Eat Taco Bell and you can look like Christine too!

If there’s one thing I’ve lurnd after kicking around on this planet for the last 21.3 years, it’s that quality food does not come from a drive-through bargain menu. A typical fast-food experience usually consists of a screwed up order, an interesting interaction with a high school drop-out, and a basket of food which tastes like salty cardboard (not that I’ve actually eaten salty cardboard).

That being so, there are many times when I’m hungry and can’t afford quality food. During said times, I often find myself reluctantly headed towards taco bell to order several of the 6 vegetarian-esque options from their value menu. I usually have no complaints. I end up with a three piece, 890 calorie meal for 2 bucks and some change, a pretty good dollar to calorie ratio. In addition, it usually tastes okay, does not make me sick (usually), and is overall a much better experience than I could obtain at any of their competitor’s dining establishments.

This was all fine and good until recently, when taco bell decided to jump on Subway’s Jared bandwagon and tout their fresco-style food items under a new marketing campaign deemed “the drive through diet.” This seemed too… fake… to be true, so I hopped on the good old inter-web to get the scoop.

They don't look as good in real life.

Here’s the story: Subway had Jared. He was kind of nerdy, wore glasses, ate lots of sandwiches, and always walked around holding up an enormous pair of pants which he used to wear. Taco Bell stole that idea, fed it some steroids, and brought us Christine.

According to the campaign, Christine started choosing Fresco items from the Drive Through Diet menu and ‘making other sensible choices.’ She cut her daily calorie consumption down to a measly 1,250 (62.5 % of the recommended daily value) for the short period of 2 years, and was able to drop 54 whole pounds, reaching her current weight where she looks quite pleasant (IMO) in a swimsuit. Amazing, right?

What Christine shows us is that if we eat 63% of what we are supposed to eat, we can lose half a pound each week, even if we sometimes go to taco bell!

Taco Bell’s claim here is really quite weak. Where Jared supposedly ate Subway twice a day, we have no idea how often Christine ate Taco Bell. All we know is that she chose Fresco items while also making other sensible choices. For all we know Christine could have eaten Taco Bell once a year while dieting and exercising normally.

Simply diet for two years and you will lose weight too!

Furthermore, this campaign is overflowing with disclaimers. At the bottom of the page detailing Christine’s story, we notice a disclaimer beginning with “Drive-Thru-Diet is not a weight-loss program.” A bit further down we see the warning “Not a low calorie food.”

Apparently, the diet items can reduce calories by 20 – 100 calories per item. Interestingly enough, this is the same amount of calories you will save by asking for no cheese and no sour-cream. Indeed, Taco Bell did not engineer some crazy new diet food for us to stuff our mouths with. Instead, they are charging us the same price for our food, keeping our cheese and sour-cream, throwing in some extra tomatoes, and telling us it will turn us into swim-suit models. Actually, asking for a regular item without cheese is sometimes healthier than the fresco option, according to their on-line calorie calculator. Oh, how I love marketing.

When all is said and done, Taco Bell tastes pretty good. Their prices are even better. But, can we please not confuse this stuff with health food? Taco Bell is good for one thing: feeding cheap ass food to poor people like myself. They need to drop this diet gig and stick to what they’re good at.

Check out a few of the diets below which I threw together. Perhaps Christine should have tried the pure pizza diet, or maybe the cold-stone ice-cream only diet.

Hefty Diet: (7.2lbs of food per day!)

