My Encounter with McDonald's Fast Food

I never eat fast food. It's against all my principals, but very occasionally I'm on the road without having prepared some foods from home to take with me.

This week was a good example. I overslept on the day I needed to take my computer downstate for repairs, so about halfway there, I actually stopped at a McDonald's. Being really hungry, I ordered their "Big Breakfast" which is eggs, sausage, pancakes, a biscuit and a fried hash browns patty.

Imagine my surprise when the condiments supplied with the meal included 2 sealed containers for the pancakes and biscuit marked "margarine" and the syrup marked "flavored high fructose corn syrup". I took them back to the counter, saying I don't, and won't, eat that fake stuff.

Not that it registered on the kids who work the counter at McD's...

The eggs weren't too bad even though factory eggs have little to offer nutritionally, and the thin sausage patty was in the same category. The hash brown patty soaked so much grease onto the plate (either canola oil or soybean oil) that I refused to eat it... same with the biscuit.

Is it any wonder our population who generally depend on fast food has become obese??

Hyperpalatable Industrial Foods

They really do a good job, don't they, those scientists who create the taste and smell of adulterated food to seem real and delicious? As another blogger says, we are "Seduced by Foods".

Research and Development teams have done studies and conducted taste panels that have found "sweet" sells. The more they sell sweet stuff, the more people come to expect it. Sweet is found in loads of savory items too, not just sweet items. Tomato sauces, crackers, salad dressings, mustards, coated chicken products, sausages, and more. Many of our fresh products are also enhanced with sugar, like Butterball turkey, pumped brined pork loins, stewing hens. Our palates are being distorted by sweet.

As much as I am aware of the "deceptions" the food scientists have created, and as much as I am aware of the nutritive value in real foods, there are still times when I am lured by barely detectable smells and/or my mental images into thinking a fast food meal like a Big Mac, a taco supreme, or a take-out pizza* would hit the spot! Taste-wise I'm sure it would, thanks to those scientists who work hard to manufacture chemicals that tease our taste buds, and addict us to their pseudo foods. It is a very difficult temptation to resist! 

The tongue can detect five tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (savory). While you are probably familiar with the first four, umami is a taste that is relatively new to the Western palate, although the Japanese have known about it for decades. Umami is based on the detection of glutamate, and many foods naturally contain glutamate, although it is often added as well. You have probably heard of MSG: monosodium glutamate is the lab-derived chemical that enhances tastes. It makes things taste more like what they are (or should be). While umami is a taste that is hard to define, it is sometimes described as “meaty.”

The sense of small is probably the oldest and the least understood of our five senses. During evolution it has kept its connections with the parts of the brain, which grew to be the sorting house for our emotional responses, intimately linking the odors of things to our emotions. Think of the smell of BBQ coming from a grill at the BBQ joint down the street. Do you notice they have the grill/smoker outside or even vented outside, all the better to send those lovely smells in the air and capture us for a sale? It's an emotional response, our involuntary response to those smells wafting in the air. Researchers say 80 percent of the flavors we taste come from what we smell.

Our sense of taste is also triggered by sight. Ever notice the ads for foods on TV look SO juicy and tempting? Enough so that we have an emotional response that even overrides the reality of the supposedly same thing we are actually served. We salivate and feel the taste of a preferred food before even touching it. In the end, we believe more in what we see than in our other senses.

I have to constantly remind myself that those "almost foods" or "food-like products" come packaged with "micronutritional" malnutrition, and they can bring on (among other things) thyroid dysfunction, insulin resistance, and poor gut flora... all of which can lead to obesity. So many processed foods aren't really food, but nutritionally lacking "food-like products" engineered to stimulate us to eat more, buy more, and ensure that big food conglomerates turn a profit.

When most Americans eat a "hamburger", it isn't really meat they are eating. It's a "flavorless, factory-formed protein matrix for sugar and soy oils engineered to induce higher consumption".  Source

* I do eat pizza... but home-made, with real aged raw-milk cheese rather than pseudo "processed" cheese... tomato sauce from my garden without any artificial ingredients; true pepperoni that even real Italians would recognize rather than that imitation stuff made just for pizzas; fresh organic vegetables (onion, peppers) and mushrooms for toppings, and NO GMO soy or canola anywhere in sight.

