Big Mac

[wishes]

and what is wrong with meat? nothing.
I think this thread has gone into stupidity and folklore. contrary to popular belief, they dont lace everything with cyanide and chemicals. They buy in a bunch of patties from one company, a bunch of buns from another etc and put them together. theres nothing fancy or strange about it. Its no worse than buying the same ingrediants fro the supermarket and putting them together yourself.

[Blancita]

I dont believe the patties at fast food restaurants contain 100% meat. I have nothing against burgers, whether or not you're dieting, but there may be better ways to attain a healthy lifestyle than by introducing one Big Mac a day--like eating a low fat burger at home (and that way you avoid the temptation of ordering the super size fries!)

****

It’s Called Junk and You Still Eat It

By Sara Khorshid

The profits of giant fast food chains hit billions of dollars every year as hungry consumers all around the world continue to line up to get hamburgers or pizzas with French fries and sodas. Fast-paced citizens of the 21st century spend their money and risk their health to eat junk. Mainly composed of fat and salt, fast food is nothing but that. Americans eat it to enjoy its delicious taste and to save their time and effort.

Fast Food= Processed Food

Basically, fast food is processed food; but what is processed food to begin with? Processed food is simply food that has been altered in a factory from the way in which nature presented it, as part of a bulk process where natural and chemical food additives are added. This leaves the final product without its naturally created nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. Besides giving the food its delectable taste, food additives keep it lasting unspoiled for a long time, which means that processed food is usually stored for a long time before it is purchased and eaten! The oldest natural food additives are salt, sugar, and vinegar; and although these are natural, an excess in their amounts seriously endangers the health.

Junk foods characteristically contain high amounts of salt (sodium chloride). Sodium is necessary for various metabolic functions; too much of it, however, is associated with an increased risk of hypertension (high blood pressure). Hypertension is a known risk factor for heart disease.

If this is the case with natural food additives, then how about artificial ones? With the advent of processed foods in the past thirty years, there has been a massive explosion in the chemical adulteration of foods with additives.
In his best seller, Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser reveals to the American public very interesting facts about what they eat. He talks about his experience in a factory in New Jersey where he discovered how the flavors of McDonald's food products are fabricated.

Current food processing methods gather many parts of many animals into one burger. The burger's beef has to be deep-fried in oil at high temperatures over 300° C, and this goes for almost all the popular fast foods that have to be deep-fried, consequently, they become denatured and possibly even carcinogenic.

Moreover, there is a very interesting story to tell about the popular McDonald's French fries exposing the way they are processed, and the flavors that distinguish them. For decades, McDonald's cooked its French fries in a mixture of 7% cottonseed oil and 93 % beef tallow. The mixture gave the fries their unique flavor and more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald's hamburger. In 1990, amidst a barrage of criticism over the amount of cholesterol in its fries, McDonald's switched to pure vegetable oil. This presented the company with a challenge: how to make fries that subtly taste like beef without cooking them in beef tallow. A look at the ingredients in McDonald's French fries suggests how the problem was solved. Toward the end of the list is a seemingly innocuous yet oddly mysterious phrase: "natural flavor". That ingredient helps to explain why the fries taste so good.
We thus see how the mouth-watering tastes of the much popular American fast food diet are all about chemicals, artificial flavors and food additives that are added to the food in the course of a hi-tech manufacturing process.

Fat and Sugar: Obesity Has Become A Phenomenon

Simply put, fast food is high in fat and sugar – that is to say high in calories – and low in its nutrient value. Fast food is particularly high in saturated fats, generally preferred by the food industry because it is cheap and can withstand high cooking temperatures.

It has been scientifically proven that saturated fats are correlated to cholesterol levels in the blood, and can therefore cause heart diseases.

While experts state that a healthy meal should have less than 30% of its calories from fat, with 9 grams of fat and 270 calories, a McDonald's hamburger just breaks the 30% ceiling. Burger King's hamburger has 15 grams of fat and 320 calories, i.e. 42% of its calories are from fat. Other famous restaurants' hamburgers have more calories and larger percentages of fats. Thus, hamburgers give us much more calories than we need and their calories come mainly from fats.

When it comes to sugar, it is enough to say that the typical can of soda contains an equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar.

Fast food thus offers much more calories than our systems can digest; and these extra calories are stored in our bodies in the form of fats. Excessive storage of fats in the body leads to obesity, which does not merely prevent people from looking slim, but it furthermore predisposes them to many disorders, such as insulin-dependent diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and coronary artery disease. More fatally, obesity has been linked to an increased incidence of certain cancers, notably cancers of the colon, rectum, prostate, breast, uterus, and cervix.

If fast food and soft drinks mark the American way of life, then it is easy to understand why more than half of all adult Americans are overweight. Actually, both scientific studies and common sense indicate that fast food is the primary reason for obesity.

