Let’s face it — Americans have always had a love affair with gaining unnecessary pounds and then losing weight by going to the gym and eating “healthy.” However, it is commonly known that the amount of people who lose weight and successfully keep it off is minimal. Often the post-weight-loss weight-gain is blamed on quitting a strict gym regimen. In truth, most people just begin to confuse what eating healthy is all about. They start to loosen the grip on the excessive label reading and stop using their calorie-counting iPhone apps. Many Americans just balance the good foods with the bad foods, thinking that they’ll never be one of those people who gain the weight back.

Fast food corporations have taken full advantage of this weight loss woe and reinforce it with their advertisements. We all remember Jared, right? He was the fast food miracle to Americans and an angel sent to Subway. What could have been better for them than to advertise a guy who lost over 240 pounds just by walking and eating sandwiches from his local Subway? Americans fell head over heels for Jared. He immediately “disproved” all the dieticians that said you had to cut out fast food from your life to lose weight. Subway began to tell consumers that it was not their food that was unhealthy, but the way Americans were customizing their sandwiches. If the consumers simply “made better choices” then Subway wasn’t the bad guy at all.

So, Jared did a lot of commercials and people ate a lot of Subway.

Enter Christine. Sent to Americans during Biggest Loser commercials, she is Taco Bell’s chosen one for their new “Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet”. Have you heard Christine’s amazing story?! Taco Bell has recently introduced her to the world — an everyday-soccer-mom-type who lost 54 pounds by eating one of their new “Fresco” options regularly and exercising. Apparently, each of the seven new items on the Drive-Thru Diet menu is a healthier option than the rest of the food on Taco Bell’s regular menu. The ingredients used in the “Fresco” line are fresh compared to the normal ingredients. For example, they use real tomatoes instead of those little packets of diabetes-inducing hot sauce.

Again, the consumers are told that if they simply made healthier choices from the given fast food menus and exercised, they would not only lose weight, but keep the pounds off. However, if Subway and Taco Bell are willing to admit that certain items on their menus are healthier than the others, than why can’t they simply make it all healthy? The annoyance here is how they advertise that they care about their consumers’ health, when in reality, they are just trying to float in the health food market. True, they do not have any moral responsibility to take a health initiative, but to trick customers into thinking they are eating healthy is unnecessary.

This trend of eating healthy from a fast food restaurant is confusing people who sincerely would like to lose weight or just eat healthier. Did you hear Jared has gained some weight back? Subway is having a hard time admitting it. Christine has a good chance of gaining the weight back as well. There will be days where she does not order from the Drive-Thru menu. The unhealthy food will be right there staring her in the face, as it does to all customers. The thought process will begin with the fact that they ordered healthy yesterday, and deserve to fulfill their unhealthy cravings. And soon enough, Christine and the rest of the “healthy” fast food eaters will gain the weight back just like Jared did. And the saga will continue, up five pounds, down two pounds, because that’s the American way.

Sonal Patel is studying communcations in her fourth year at Drexel University. She is currently interning for the Drexel Publishing Group.

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