I made a mistake

I ate at Wendy's. You know, the restaurant.

I have happy memories of Wendy's. The Wendy's in Caldwell used to serve french toast in the mornings with ice cream scoop-sized dollops of butter.

And then in college. I frequented the Wendy's in Provo, especially my sophomore year when I thought I could win the love of a handsome older man (yeah, he was 23, I was 19) by driving the car-less fellow there and buying him junior bacon cheeseburgers and 4-piece chicken nuggets anytime the whim struck him. It didn't work. That is, he never fell in love with me. But Wendy's was fun.

But it's been years since I ate there with anything that could be called regularity. And lately I've been on an anti-non-food kick. You know, wanting to eat mostly things that either don't come in packages or whose ingredients I actually recognize. And fast food doesn't fit too well there.

My children have no objection to non-food, however, and seem to prefer non-food to food when given the choice. So when we were all hungry yesterday and were way closer to Wendy's than home, we stopped in.

The first problem was the half eaten candy bar and stray french fry on the floor right in front of the ordering counter. Both of my boys tried to pick them up and eat them. At least once. Yuck.

The next was the loud girl who hollered stuff like, "Oh my God, who filled these french fries? This is, like, not even a kid's portion!" Like, loud. Like, several times.

But we ordered. I got each boy his own kids meal with chicken nuggets, fries, and "white milk." I've learned from my minimal fast food kids meal experience that if you just say "milk" you will be asked "white or chocolate?" so you might as well specify your color upfront. I also ordered something for myself that was so not yummy that I don't even want to talk about it. (I did eat it anyway.)

I opened the milk for the boys (yes, white) and, to distract myself from the yuck I was shoving in my mouth, cast my eyes about for something to read. They fell on the back of the bottle of milk. I noticed that the ingredient list was sort of longish. That's odd, I thought. It's milk...what else could be in it?

Here's what else: lowfat milk, vitamin d palmitate, calcium carbonate, something polysorbate, and carrageenan. The last three in the list had little stars next to them. I found the matching asterisk below and read "These ingredients not typically found in milk." Oh really.

Yeah, maybe it sounds stupid to you, but when I order MILK, I don't expect to have to CHECK THE INGREDIENTS. I expect it to just be, you know, milk.

And the more I thought about it, the more it disturbed me. I mean, what is this stuff and why should my boys be ingesting it? I usually feel good giving them milk instead of soda. But now I wonder, which is worse: endless high fructose corn syrup or multiple unfamiliar chemicals and stabilizers?

When I got up to leave, I decided to walk back up to the counter for a moment. I waited while a drive-thru customer who'd had to park and come in got the dressing and toppings for his salad that the glorious Wendy's crew had forgotten. Then, though not in these exact words, I asked Rikki at the cash register to thank whichever loud co-worker it was who just taught my three year old how to take the Lord's name in vain.

So much for happy memories.