From that list, almost never.
But I eat subs at least once a week, if that counts.
It’s a money thing for me. I could eat, for example, Captain D’s battered fish and shrimp until I pop, except that it blows my budget.
Psst… it’s “intents and purposes” not “intensive purposes”
I used to be at “I love that stuff.” Most of my meals ended up being from there. This was mostly due to laziness. Now, However, I’m somewhere between “every now and then” and “rarely”, and have been for the past few months. Today, I had one of Panera’s half-salads. Before that, my last fast food was a month ago, when I tried Five Guys for the first time. But before that, I’d had a cheeseburger only from a local place a few days earlier.
As you know I’ve had temp jobs for the last three years. I eat a LOT of beans and rice or lentils and barley or, well you get the idea.
Then on Sunday’s I try to have milk or eggs or something different. It’s monotonous but until I get a “real” job or can qualify for food stamps, what are you gonna do.
And one thing, you don’t get hungry. You can buy a LOT of beans and rice cheap 
Emory center for heart failure gave me simple instructions for eating out- “avoid restaurants”.
Pretty much every day. That’s because I’m lazy and it’s cheap. I like salads, fruit and yogurt and the oatmeal from McD’s. I can fool myself into thinking I’m being semi-healthy. I used to be a HUGE french fry lover, but now all that salt just makes me swell, so I stay away.
Your interpretation (and that of most nutritionists and the US government, to be fair) is directly opposed to my idea of ‘healthy’. My diet is 60-80% fat (mostly from coconuts, eggs, cream/butter, and red meat - so highly saturated). I avoid excess dietary sugars, in particular fructose, like the devil.
The main source of calories in almost everything you can get from a ‘fast food’ establishment is carbohydrate, by a large margin. Much of it is from added table sugar or HFCS, which is around 50% fructose. Additionally, most of the fat is from unnatural, unhealthy sources like soy and corn oil. That, to me, is what makes a steady diet of fast food very unhealthy and likely to raise someone’s risk of being overweight, diabetic, and otherwise health-compromised.
When I go to Chipotle I get a burrito bowl with barbacoa, white rice, salsa and guac. This is a perfectly healthy meal. If I had to go to McD’s for example I’d get a bacon cheeseburger with no bun and a small fries. Decently healthy in my book - but I can make my own with more nutritious ingredients (pastured meat ideally, and potatoes fried in beef tallow or lard), that will taste much better.
I think I average just under once a month. It’s probably a good thing that driving to McDonalds is way out of my way, or I’d go there before work for breakfast more than once every 3-4 years.
I don’t eat much during the day, but sometimes I get faint from hunger, so I carry a granola bar in my purse for emergencies. I try to avoid going through the fast food places because that’s the edge of the slippery slope. I’d go every single day if left to my own devices, there are enough of these restaurants around. I’d say I hit up Wendy’s or Burger King or whatever once or twice a month.
I picked what’s true – at most once a month, probably more like once every few months. But I don’t think it’s crap, necessarily – I actually like the stuff, but I don’t live near a joint and I’m not going out of my way to pick something up.
I’m a fatass since the winter started, if it’s any consolation to the presumably somewhat guilty lovers of the snack, and mostly a vegetarian (meat maybe once a week or less often). Fast Food is good for you, I conclude.
One to twice a week for me.
But its minimal. Like 2 or 3 tacos at Taco Bell. Or one bacon egg and cheese biscuit. Or one of those small one dollar cheese burgers or chicken sandwiches. No extras, no big order of fries. No big drink. More like a snack than meal.
And me and the SO eat out at something like TGIFs or a local BBQ place or mexican or seafood or italian pretty close to once a week. And we often take enough home in doggy bags to make another full meal the next day (In other words we eat about half of your average meal these days).
Every now and then if we’re counting Subway, which IMO is in somewhat of a different category; I’ll eat a 6" turkey or Club sandwich every couple of weeks. No mayo, less for health reasons than because I despise it. Chick-fil-A maybe once a month.
