Last week there was a shooting at the McDonald’s down the street from my apartment complex that was probably gang related. The suspect was last seen running up the street towards Taco Bell. The victim had died yesterday and the police made no arrests yet. Also in the news yesterday was a shooting at a Taco Bell in San Antonio, TX, where the suspect ordered seven Beef Crunchy Burritos, got upset when they were no longer on sale for $0.99 each (regular price is $1.49 each), and shot at the manager with a BB gun. The SWAT team had to use tear gas to flush him out of a barricaded motel room.

This begs the obvious question: What has Taco Bell been putting into their meat filling lately?

Okay, that’s an unfair question. It’s only coincidental that the suspect in one shooting was seen heading towards a Taco Bell in San Jose and a suspect in another shooting shot up a Taco Bell in San Antonio. A cause-and-effect between eating food at Taco Bell and experiencing a “taco rage” to start shooting haven’t been firmly established.

Not yet, anyway.

What has been established is that eating at fast food restaurants is unhealthy. Even McDonald can take the most healthiest ingredient, oatmeal, and turn it into a loaded sugar bomb that cost times more. If you want to live a healthier lifestyle, you need to stop eating at fast food restaurants. I still run into friends who thinks it’s amazing that I stopped eating out and how they would just die if they didn’t. (If they don’t change their habits, they will die from either clogged arteries or a stray bullet.) It wasn’t an easy transition.

I ended up working for tech companies in Mountain View that made driving out to get fast food something I couldn’t do since I was still taking public transportation. I did eat at the cafeterias that had healthier food options and my weekly lunch budget limited the amount of food I could get. Google was the worst place to eat at since the cafeteria food and mini-kitchen snacks were always free, where the typical worker gains an average 25 pounds. (The mac-and-cheese on Fridays was still heavenly delicious.) I eventually gave up eating lunch to use my one hour break to write two-thirds of a 700-page first novel behind the steering wheel of my car.

After two years of being unemployed and three months of being underemployed, all I can afford is to eat at home is a regular diet of beans, eggs, rice and tuna. On the few occasions that I do eat out, I often find myself trying to order the smallest possible meal and still end up feeling sick. Once you give up eating processed foods, it’s really hard to go back to being sick all the time.