This diet is what I imagine a big guy would eat in a day if he ate 3-4 meals per day at Taco Bell, and was forced to stick to the Fresco Menu
3 Fresco Bean Burritos
6 Fresco Steak Burrito Supreme
9 Fresco Grilled Chicken Soft Tacos

Average Diet: (3.3lbs of food per day)

This diet is the amount you would have to eat each day if you wanted to stick to the fresco menu, and consume the recommended daily average of 2,000 calories
1 Fresco Bean Burrito
3 Fresco Steak Burrito Supreme
4 Fresco Grilled Chicken Soft Tacos

Pizza Hut Diet:(1.5lbs of food per day)

This diet is what you could eat each day if you wanted to consume as many calories as Christine while only eating pizza hut pizza
7 slices of Vegie Lovers Thin Crust Pizza

Cold Stone Diet:(1.1lbs of food per day)

This diet is what you would have to eat each day if you wanted to consume the same amount of calories as Christine, while eating nothing other than Cold Stone Cake Batter Ice Cream
18oz of Coldstone Cake-Batter Ice Cream

Christine Diet: (1.7lbs of food per day)

This diet is what Christine would have eaten each day if she ate only taco-bell fresco items and kept her daily calories at 1250, her official daily calorie intake.
2 Fresco Bean Burritos
1 Fresco Chicken Burrito Supreme
1 Fresco Soft Taco
6 pieces of chewing gum (for the extra 30 calories and to help with hunger pangs)

Totals:

Here we have the Nutrition facts for each of the diets described above…

The point here is that if you cut your calorie intake down to 60-some percent of what it ought to be, you’re going to lose weight. No matter if you eat purely ice-cream or purely pizza, a 1250 calorie diet is going to result in weight-loss. Clearly, this doesn’t make for a healthy diet. Instead of making you healthy, a taco-bell diet would lead to a severely malnourished individual, and as we saw above, is about as good for you as eating nothing but pizza.

There’s nothing wrong with including taco-bell in your starving student food repertoire, just don’t pretend you’re eating healthy.

This is a proper burrito. Fair sized, warm, and not being smothered in sauce are just a few of its noble characteristics.

I must confess that I have, at times, considered myself a student of philosophy. Undoubtedly, the most interesting of the big questions is the biggest question, that is, what are the chances that this God dude exists. Up until this morning, it is true, I had my doubts. But, today I came upon a great epiphany and am now prepared to show that God does indeed exist.

The reason that we can be sure that God exists is simply that Burritos exist.Think about it. How could something of such divine taste ever come into existence in the absence of a divine being? As I site here typing, it is becoming more and more clear. I feel the divine presence in me. I can still feel the dust of flour on my fingers which so recently held a steaming warm tortilla. The smell of cheese melting into freshly cooked potatoes and eggs still permeates the air. A spicy tinge of hot sauce still lingers on my tongue. My headache, caused by an absent minded decision to mix red wine, malt liquor, and three different types of beer, has finally seemed to vanish, a testimony to the miraculous healing power which all burritos possess.

Indeed, Burritos saved my soul this weekend, just as they have in weekends past and just as they will continue to do until I find myself stationed somewhere other than Southern California. But, one cannot help but ask, what are these divine beings which we call Burritos? Where did they come from? From where, exactly, are their hangover curing properties derived? Yes, the Burrito is a mysterious being, and science will never have all the answers. But, we do know this much:

Burritos are a member of the Mexican food family. The name is a Spanish word. It literally means “little donkey” (Burro = Donkey, -ito is a diminutive meaning small or little)

It is a bit of a curious phenomenon though. Burritos are undoubtedly Mexican food. They are purchased most commonly in Mexicanesque  taco shops. But, a short trip south of the border will reveal, at least it did in my experience, that burritos in Tijuana are few and far between. You are much more likely to run into tacos, which possess divine properties all their own, but I will spare you of that discussion.

So, I got to thinking, where did these Burritos come from? A quick query to my question quencher, Wikipedia, revealed a nice little folk story which answered everything I had ever wanted to know about the little donkeys. Here is my Rendition:

It all started during the mexican revolution, in a border town called Juárez. Here, a brilliant man by the name of Juan Mendez found himself in a bit of a bind. He was in the food business, but was confronted with an unfortunate puzzle. Mr. Mendez would cook some food, strap it onto his donkey, and sell it from his four legged taco stand. The problem though, was that after wondering around selling his food for a few hours, the food got cold and no longer possessed its appetizing qualities. Mr. Mendez found that this problem could be solved by simply wrapping his delicious treats into big flour tortillas which would trap the heat and keep his products warm and tasty all day long. His entrepreneur intellect proved a success, his food became popular with the townsfolk, and it gained a reputation as ‘comida del burrito,’ literally, food of the little donkey. In time, the name got shortened, and we were left with the greatest invention since the printing press, the burrito.