My hamburgers are local grass-fed beef, and the condiments are lacto-fermented, home-made without all that sugar, although I think you can now buy good quality condiments with a dedicated search. I did look in the natural foods store yesterday for a mayonnaise without GMO soy or canola oil. None to be found.

Train them young with good food

If I remember correctly, it says in Proverbs something like "Train up a child in the way he must go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." 

I want to link that idea to real food, but I'm also wondering if behavior, just like health, isn't somehow food related?

I'm thinking about today's kids who are now in, or approaching, their semi-adult years... and whether they are really so much like (or unlike) we might have been (or were?) at their age, or is there something else/more going on?

The youngsters I see around here seem to concentrate entirely on using their opposable thumbs. I really have no problem with that (form of communication) although it's not my preference; it's their other behavior that interests me. So, I am wondering about whether there's actually a common cause like food for much of the behavior I see. (Don't misunderstand, please. I have many friends with great kids.)

I don't care what outlandish things kids wear, or the ghastly make-up and choice of attire, or their time enmeshed in texting... those are merely trappings, and I think some rebellion is a normal part of growing up. What I do care about is whether they have respect for anything, a real education, a sense of wanting to contribute to the community or the world, and some idea of what their families have provided for them.

I shall use my half-sister's daughter who lives here as an example. She's 24 and thinks the world owes her the lifestyle she covets. She was a late-in-life only child, born when my sis was 40, and who is still a single mother. The Kid lives on Ramen noodles, sugars, and other packaged starchy carbs, with an occasional chili or meatloaf thrown in every couple of months. (My sis can afford better food but the kid chooses what's quick and easy... and addictive.)

When she was about 4, the kid and my sis moved in with my Mother for a few years, and I spent a few months living there while building an addition on Mother's house for them. As with all my time ever spent living at home, Mother prepared a balanced meal for supper every night, much of it from her garden: salad, meat, green vegetable(s), usually a small side carb, and then a token light dessert. My sis never came to the table, but her kid did. She'd play with her food, end up restricted to the table until she "finished"... which she never did... and finally Mother would give in out of pure exasperation and let her go upstairs to Mommie. Around 8-9:00 my sis would come downstairs with the kid and give her pie/cake and ice cream or some other sweets she bought just for the kid. (It didn't help that the kid got almost any toy she wanted from the get-go either.)

I have no reason to think her eating habits ever changed; certainly her sense of entitlement never did. In all the years I visited, I never saw anything different, nor do I see it now that we technically live together, even though this house is divided into separate living quarters for me. The kid was diagnosed as ADHD when she was in elementary school, and has been on various meds ever since… that is, when she will take them. Frankly, if she wants to focus on something, she’s extremely able to focus, meds or not.

The Kid has had no job for over 2½ years, won't even consider temp work, and is looking for a sugar daddy. She won't even wash their dishes except maybe once a week under duress, and she has a mouth that would make a seasoned sailor blush. (If I had ever talked to MY mother that way, I'd have been toothless long before I was grown!)

I have to wonder how different her life might be (or might have been) if she had been encouraged by her mother to eat balanced "real food"  dinners when our Mother was still alive and cooking for them... and later on, fed real foods while she was growing up. Could it actually be that simple? What kind of future generations could we raise IF we fed them healthy, nourishing foods?

If it turns out her ADHD problems could be somewhat mitigated by healthy food, what might that mean for other kids today? Is there even much research being done on the emotional or psychological states of our kids and foods? I do see research on obesity in kids today, and those skirt as much of the industrial food issue as possible.

There is no way I can see to change this kid's eating habits; I've tried, and the habits are too ingrained. (Plus, it’s not my kid nor my responsibility either, except as a concerned person.) 

My own eating habits haven’t changed much in the 50+ years I have been providing for myself either, except to exercise some discernment in real food choices as industrial food has become bleck. 

