of food that we have.

A blanket statement like that is sure to be mostly wrong. Nutritional value varies greatly from one fruit to another. Most importantly though, as always, is the method of cultivation, and the point in the ripening process at which the fruit was harvested, and how much time elapsed from harvest to consumption.

Fruits and veggies grown on industrial farms have very little nutritional value other than sugars, starches and fibre. When it comes to flavor and nutritional value, it's all about the soil. The soil they are grown in has been over extended and depleted of nutrients, and synthetic chemical fertilizers are used to promote vegetative growth. While these fertilizers are designed to optimize the growth of the plant and it's fruit, they do very little to adding the nutritional value we seek and expect. An old traditional method of farming was to rotate crops, so that a field never was growing the same crop one season to the next, and would usually be left to grow wild for one season every three or four years. Also, planting legumes every few years actually replenishes the soil in nitrogen, as legumes can grab nitrogen out of the air which is then put into the soil through the plants roots. Nitrogen is an essential component to all life. Plants use it to form chlorophyl which as we all know is the engine in photosynthesis.

Fruit is generally harvested under-ripe, and ripens in transit to the warehouses and ultimately to the stores where they are sold. Vitamins and minerals are for the most part water soluble and degrade over time and exposure to oxygen, so if a fruit or veggie is cut up into pieces and/or sits around for a while ripening in the back of a semi or in a warehouse, it will lose significant amounts of whatever little nutrients it already had to begin with.

As always, buying organic and local makes a big difference. The best solution is to grow your own, but that is not always feasible. You get what you pay for. But yeah, even supermarket factory farmed fruits and veggies are better than none at all. Robyn, your summary is misleading and I think should be re-written, as the article linked clearly makes the distinction between whole fruits and prepared and prepackaged fruit.

Ugh... this kind of article is what makes dietitians like myself want to throw our hands up in the air and give up. We have to realize that no one food can provide all the nutrients we need... that's why all foods fit into a healthy diet - fruit is another building block, packed with fiber, water, antioxidants, etc... and oh yeah, and it TASTES good too! Sounds like a nutritious combination to me...

Amazing!

Hmmm, Carl's Jr. is still one of the last fast food places with a Low Carb Burger still on the menu (wrapped in lettuce, minus the bun).

While I think it's far better to find a grass fed burger than a factory-farmed fast food burger, when are people going to understand the basic biochemistry that makes a fast food meal a nutritional disaster? It is the bun, the ketchup, the fries, the fake "cheese", the soybean and HFCS sweetened mayo, and the HFCS-laced soda that are the most "artery-clogging", not the burger.

that website has the cutest images!

and they put them on a calender? brilliant!

the 4th of July burger would drive me nuts--I can't stand to have foods that aren't normally eaten together to be touching (weird, i know). Having the hamburger, hot dog, and potato chips all crammed together into one bun would be a mealtime disaster for me.

well after reading pollan's omnivore's dilemma I would say that statistically speaking the people that are regularly consuming these types of foods are of a lower SES. Therefore, I believe that it is the responsibility of a higher power to at least put up some regulations because these people are eating this stuff as a regular meal replacement because they can't afford healthier foods that contain the same # of calories needed to survive. It sounds a lot like exploitation to me.

I'm all for hardees advertising a burger as a sickeningly unhealthy burger - "thickburger"? cmon, anyone with any common sense will know that something called a 'thickburger' ain't good for you.

then there's food like a chipotle burrito that flies under the radar, because it's a burrito with stuff like rice, beans, veggies. something like THAT can't be that bad for you, right?.....

when restaurants/companies start deceiving the consumer (you can't find nutritional information at a chipotle, even though it's avail in all other fast food restaurants), that's when they execs should be held responsible...

that burger looks too amazing..