-Caren Baginski is a junior journalism major. Read her companion article online at The Post Online or send her an e-mail at caren.baginski@ohiou.edu.
One of my earliest restaurant memories comes from my preschool days. After my mom picked me up in our colossal Chevy van, we headed to Izzy's (http://www.izzys.com/) for hot dogs and ruffled potato chips. I can tell you which booth we sat in and how I swung through the roped off queue lines to the order counter, then hid behind my mom's pant leg as she ordered. The owner knew us by name.
Since then my dining out selections have become more sophisticated. In my own right, I am a restaurant aficionado. I enjoy good company and good food that I, lacking in cooking expertise, would not otherwise get to eat.
But what makes me an aficionado is not characterized by the cuisine I order. Simply, it's the sheer number of times I have spent in a booth forking food eagerly into my mouth. And with 900,000 eating establishments in the United States, there's no end to variety.
In 2005, the National Restaurant Association (http://www.restaurant.org/research) predicts that Americans will spend 47 percent of their food dollar on eating out. If there's one thing I learned from Economics 103, it's that demand drives supply. The restaurant industry is the nation's largest employer outside of government, employing about 12.2 million people who make 54 billion meals each year.
Calculating my slice of this figure is eye opening.
With a conservative estimate of eating out three times a week for 20 years (minus a year to account for baby food) I've dined out a total of 3,120 times. At a minimum of an hour and a half a pop, that makes for 4,680 hours of my life spent in a restaurant.
This might not seem like much considering how many times we wash our hands or spend gluing our eyes to the TV every day. But really, that's 3,120 opportunities for food poisoning, lousy service and long please-wait-to-be-seated requests. It's also countless decisions to be made on drink, appetizer, entrée and dessert.
I rarely make it to the dessert these days because the entrée that sounded reasonable in the description was really two (or three) meals mistakenly disguised as one ^ la The Cheesecake Factory (http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/menu.htm). I don't wanna diet, but I also don't like the trend I'm seeing in American restaurant culture where even more is better than more.
Food chains have come a long way from my neighborhood Izzy's. Swanky affairs like Maggiano's Little Italy and Buca di Beppo elevate the dining experience while widening your waistband. My parents always taught me to clean my plate, but lately that's been harder and harder to do.
Last year, my friends and I went to Ruby Tuesday's here in Athens. When I opened the menu and saw calorie counts and grams of fat looming up at me beneath each hamburger, pasta and Thai wrap, I distinctly remember thinking, You've got to be kidding me.
Ruby Tuesday's isn't the only restaurant to jump on the 2004 carb-craze bandwagon (http://www.carbwire.com/category/restaurants). Two out of three restaurants have added low-carb items to their menu as a result of the low-carb diet trend, reports the National Restaurant Association.
I've seen items tucked unobtrusively into the menu folds of Romano's Macaroni Grill, Red Lobster and TGI Friday's. Fast food moguls like Taco Bell, Wendy's and Arby's (don't forget Jared and the Subway diet) take already unhealthy food and slap it on less bread. This is supposed to be good for you.
While the Atkins diet wanes, those of us who strive to eat balanced meals in moderation are being hit on two fronts by the restaurant industry. Low-carb meal plus gigantic portion does not equal diet. If it's any consolation, Ruby Tuesday's has since removed the stats from their menu (and put them in another booklet on your table).
The damage has already been done. I painfully realize that that steak has 900 calories and 30 grams of fat. I won't ever order it because that's already more than half of a regular caloric daily intake, and I like to eat more than one meal in a day.
I think it's time for this aficionado to start learning how to cook.
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