To think McDonald's isn't actually That bad...it's not cardboard and cows ears as people seem to think?

[WittiestUsernameEver]

Looking at the ingredients in most of it, it's fine??

They use organic milk, free range eggs, burgers are meat and salt, probably better quality stuff than the likes of Harvester burgers etc.

People talk about it like you're feeding your kids arsenic, rats piss and pig shit...

Yes ultimately, I think people can eat what they like. They just need to be aware what these UPF foods contain and how damaging they can be to our health. Then they can make an informed decision about how much they eat of it or not. I think a lot of people just think McDonalds and other foods as high fat, sugary and salty food but it isn’t just that. It’s the chemically man-made ingredients that are added to these foods that are damaging.

It's not terrible and I think they upped their game years ago. Some of that will be marketing and trying to improve their self image, I could be wrong but I think the ingredients are half decent.

It’s fine. Is it the “best” food in terms of quality? No, but nor is what you get in most restaurants. McDonald’s only becomes a problem when you eat it all the time. People just like to be up their own backsides about only feeding little Tabatha and Sebastian wholly organic, hand reared, grass fed…blah blah nobody cares.

You can be massively overweight by eating “good” food. You gain weight by eating too many calories, not by eating “bad” food. In theory, you could lose weight by only eating chocolate, as long as you’re in a calorie deficit (you’d be hugely nutrient deficient but that’s a different thing). I absolutely detest all these stupid diets (and I include WW and SW) because they’re setup to demonise certain types of food (thinks “syns” in SW) and don’t teach people how to manage their weight and diet. In fact, they’re setup to ensure you go back because as soon as people stop their stupid diet they gain the weight back (because they haven’t learnt anything) and so they go back to handover more money.

@brunettemic

You would have to eat a LOT to get fat on food from the earth and the purest meat and literally nothing else. Imagine all that chewing and digesting. And the cost! I don’t think it would be possible for a regular person. Maybe if you only ate avocados 🤔But then who could physically do that?

I've just seen on the news that Morgan Spurlock has died.

My dad said all food is good if eaten in moderation. People are too obsessed with defining food as good or bad.

And?

He's been mentioned a few times on this thread, so I thought this might be of interest.

Ok but he didn’t die from eating McDonald’s 20 years ago. Just want to get that in….

I wasn't aware there was any suggestion that he had - where have you seen this reported? The BBC article just said he'd died of cancer.

Ah but if it was cancer how do we KNOW?!

( spooky music …)

The processed food yeah, it’s pretty bad if you’re buying pre made meals, bread products, jars of sauces, cereals. If that makes up 99% of your shopping it’s not great.

If you’re shopping is mostly fresh ingredients whether that be meat, vegetables and fruit you’re doing much better

sorry if that’s not what you want to hear but that’s the truth of it unfortunately

it’s pretty hard to avoid processed industrialised foods nowadays, but if you cook fresh from ingredients you’re diet is much healthier

They’re really high in salt.

The NHS recommends anyone over 11 has not more than 6 g of salt a day.. their quarter pounders have almost half (2.7g) that’s before fries or any extras

but yeah if you’re choosing between one fast food place and another, they’re all very bad. but like i say, I’ll eat them sometimes myself. But i know they’re really unhealthy. Every now and then won’t really matter to me.

I do think about 75% of food in supermarkets is unhealthy, including ones like Waitrose. Their stuff might be more likely to be organic and slightly higher quality but it's still very often UPF.

I assume all takeaways and restaurant food are too because there are probably non-virgin seed oils. This is only a small part of the obesity epidemic though, there are so many factors.

This thread has totally put me off McD’s.

Previously I wouldn’t have touched Burger King as it tastes so salty and fatty but I now learn McDs is actually saltier ( doesn’t taste it: tastes bland). Occasionally we get it, I don’t love it but it’s ok and the dc think it’s a treat. But somehow dissecting it in this detail has given me the ick. I think the killer for me was the post defending it reached down to do so by comparing it with something as junky as Burger King ( and it still lost out..,)

Ooh — I'd have to give that a go, if it weren't for the fact I can't eat gluten.

