[learc83]

That's technically correct but it misses the whole picture.

For an extreme example--it's a lot easier to gain weight if you regularly stop by the convience store and pick up cookies, chips and a bottle of coke for dinner than if you cook lean chicken and roast vegetables.

Sure you could eat a similar calorie portion of both.

[Merrill]

The more common scenario is for the cookies, chips and coke to come from the respective aisle-long displays at the supermarket. Ready to eat frozen meals tend to be high calorie as well.

As for eating out, fast food is bad, but fast casual is worse. All you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster, the pasta cabonara with chicken at Cheesecake Factory (~2300 calories) and your personal pie at the pizza place put on more weight than convenience store snacks. Plus a few beers or glasses of wine, a margarita or two -- pretty soon it adds up.

[learc83]

>The more common scenario is for the cookies, chips and coke to come from the respective aisle-long displays at the supermarket.

I'm not sure I see the point here?

>Ready to eat frozen meals tend to be high calorie as well.

They can be, but I wouldn't say they tend to be high calorie. Most of the cheaper frozen dinners tend to be somewhere around 500 calories. Only the larger, more expensive, higher calorie dinners tend to get near 1,000 calories.

>As for eating out, fast food is bad, but fast casual is worse.

Fast casual doesn't mean Red Lobster or The Cheesecake Factory. Chipotle, and Panera Bread are examples of fast casual restaurants.

All you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster, the pasta cabonara with chicken at Cheesecake Factory (~2300 calories) and your personal pie at the pizza place put on more weight than convenience store snacks. Plus a few beers or glasses of wine, a margarita or two -- pretty soon it adds up.

For all but the pizza place your getting close to $100 meals there. The number of people who are eating like that regularly enough for that to be the primary cause of them being overweight is relatively small. And when you consider that obesity is negatively correlated with income, I don't think those restaurants are having a huge impact here.

As for a personal pan pizza. A pepperoni personal pan pizza at Pizza hut is only ~600 calories, that's less than a burger and fries at pretty much any fast food restaurant.