Once upon a time, there was a thirteen-year-old boy who loved to eat hamburgers and chips in fast-food restaurants. Every week, Joe and his friend Daniel would meet up to go to the local McDonalds, and order a Big Mac with fries and a fizzy drink.

Joe liked hamburgers so much that during the week he couldn’t stop thinking about the burger he would be eating the following weekend. One night, he even dreamed about a burger because he’d been thinking about it so much…

In Joe’s dream there appeared a freshly made burger with grated cheese, which said to him: “Eat burgers, they’re delicious!!” So Joe took the two enormous hamburgers that had appeared in his dream, and gobbled them down in one mouthful. But suddenly he began to feel sick, for he had eaten too much too quickly and his tummy was hurting. Just before waking up, Joe looked at himself in the mirror and saw that he had developed a belly as big as Santa Claus’, so he shouted: “Noooooo!!”

Well, this woke Joe up with a start and he ran to the bathroom mirror to check his tummy. Phew! It had all been a dream.

The next day, like every Sunday, Joe and Daniel met up by the park to go for a burger, but today something unexpected was about to happen.

Just as they were about to go into the restaurant, Joe stopped at the door and said: “Dan, I don’t want a burger today. If we keep on eating so many of them, I’ll get fat or sick. So shall we swap the burger for a salad today?”

Surprised, Daniel asked: “So we’re never going to eat burgers again?”

“‘Course we are! All I’m trying to say is that we should eat salads more often, and that way our diet will be healthier, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get a nice salad then,” replied Daniel with a smile.

And that was how the boys realised that eating fast food isn’t all bad – but you should only eat it from time to time and instead eat a lot more vegetables for a healthy diet.

THE END

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Stories for kids written by: www.shortstories.net (a pseudonym).