In this beautiful and holy city, the burrito was born.

Traditional burritos, I’ve been told, were small and thin, and usually contained only one or two ingredients. Luckily, the Americans got a hold of these things and fixed them up a bit. For one, we made them bigger. We didn’t limit ourselves to one or two ingredients, and began stuffing them with all sorts of delicious stuff, like potatoes, eggs, and guacamole. With these minor modifications, the Burritos I know and love were born.

Now, me and countless other San Diegan residents are so blessed that at any time of the day, we can hop in the car, drive to a taco shop, and stuff our mouths full of giant, steamy, greasy mountains of goodness, which will bring unmeasurable quantities of delight, all for the low cost of a few bucks and an excessive boost in cholesterol.

But, this brings me to a little pet peeve of mine, that is, people who ruin burritos. Its not a difficult science, but nonetheless, people continue to think that their modifications will improve the greatest thing ever to grace this earth with its presence. Im going to lay out a few rules about how, in my opinion, burritos ought to be.

First off, they should never be any narrower than your wrist. The point of a burrito is to stuff as much delicious stuff as possible into one tortilla. There is no good reason to limit yourself by making burritos out of tea saucer sized tortillas. A good burrito should be approximately the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biggest forearm. End of Story.

Second, they should never be frozen. This is just sacrilegious. What good reason could there possibly be for freezing a steaming stack of goodness? If you have left over burritos, do the world a favor and feed them to hungry people while they are still warm. I understand the temptation to bring burritos to the parts of the world which don’t have them, but please resist. A bag of frozen Burritos from costco will do nothing more than disappoint a hungry burrito lover, possibly emotionally scarring them so they will never truly enjoy a burrito again.

These burritos, served at McDonalds, can be recognized as imposters due to their small size and frail appearance.

Third, a burrito should never be eaten with a fork or knife. Burritos have undergone a complex engineering process to result in a food that fits perfectly in your hands. This makes it so that while a Burrito is being eaten, the Burrito and the culinary connoisseur eating it can become one. A properly held Burrito feels like an extension of your soul. This religious experience of being one with your food can not be attained by traditional means of kitchen utensils.

Fourth, a burrito should never be laid on its side and smothered with anything, including enchilada sauce. Not only does this force you to use utensils, thereby violating rule number three, but it also violates the entire concept of a burrito. Burritos are meant to be containers which are filled with good stuff. Putting food outside of the container is just messy, unnecessary, and unorthodox. Just as you don’t store left over food on the lid of a Tupperware container, neither should you disgrace a burrito by laying it down and pouring stuff on it. This is not to be confused with pouring hot sauce on individual bites of your burrito, which is an acceptable and even recommended method of consumption.

Fifth and finally, you should not try to put too much healthy stuff inside a burrito. While Burritos do possess magical hangover curing properties, they are not to be confused with health food. This does not mean that you cannot put vegetables in there for added taste, it only means that health should take a back seat in this instance. Burritos are commonly eaten at 4 in the morning in some kind of drunken stupor, or at 10 in the morning to get rid of the lingering alcohol taste accrued the night before. Trying to make them healthy will only result in an unsatisfied customer. There is a time and a place for everything, but the inside of a burrito will never be a place for healthy stuff.

If these rules are followed religiously, I can assure you will lead a blessed life. It would not be fair to finish this discussion without mentioning the addictive nature of Burritos. Burrito addiction can be an ugly thing. Therefore, one should always consume burritos responsibly. You wouldn’t want to die of a heart attack at 30, mostly because that would cheat you out of a good 40 years of Burrito consumption. Eating Burritos in moderation, in combination with exercise and a balanced diet, can open up a whole new world of goodness. But please, use your discretion wisely. Until next time, happy eating.