Smartest move - dine at home!

ALL OF THE recent chatter about local restaurant food safety had me thinking that, as bad as the statistics are, it's really far worse than what most people can even imagine.

The restaurant industry has an appetite for one thing: profits! Restaurants don't really care about your health or nutrition, let alone food safety.

Let's take, for example, the "healthy" grilled vegetable salad with salmon, sold at a local mid-level chain. This healthy-sounding, $20 salad has a whopping 1040 calories, if we can believe their website (content is often underestimated). This fat-bomb salad also will give you about three days' worth of fat and sodium, to boot. That many calories is the equivalent of two Big Macs!

Clearly, if you're suffering from conditions like heart disease, diabetes or high blood pressure, and are trying to eat healthfully and avoid unnecessary and unwanted pounds, then dining out is probably not in your best interest.

Now, let's take a look at something simple, like restaurants and hygiene. Do you think that most restaurant servers wash their hands after handling your money or credit card? Do you think that assiduous hand-washing is a part of restaurant training protocol? I can tell you from first-hand experience, the answer is no! Are servers routinely sent home when they have the flu, a cold or a cut? Fat chance.

In all the years I worked in restaurants, I was never sent home for having the sniffles or a Band-Aid on my finger. Most places don't even require hair nets or hats to protect the public from hair mistakenly getting in the food.

Now, while I worked the front of the house, there was far more danger in the back of the house. Do you honestly think that cooks and chefs wash their hands after every trip to the bathroom? What about the countless times one scratches, blows his nose, or worse, digs out a wedgie? I was eyewitness to that, and much worse.

As for the third reason you should seriously consider preparing and eating most, if not all, of your meals at home: think about the money you'll save. For example, last year I saved more than $800 by dropping my daily coffee habit.

After getting sick last year from a take-out pizza, I decided to learn how to make my own. I was shocked at how easy it was to make, and the saving was tremendous. The cost of all the ingredients to make one cheese pizza was about $1.65. That's a whopping 85 percent saving over the retail price, and it took only about 20 minutes to bake in my oven. I did the same thing with salads, and again saved, on average, 80 percent to 85 percent. You can save your waistline, your health and a ton of money, all while enjoying delicious homemade dishes.

Bon appetit!