If we’re being honest, though, many of the meals I eat at non-fast-food restaurants (at least 2-3 times a week for lunch) are surely just as bad for you, if not worse. I just can’t bring myself to eat McDonalds/Burger King/Taco Bell/etc. anymore, although in my younger days I practically lived on it—reading Fast Food Nation was the nail in the coffin.
I am a member of a family of three, one of whom is under 12 years old. We go out to eat just once a week on Friday night. We rotate who chooses the restaurant. (Last night we went to the locally owned, Mom & Pop Chinese restaurant that is celebrating its 50th anniversay this year.) Probably twice a month or so the pick is a fast food place like Burger King, KFC or Taco Bell. Sometimes it’s a chain place with somewhat slower food like Ninety-Nine or I-Hop. And there are lots of one-of-a-kind local places in the mix too. (And it’s not always the child who pick fast food.) All other meals are home food or elementary school cafeteria.
By the definition in the OP, I practically never eat fast food - once every month or two I’ll get a sundae at McDonalds or something after eating my brown-bagged lunch at work. I do eat burgers, burritos, etc. now and again, but almost always from small non-chain local places that use fresh ingredients. I try to bring leftover home-cooked dinner to work the next day for lunch, but if I don’t, the backup is usually a falafel sandwich or something, not a Big Mac. And at home, there are approximately half a billion cheap, fast local places (Mexican and Middle Eastern, mostly) that make their food from scratch for about the same price as a chain fast food joint. And I find that basically al restaurant food is insanely salty and I am drinking water nonstop afterward, which is kind of annoying. I’d much rather eat my own (or Tom Scud’s) cooking - we can control what goes into it.
If I can grab a fabulous whole Lebanese roast chicken wrapped in fresh-baked lavash for $7 on the way home from the train, there’s pretty much zero temptation to stop by Subway. For sure, the food was a factor in our choice of neighborhood.
In THIS household:
We grow our own sprouts
We do NOT buy organic - why pay more for a different label?
Buy our meat (beef) from a farmer we know, who sells non feed lot cows (no antibiotics, no steroids)
DRink Tap water _ it rates very highly internationally…
Cook most of our meals from scratch - we rarely go to about 6 restaurants of various ethnicity that also cook from scratch
for a family of 5 (inc 3 teenagers and their guests) spend less than $350 month on food.
My wife and I have great cholesterol/ BP and other indicators, although we tend to carry an extra 5-15 lbs depending on season.
our teens are healthy very active and very fit.
I only WISH there were places like that around here. There may be one or two up in the university section, but there is literally no place to park a car. I guess these restaurants are just for the students, who can walk there with ease.
We eat at Five Guys every 4-6 weeks or so. Little hamburgers, no fries, so it’s not terrible.
We always pack food when we travel so we eat well. It’s hard, because we prefer hot leftovers for lunch but it beats the hell out of anything on the road (Subway’s whole wheat bread isn’t real whole wheat, after all).
Before I got pregnant with my daughter, I had gone for about 3 years without any fast food. However, once pregnant with her, I had a Wendy’s kids’ meal every once in a while. Unfortunately, fast food is the only thing near my office, so if you forget lunch, unless you’re willing to drive a bit, there’s nothing else. I generally pack my lunch and forget maybe once every 3-4 weeks, which is when I grab some fast food. I usually manage to limit myself to a salad and maybe some chili, but sometimes I fail.
I can have an occasional hamburger or hot dog if I’m really hungry, but I would never use the word restaurant together with McDonald’s and their ilk.
Major fast food chains like McDs, BK, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, KFC, White Castle, etc., not so often. Mostly rest stop visits when there is no alternative. I selected “less than once a month” but then I remembered Subway was on the list, which would bump that up considerably though, as I get lunch from at Subway 3-4 times a month (less often than every week, but every once in a while twice in a week).
However I have to admit it’s not that my diet is so vastly superior in the end - just that for pizza and burgers and food of that kind, I frequent one of several pizzerias and a local diner for dinner. I do have pizza or burgers for dinner maybe 10 times a month.
As for lunch, while I don’t hit fast food places very often, I do hit the Manhattan street vendor carts with regularity. You could certainly debate whether or not getting a “chicken and lamb gyro” from Rafiqi is such a huge step up nutritionally.