Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Of course you CAN build muscle and lose weight if you moderate food intake and eat crap. Just look at prison inmates. However, most people in America lead a sedentary lifestyle, do not exercise regularly, and have issues regulating food intake when confronted with foods high in the triple-play of fat, sugar and salt. It's only recently that fast food restaurants were required to post nutrition information.

I'm a body builder myself, I tend to prefer Elevation Burger because they use better ingredients, but it's still a greasy 700 calorie gut bomb. Sure hits the spot after a hard workout of deadlifts, though! I stopped eating McDonald's because it gives me digestive problems that normal hamburgers don't. Perhaps I'm allergic to whatever chemical cocktail they're spraying into the food these days.

I find it disingenuous to get someone who works out hard several days a week and have them eat McDonald's for 30 days and lose weight, and declare the food healthy. Michael Phelps could eat 10,000 calories a day, but most people cannot. They do not burn enough calories, and without proper conditioning, they CAN'T burn enough to counter 3 meals a day at McDonald's unless they very carefully. Spurlock obviously had an agenda, but he laid out his rules clearly- any time they asked him to Super Size, he would say yes. Before I was diet conscious, I'd say yes too. Why not? It's only a few cents more.

Pseudo science should always be debunked. Of course a Happy Meal will rot. As far as I'm concerned, all of them should.

Alton has become like a teetotaler who was once a drunk, now that he's skeletally skinny. I prefer the "hot" challenges to watching Adam try to gorge himself on 6 pounds of meat, and I like the venues they find much more than the places Guy Ferry (cough) I mean "Fie-air-rie" goes to, and Richman is at least charismatic and funny.

Better yet, sit down at Grimaldi's or Lombardi's or Totonno's and have something better than street slices.

My favorite burger memories are of a little diner, now gone, at the top of the hill near where I grew up. Most kids squandered their allowances on candy and ice cream, but I preferred to get a greasy, griddled burger at Nunzio's with onions, ketchup and cheese on a kaiser roll. To go, they wrapped it in foil so it steamed. It was like a giant slider.

I've had fancier, but in my memory, that is the best tasting burger I'll ever have, riding home on my bike and eating it on the park bench under the pear tree. With a pear for dessert, of course.

My current fave is the DBGB Frenchie in Manhattan.

I love both of these when I'm in California, but honestly I like Fatburger better as well. It's a tough choice.

Ah, I've been looking forward to this. I'll snag Krug's Tavern of Newark and Sporjeven in Copenhagen Denmark :)

If you're averse to going vegetarian completely, I recommend Trader Joe's or a Costco membership, and looking for sales at your local markets. Buy whole chickens and learn how to cut them up, or buy breasts in bulk. Inexpensive cuts of beef do well in the slow cooker, pork loin can be found on sale and pork butt becomes pulled pork overnight, and you can make fajitas on the relative cheap with quickly cooked flank/skirt steaks, chicken, etc.

Make soup from your chicken carcasses with rice, beans, leftover veggies. Buy lentils and quinoa in bulk, quinoa is a complete protein; rice and beans are together. Don't buy anything that's prepared. Like hummus? It takes 5 minutes to make with a blender. Tahini too expensive? (Sssh. Don't tell anyone, use a little PB and add more cumin and garlic.) Salsa can be cheaper to buy prepared when tomatoes are out of season, and it extends and livens many dishes quickly and cheaply.

Whoopies are lovely. I last had them from Lancaster, it's a 2 hour drive from NYC though. But if you need them more than a few times a year, it might be worth a trip to Amish country.

Sardines and avocados are also a low-carb muscle builder that a lot of bodybuilders will eat. Putting it on whole grain bread at least makes it a little more tolerable.
If you hate sardines, try tuna in olive oil put into the space where the avocado pit was.

I had this in Japan on sushi. And eel brains at an eel place. Never ask what something is first- you won't eat it. They were both good.

I usually blank things out and try to find the one palatable food item; if I eyeball the food and it looks awful I'll fill up on the snacks, even if it's junk.
But I do remember a ditzy family friend's party where she took chicken cordon bleu out of the oven early to warm some bread, didn't tell anyone, and it got served. This was in the mid-80's, and I ate raw chicken. there was so much sauce I didn't know until a few bites in. I luckily didn't contract salmonella; it was less widespread then, perhaps.

This looks like a place I need to visit. I miss the char-broiler burger joints of North Jersey, like the Anthony Wayne and the Red Chimney along Route 3 and 46.
The burger here hearkens back to those, if much larger!
Plus I never say no to a chili dog, and typical Texas Weiners in NJ are bland to me.
Thanks for sharing!