FoodBozo.com

The competition for meals packed with calories and fat was fierce this year.

When we published our first edition of Eat This, Not That: Worst Foods in America back in 2007, we made a lot of restaurant chains very unhappy. But we also made a lot of their attorneys really, really happy, as they soon began earning massive legal fees sending us saber-rattling correspondences on behalf of the food marketers they represented.

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s time for another walk down the Hall of Restaurant Shame. And we’re sorry to say that, despite the fact that more than 6 million Americans have begun using Eat This, Not That! as their weapon of choice against bad-for-you food and the restaurants that proffer it, the restaurants themselves still haven’t gotten the message. This year brought perhaps the craziest, most calorically damaging menu items we’ve ever seen. In fact, you should not attempt to eat a single thing on this list unless you are sharing it with at least three other people—because each of these “individual servings” include a full day (or more) worth of calories.

Read more: Worst Foods in America, 2010

Who hasn’t unwrapped a sandwich while driving down the highway or pulled a hard U-turn into a fast-food joint on the way home from a late meeting or soccer game? We practically live in our cars, so we need quick food, and please, we’d like it to be healthy.

Well, guess what: We surveyed the nation’s 100 largest fast-food chains, as defined by the number of locations, and found many are creating menus that look more and more like what we’d cook ourselves (if we had the time)—from nutritious soups and healthy salads to fresh whole grains and sensible desserts. Even better: They’re offering good-news Mexican, Asian, and Mediterranean fare.

Read more: America’s Top 5 Healthiest Fast Food Restaurants

There’s an arms race going on, and it could mean disaster for your waistline.

But this terrifying competition to build the biggest, scariest weapons of mass destruction isn’t happening between the United States and Russia, or on the Korean peninsula, or among angry rivals somewhere in the Middle East. It’s happening between America’s restaurants—every one of them, it seems, is eager to show it has the biggest, scariest, most destructive new food in the marketplace. And the unsuspecting victims of this Strangelovian contest? You and me.

Read more here: Scariest New Restaurant Foods

As experiments go, this one isn’t flashy.

But the success — or failure — of one Starbucks cafe on the edge of a trendy Seattle neighborhood could ripple through the nation’s coffee house industry.

Because where Starbucks goes, others follow.

Dubbed “Olive Way,” the store is the biggest percolator yet for ideas that the world’s largest coffee company has been testing separately at nearly a dozen locations around the globe. And what succeeds at Olive Way will most likely be spread to other Starbucks stores around the country.

Read more here: Starbucks shop tries wine, ‘coffee theater’

A bill was introduced at Queen’s Park on Wednesday aiming to make eating out a healthier experience.

The private member’s bill from NDP health promotion critic France Gelinas would require major chain restaurants to list calories on their menus to encourage healthy eating across Ontario.

Read more here: Calorie counts on menus proposed for restaurant chains

The owner of a popular Toronto gastropub who asks to remain nameless is showing off what he calls his “nightly journal,” though “naughty journal” is a more accurate descriptor. Most of the handwritten entries deal with the dull details of restaurant life—nightly sales, tables turned, supplier snafus. Where reading turns interesting, even salacious, is in its dutiful recording of customer misbehaviour collected via staff and fellow customer complaints. Names are used when they’re known. Otherwise, physical descriptions suffice.

Read more: How to get on a restaurant’s hit list

Written by: Michael Hill, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Writers Sue Manning in Los Angeles and Caryn Rousseau in Chicago contributed to this report.

Dieters can’t believe everything they read: The food at many popular chain restaurants and in the freezer section of the supermarket may contain a lot more calories than advertised.

A U.S. study of 10 chain restaurants, including Wendy’s and Ruby Tuesday, found that the number of calories in 29 meals or other menu items was an average of 18 per cent higher than listed.

And frozen supermarket meals from Lean Cuisine, Weight Watchers, Healthy Choice and South Beach Living had eight per cent more calories than the labels said, according to the study, published in this month’s Journal of the American Dietetic Association. The researchers and other experts aren’t accusing restaurants and food companies of trying to deceive customers. They said most of the discrepancies can be explained by variations in ingredients, portion sizes and testing methods. For example, the teenager behind the counter might have put too much mayonnaise on one sandwich.

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