22,000 Subways

So what does this economy taste like? caught my attention and I found myself watching Nightline on Thursday.

I've heard that McDonald's (Recession Diet) is doing banner business during this economy and it looks like Subway, with some 22,000 strong franchises, is not far behind.

The journalist believes that the advertising campaign and the store's ability to use small storefronts is significant to their success. Subway's C.E.O. also credits Jared Fogle's phenomenal weight loss story as a Subway success factor.

On the advertisement front, Subway does have some clever ads as does McDonald's.


I've seen this ad in Shape magazine several times and it always moves me. McDonald's got rid of its supersize fries after Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me hit theatres but the supersize concept is a hard one to shake.





Jared showed off his fat pants in the interview. I have my own version -- some black Ralph Lauren pants that I plan to keep. Those pants were a sweet find at $20 dollars but I want to keep them as reminder of how I arrived at plus-size in the first place. As I've been advised, I will get rid of the remainder of my ill-fitting clothing because I don't want to it to be convenient for me to wear my larger clothes again.

Protein To Go

Close your eyes, my grandmother said. I knew that she was up to something so I turned around. My grandmother was straight up trying to put some peach cobbler in my mouth. I was just going to give you a little.

Yesterday, my aunt Girt tipped me off that there was a remaining piece of sweet potato pie. There were quite a few cakes around and the SP pie had been forgotten. She told me to remind her today so that she could give me the slice.

Did you see Super Size Me? If anyone posed the super size option to Morgan Spurlock during the course of of his 30 day experiment, he had his order super sized. I feel the same way about sweet potato pie. If anyone offers it to me, I'm pretty much going to take them up on the offer.

As I was leaving my g'ma's house, I locked eyes with my aunt to say goodbye when I remembered the pie. She went to get it and we made the exchange in the kitchen.


Did you taste the chicken? my aunt wanted to know. Frankly, I'm a bit tired of chicken but I could tell that my aunt had enjoyed it and she wanted to share. I sampled the smoked bird and it was quite tasty. My aunt packed some in a bag and, as I headed down State Street, I dipped into my baggie and ate my protein for the day.

What's Earth Day Got To Do With It?

I taped Oprah on Wednesday because a teaser, What happens to our garbage?, pulled me in.

As it turns out, an astounding amount of paper (71.6 million tons) ends up in our landfills. I recently weaned myself off of bottled water and I will try to do the same with napkins and such.

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, was one of several guests on the show and is an advocate of meatless Mondays. Pollan claims that if everyone went meatless for one day of the week, it would be the equivalent of taking 20 million mid-size sedans off the road.

Pollan also said that people are not aware of the carbon footprint of food and that agriculture changes the landscape more than anything else that we do. This statement was my favorite:

When we sit down to eat, that's our most profound engagement with nature.

I also like Pollan's advice to shop the periphery of the store where the real food is at. In the middle, he said, is the food that never goes bad.

Pollan's rule of thumb is to only eat things that his grandmother would recognize which does not include items like portable yogurt. Expanding on the grandmother rule, Pollan advised people not to eat anything that won't eventually rot. It's not real food, he surmised. This advice reminds me of Morgan Spurlock's documentary, Super Size Me, in which he did several experiments with food and the composition of McDonald's french fries never changed.



Some nice stores were featured on Oprah's Earth Day show, including:

Mysigg

To-Goware

Terracycle

As you can imagine, since the organizations have been mentioned on Oprah, increased traffic has affected the websites. Whole Foods is also giving away tote bags for free but the coupon expires today.

Whole Foods Coupon