Consuming junk food does not only mean eating the chemical food additives that are added while the food is being processed, nor is it limited to looking fat and getting exposed to obesity-related illnesses. The problems of fast food are far more diversified.

[maleficent]

According to the book Fast Food Nation, the smell of McDonald's French Fries - that has always made me nauseus but others find so appealing - -comes from a factory on the New Jersey turnpike... Now I love my former home state of New Jersey and will defend her to the death - but the turnpike is a shithole - and no human being should ever eat anything that comes from the turnpike

Now the fresh mozarrella from that little italian deli in Lyndhurst - entirely a different story

[darkangell]

Originally Posted by Blancita

Check out this video, makes you wonder what sort of chemicals McD's puts in its "food".

Why you should NOT eat Mcdonalds’ food

Okay seriously, WHAT is up with those fries?!

[wishes]

of course the patty isnt 100% meat - ever done cooking? you need stuff to make it stick together usually
Also any minced meat is usually the leftovers and crap off the floor unless you are paying for prime mince, which i cant see a large corperate doing for the sake of a few whingers (though in NZ they actually do use 100% NZ Beef apparently).
Sausages also are the same, in fact they cannot be considered sausages here unless it has over 50% meat, and a few dont so they get called 'sizzlers' and other wanky names.
Chicken nuggets are probably the worst, they appear to be entirely chicken fat, chicken skin, and god only knows what

But again, this is not a McDonalds thing, this is how they make our food. Ever looked at the ingrediants of a mince meat pie? Parts of noses, eats, livers, lungs, etc. Its not because they are out to get you, its just how they make the food, thats why its so cheap. Like cheese is just moldy cream/milk kinda thing.

But either way, this still has nothing to do with weight loss, which its all about anyway, and you can eat snails and tree bark if you want, so long as the calories in are less than the calories out

[nol3afclover]

How about a Big Mac for $1????

Order a double cheese burger, add lettuce, add Mac Sauce....No extra charge...And BOOM, you got a BicMac without for extra bread for $1.

[austin_88]

Originally Posted by wishes

of course the patty isnt 100% meat - ever done cooking? you need stuff to make it stick together usually
Also any minced meat is usually the leftovers and crap off the floor unless you are paying for prime mince, which i cant see a large corperate doing for the sake of a few whingers (though in NZ they actually do use 100% NZ Beef apparently).
Sausages also are the same, in fact they cannot be considered sausages here unless it has over 50% meat, and a few dont so they get called 'sizzlers' and other wanky names.
Chicken nuggets are probably the worst, they appear to be entirely chicken fat, chicken skin, and god only knows what

But again, this is not a McDonalds thing, this is how they make our food. Ever looked at the ingrediants of a mince meat pie? Parts of noses, eats, livers, lungs, etc. Its not because they are out to get you, its just how they make the food, thats why its so cheap. Like cheese is just moldy cream/milk kinda thing.

But either way, this still has nothing to do with weight loss, which its all about anyway, and you can eat snails and tree bark if you want, so long as the calories in are less than the calories out

So true!

I dont know what the rest of the world eats but Australian McDonalds is 100% Australian Beef & Chicken. Its just a bun, patty, cheese, salad and sauce! Whats so bad about that??? And a lot of the time its a GRILLED calorie.

Like Wishes said, its all about calories in V calories out. If I have mcdonalds one day I just have to have a lighter meal, or just get the burger, diet coke and no fries? Or a healthy choice option (tandoori chicken roll is 400 calories)?

[mastersync]

Read 'Foodnation' and you will see how come McD's burgers are so juicy. Artificial juice flavorings...

[wishes]

clearly another idiot who doesnt read packets. Most foods have artificial flavourings and colourings and crap - they have done for decades. This is why the govt have places to test whats safe and whats not.
And yes ANYTHING eaten in excess will be unsafe .. duh!

[Blancita]

Originally Posted by wishes

of course the patty isnt 100% meat - ever done cooking? you need stuff to make it stick together usually

In my opinion, changing one's lifestyle is not going from 5 Big Macs to 1, its substituting unhealthy fattening processed foods for better quality foods. I dont add anything to my hamburger to keep it stuck together, certainly not a ton of sodium and the other unhealthy ingredients added to the McD burgers. Not to say I never eat at McDs, but frankly I seem to get mildly grossed out every time and tend to not want to return for another several months.

I also disagree about the additives and how we can trust our government to keep us safe from unnatural chemicals. We have lead in toys, pesticides in our foods, and lots of cancer and other diseases that could very well be caused or exaserbated by the chemicals in our foods and environment. Not to say I'm always eating organic by any stretch, but let's not fool ourselves either. You're always going to be better off eating natural versus processed and chemical ridden. That's just plain old common sense.