My mother trained me right…

Giving up Sodas

Photo by fimoculous 

The New York Times posted a couple of articles recently about doctors and under-the-table payments. One article is Who Else is Paying Your Doctor? and the other is Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors. I think that's a good start (at least for reporting), maybe actually enabling us to know who pays our doctors, assuming we can ever find the reports... but I think there's much more to health care than "the doctor".

It seems to me that prevention is the least expensive way to be healthy, and going to doctors for treatments once you become ill is the most expensive. Plus, when something goes wrong (as it eventually will with a poor diet) the doctors may not "cure" you. They may merely prescribe drugs, treatments, or maybe operations that permit you to live with your afflictions. 

It has been five years since I had surgery to remove my gallbladder, but in retrospect I think it could have been prevented if I had known as much about eating right, and real food, as I do now. If so, I wouldn't have had the surgical expense and aftercare, the trauma to my body being cut open, and I sure wouldn't have the resulting adhesions that now double me over occasionally.

Drugs and/or operations are for the most part just crutches after the injury. Eating right is far cheaper in the long run, and the resulting quality of life is far greater... and that's the advantage of prevention over treatment.

The problem is that we are complacent, even with less than optimal health, and no one wants to give up their sodas, diet sodas, artificially sweetened fake coffee creamers, donuts, chips, McD's and other junk food. We even fool ourselves into believing that sweetened fruity, non-fat yogurt is actually healthy! No one wants to increase their food budget with organic salad greens, fruits, vegetables and free-range eggs/meats in place of sodas, chips, donuts, burgers, fries and pizza, even though they would probably come out cheaper without the junk in the grocery line, not even even considering the additional cost of medical care later on.

MacEverything... including Drugs?

We commonly now add "Mc" or "Mac" to a lot of words to create a quick visual impression. McMansions come immediately to mind!

I recently read a post about MacStatins where the author of the post (Stephen Guyenet) quoted a PubMed study: "Routine accessibility of statins in establishments providing unhealthy food might be a rational modern means to offset the cardiovascular risk. Fast food outlets already offer free condiments to supplement meals. A free statin-containing accompaniment would offer cardiovascular benefits, opposite to the effects of equally available salt, sugar, and high-fat condiments. Although no substitute for systematic lifestyle improvements, including healthy diet, regular exercise, weight loss, and smoking cessation, complimentary statin packets would add, at little cost, 1 positive choice to a panoply of negative ones." Mr. Guyenet and I both hope this statement was not a serious suggestion for fast food joints!

However, since there are now low-dosage statin drugs available over the counter, how far fetched is it in reality?

As Mr. Guyenet said, it would be far cheaper for industrial foods to add statins to foods (or make them available along with the condiments) than to educate the populace on how to eat well. A variety of studies show cultures that don't eat industrial foods are almost free of heart attacks.

Here's Stephan's alternative proposal: "Rather than giving people statins along with their Big Mac, why don't we change the incentive structure that artificially favors the Big Mac, french fries and soft drink? If it weren't for corn, soybean and wheat subsidies, fast food wouldn't be so cheap. Neither would any other processed food. Fresh, whole food would be price competitive with industrial food, particularly if we applied the grain subsidies to more wholesome foods. Grass-fed beef and dairy would cost the same as grain-fed."

Food, Inc. Premiers Tonight!

Tonight is the Premier of Food, Inc. on PBS. If you eat, it is a must watch! If you happen to miss it, you can watch it online.

Slow Food and Ark of Taste

I have been aware of Slow Food and their Ark of Taste for a long time, but truthfully I haven't paid much attention for quite a while. Now, with my renewed interest in healthy nutrition, I have come back to paying more attention.

Why?

"Slow Foods aims to be everything fast food is not." ~USA Today

Changing my diet to eliminate all the unhealthy foods and food additives also means seeking out foods that taste better (or be very bored at mealtime). Inherent taste in foods varies with nutritional quality, of course. However, the move by BigAg to fewer and fewer varieties has narrowed our options considerably, thus we are in danger of losing many heirloom varieties that hold incredible range and nuances of taste.