For medical reasons, I'm meant to keep my salt intake at a consistently high level.

Because everyone's different, and a healthy diet for one is not a healthy diet for another.

So you’re an exception

i doubt that even if you have to keep your salt intake higher you should do so with mcDonald’s with all the sugar and fats etc

but obv if you want to try that and see how it goes .. good luck to you 😜

No, I'm not an exception. Or, at least, not a particularly special one. While yes, there are general similarities between most people as to what might constitute a healthy diet for them, everyone's needs will be particular to them, even if it's something as basic as the difference between what's healthy for someone when they're three compared to when they're thirty, or the difference in calorie requirements depending on size and activity level. On the whole, most people can follow generic healthy-eating advice, but everyone will need to adapt that at the very least for their sex, size, stage of life, and activity level, and many will need to make other adjustments too.

This is why I say that discussion of healthy eating has to be about healthy diets for particular individuals. General recommendations or advice are general. It's mostly okay if that's not made explicit, because usually people are aware if they have a particular medical need that supervenes the general recommendations. But in discussions like this, people often talk as though "healthy" is just one, uniform thing. (And as though you can point at this food or that and identify it as "healthy" or "unhealthy", completely outside the context of a broader diet.)

Sn example of this is Chrons sufferers who I think are not supposed to have high fibre. However, I think rather than saying this is a “ healthy” diet it’s more a diet adapted to accommodate irregularities.

It's not my go to favourite food, however on a long journey with hungry children, it's hard to beat for speed, and they will usually eat it. More importantly I very rarely go into a McDonald's toilet that isn't spotless

I think you missed my point here. What I'm saying is that any diet which contains only one type of food (including, but not limited to, hight in sugar, fat, salt or highly processed) is not good for human beings physiologically but there is no one food which can be given a moral label and there is room for any and all foods (including crumpets) in a varied diet.

Personally, I haven't come across many foods which are made entirely of emulsifiers, stabilisers, flavourings, thickeners etc. It's worth noting that these items are often made from everyday natural sources. They can be oil, eggs, pectin carrageenan, vanillin, methyl anthracite, isoamyl acetate, potato starch, corn starch, gelatin. The list is massive. In my experience, additives like these are often added to foods where an element has been removed in order to make them more palatable and turn up in foods labelled as low fat, low sugar, low calorie a lot of the time. My point is, assigning a moral value to any food is not helpful in the pursuit of helping people to eat a health diet. Would I subsist on maccy's and fruit pastels? No, definitely not but I don't consider them to be bad foods in the context of a varied diet.

Thank you, I do consider myself to be woke (woke, adjective: Originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice).
I wonder what you define as 'fat' or 'overweight' or 'unhealthy' and which medical definitions you are basing your confident assertion on? I'm also interested to know which meta analyses of studies into the subject have lead you to state that the people you have assigned a label of 'fat' or 'overweight' or 'unhealthy' to are that way because of "diet and a bit by lifestyle"?
I can eat what I want, when I want and I consider myself very lucky to be able to do so without the restrictions that so much of the world's population experiences. I don't think that's a laughing matter though, and I would prefer to see everyone in the world able to eat a varied diet without restriction - probably because I'm so woke.

McDonalds to me tastes like fake food.
It's odd that the ingredients are just normal ingredients because it doesn't taste like normal ingredients.
It says the beef patty is '100% pure beef, No additives, fillers, binders, preservatives or flavour enhancers. Just pure forequarter and flank. A little salt and pepper is added to season after cooking'
but I feel like if I made a burger with the same cut then it would taste very different so I don't get what they're doing to the food.

Their streaky bacon is bizarre, even their onions don't taste like onions 😂

Everything is just fake and bland so I don't get it how people love it so much😂
Even the ice cream in mcflurrys tastes bland and weird so I just don't understand why some people just love it so much. Obviously different people like different things but I'm very surprised that so many enjoy the flavour and would choose McDonalds over other places.