Repost This Article5. There’s no such thing as healthy fast food
We know fast food isn’t good for us, and this is something the industry doesn’t want us to think about too much. Even their “healthy” offerings are often loaded with calories, trans-fats and refined sugar.
Burping cow, by Micah Taylor
- McDonald’s California Cobb Salad with Crispy Chicken packs a whopping 18 grams of fat, almost 28% of the recommended daily value of 65 grams in a 2,000 calorie diet. That’s as much as a Quarter Pounder!
- Add a pack of Newman’s Own Creamy Caesar Dressing and you’re doubling the total fat of the salad, bringing it up to 36 grams—over half our recommended daily intake. In a salad.
- Just because something’s in a little packet doesn’t mean it’s safe, and sauces are particularly bad. McDonald’s 1.5oz pack of Spicy Buffalo Sauce is 60 calories (all from fat), plus 910mg of sodium – 38% of your recommended daily intake.
You can check fast food nutrition facts before you order by using the FastFoodNutrition.org Meal Nutrition Fact Calculator, and comparing with your recommended daily intakes.
6. Artificial sweeteners are often far worse than sugar
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a commonly used sweetener. Despite the commercials which attempt to show otherwise – which are made by the Corn Refiners’ Association, by the way! – research has shown a link between HFCS and obesity.
- Princeton University recently released a study linking HFCS consumption to obesity in rats, even when their overall caloric intake remained the same as the rats given table sugar!
- And as this examiner.com article reports, mercury was found in HFCS as far back as 2005, and yet foods containing the chemical can still legally advertise themselves as being “natural.”
Photo from Alphaila, by Dario D.
7. Bovine burps and dead fish
Most people are aware of the environmental implications of our food industry – food trucked or flown in from far off places, over-use of polluting chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the squeezing out of smaller farms. But did you know:
- Factory farms in the Midwestern US have released so many chemicals into the Mississippi River that a large “dead zone” – an oxygen-depleted area where no fish live – has formed off the Louisiana coast. This dead zone is about the size of New Jersey, and has had disastrous effects on the important Louisiana shrimping and fishing industries.
- The greenhouse gas methane is approximately 23 times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, and is a significant factor in global warming since cows produce so much methane. A single cow can belch out anything from 25 to 130 gallons of methane each day, which means they can be said to produce more greenhouse gas than an SUV! Oh, and there are 1.5 billion belching cattle on Earth – a number set to rise rapidly as the world demand for meat increases.
8. Fast food never tastes like it looks
In fact, it often doesn’t even look like it looks, at least in those glossy pictures. One photographer recently took it upon himself to document such discrepancies. Enjoy!
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What do you think of fast food? How often do you eat it? Do you think it’s an important issue, or one that gets blown out of proportion. Share your thoughts in the comments.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like The No Nonsense Guide to Food Labels at Farmers’ Markets, and Going Organic: 6 Reasons Why You Should (Or Shouldn’t).
Megan Hill
Megan Hill is a freelance writer from New Orleans. She recently finished a year of service with AmeriCorps NCCC and is seeking representation for her memoir of her service. Read more from her on her website.
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Good work Megan!!
PS: not only are the scraps mechanically separated, the actual living animal is being picked apart by mechanical hands. Liver, kidney, etc. the animal dies in agony and no one seems to care. Perhaps more people will consider the veg vagon! One would not believe what wonders can happen when you go veg.
Check out Green Candy Paws, a bi annual online mag written by animals.
Rory Freedman’s fab books titled Skinny Bitch and Skinny Bastard or Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals. These reads are sure to open your eyes about the meat industry and it’s tactics, then spread the word. We’re only strong in #s
Item #5 is very misleading. You state there is no such thing as healthy fast food and then to prove the point, you describe two of the fattiest items on a fast food menu – a fried chicken sandwich and creamy salad dressing. The article loses lots of credibility right there. Why not discuss the grilled chicken instead? Oh right – because that’s much lower in fat and would disprove your point.
There are plenty of fast food items that are perfectly healthy. A Wendy’s plain baked potato and side salad with fat-free dressing, for instance. And the bulk of Subway’s menu.
This piece reads more like propaganda instead of an informed argument. I was expecting more.
With all the facts that exist and are easily available, I still find myself indulging in the “junk food” category from time to time. But I must say, as I remind myself of the BENEFITS of eating the right foods and adding nutritional products to my diet, my progress has been improving with leaps and bounds.
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