It's kinda like starting with millions of colors on your monitor, then slowly but surely moving to only 256 colors. Soon we risk having only RGB!

One of the programs at Slow Foods is RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions). RAFT is "an alliance of food, farming, environmental and culinary advocates who have joined together to identify, restore and celebrate America's biological and culturally diverse food traditions through conservation, education, promotion and regional networking."

Their aim is "to develop and promote conservation strategies, sustainable food production, and awareness of our country's unique and "at risk" foods and food traditions." They are working with groups like Seed Savers Exchange and Native Seeds / SEARCH for Heirloom Vegetable Recovery. Other ongoing projects are Heirloom Breed Recovery with groups like American Livestock Breeds Conservancy , and Heirloom Fruit Tree Recovery with growers all over the country.

To see some of what I have been missing, I downloaded their PDF on apples (Forgotten Fruits Manual & Manifesto - Apples). We once had between 15,000 and 16,000 named, grown and eaten varieties in North America, and now fewer than 20% remain. How many varieties do you see in the grocery stores? Not but a few of the nearly 20% remaining, I'd bet.

Slow Food's Ark of Taste is a 'catalog' of foods that are threatened by industrial standardization, and only the best tasting foods make it into the Ark. The US Ark of Taste now contains over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction.

Last night I was surfing for tasty and more local rice grains, and I found Carolina Gold Rice, an antebellum long grain that was once grown all over the coastal wetlands of Georgia and the Carolinas. I saw a package of it 2-3 years ago in a specialty foods store, but since I didn't know what it was, I didn't buy it.

Now I am anxious to try it since it is described as superior in flavor, aroma, texture and cooking qualities (and a beautiful golden hue in the fields). It has resurfaced thanks to heirloom seed collectors, and has been brought back to life. It is one of the 200 foods in the US Ark, and is grown sustainably (and organically) by Anson Mills, who also mill it the old fashioned way.

Checking out the endangered lists/resources on the Slow Foods site, I found that one of my favorite heirloom seed suppliers, Victory Seeds, has several heirloom seeds from the list.

Getting my health back via better nutrition means helping to save some tasty endangered foods, or boredom with what few choices are generally still on the market.

Fast Food Calorie Labeling

Photo from justinial's photostream

The Slow Food USA Blog posted:

"Yesterday, President Barack Obama signed the health care bill into law. Tucked away inside the massive piece of legislation, there is provision requiring chain restaurants with 20 or more outlets in the United States to list calorie counts on menus, menu boards, and drive-through displays. The law, which affects over 200,000 U.S. restaurants, also applies to vending machines.

The Food and Drug Administration will create standards for the labeling, which should come into full effect within the next few years."

(I looked it up, in the new law, find it under Division C, Title V, Subtitle C, Part 1, Section 2572)

Too little, too late, and in the wrong place?? (It doesn't address healthy calories, the implementation is years away, and the new law is being hotly contested.)

Modern MRE's

Well, kinda ready to eat... the one I just tried required a 10 minute cook time on the stovetop.

I generally avoid packaged foods, but I guess I was in a low spot when shopping and bought this to try. Here are my observations:

It was very tasty. It was also very expensive (even to feed 2 people) considering the cost of the ingredients. All the chicken in the package could not have been as much as half a chicken breast, and the amount of spinach was about 1/4 of a package of frozen spinach. That leaves the pasta, and sauce. We all know pasta is cheap, no matter what the shape. So I really bought a bag of pretty expensive frozen Parmesan cheese sauce.

In a pinch I might make it again, but I'd add more chicken for protein and a tad more spinach, but if I did that, I might as well make it from scratch.

The package was either $7.99 or $6.99; I forget which, and don't have the receipt, but probably $7.99. (I found the receipt, it was $7.99.) It made one very tasty dinner, and one tasty lunch for me. It was cheaper than eating out and certainly not a TV dinner, and was a nice break from my usual fare.