Fast Food Nutrition
Are healthy choices getting easier?
By now it should be no surprise that fast food is not something that you should eat on a regular basis. High fat content and basically no nutritional value make frequent fast-food meals a caloric and fat nightmare to say the least.
We are in a country where the obesity rates just keep growing, and fast-food establishments have been feeling the pinch. Fast-food chains take advantage of the lack of time the average person has to prepare and eat healthier food choices. Many people just don’t have the time or energy to prepare something that’s always healthy – take families with both parents working full-time to make ends meet or students in college who work, for example. People just take the fast way out by choosing to zip to the drive-thru. However there are ways that restaurants have tried to improve on your fast-food order. But is it enough?
Salads Added to the Menu
Fast-food restaurants added salads to their menus so patrons were not always forced to choose between a burger, chicken or fish sandwich. Chicken and fish are good for you, but not encased in a crunchy, fatty, deep-fried batter. Patrons who were looking to be healthy could now tag along, pick up a salad and eat better.
What those patrons don’t consider when ordering the salad is that the ingredients used within can actually add up to a higher daily intake of fat and calories than the burger. The nutritional information for many of the salads contain double-digit fat content, one-quarter to one-third of your daily caloric intake and over half the recommended sodium intake per day. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like what I would expect from a salad.
Adding to the problem is the dressing that comes with it. Dressings just add more calories to the salad that already contains more than enough calories. Most people won’t eat a salad without dressing, which is understandable, but they might not be aware that many of those salads already have an excess of fat and calories before the dressing is even drizzled on top. Take a look at the nutritional information for yourself to see if that is really what you thought you were getting. There is a good chance it is probably more than you thought.
Also check to see if they include the calories from the dressing within the salad nutritional information. Restaurants can avoid listing the added condiments, such as dressing, if they don’t actually put it on for you. Customers who add the dressing can find the nutritional information on the packet.
Get Rid of the Supersize
For a little extra money you can get a bigger order of fries and a bigger drink your standard burger combo. Welcome to the supersize, the order feature that has been villainized for adding double the calories, salt and sugar – for less! Eliminating that option was thought to be good since it kept customers from eating more of the bad. What most people don’t realize is that patrons can still order additional food if they want more so it is not really any healthier, just more expensive. Remember, eating only half the crap is still eating crap.
Healthier Options for Children
Switching the fries and soda for something healthier – such as an apple and milk or juice – for your little one is a great idea, right? Well what if the apple comes with caramel dip? It might help your child enjoy the apple, but it’s still candy and sugar. In addition to that, people forget they still get a burger as the main part of a meal, so adding an apple really isn’t much of a health improvement. The burger or nuggets are as bad a part of the meal as the fries and soda. It’s not fixing anything; it’s only mildly reducing the mighty blow of the fat and salt intake.
How about switching the burger to something healthier, such as opting for the deceptively “healthy” salad? Do yourself and your youngster a favor and make something at home.
Advertising Low-Fat Items
Everyone keeps hearing about how fast food is bad and even though people still go, they know it’s bad. Then you see that commercial where your favorite item, which you thought was high in fat and calories, really only has a few grams of fat! A few grams of fat! This is a miracle! You don’t have to cut back anymore since you can eat that and know you are only taking in a few grams of fat, right?
WRONG! Read the fine print. Most times those claims come with leaving off certain items and / or dressing and condiments, taking the enjoyment out of the item in the first place.
Whole Wheat Buns
Going from the standard burger holder to a whole-wheat version sure took a long time. But that doesn’t make the burger healthy – it just makes the bun healthy. The bun didn’t make the burger bad, the burger made the burger bad. Is it just me or are fast-food places dancing around the biggest problem they have by changing the easy things and then over-advertising those minor changes? How about changing the burger?
Advertised the Use of Good Quality Ingredients
Fast-food chains often advertise their food as being made with the best ingredients. To the untrained and trusting ear it sounds really good, but often it’s only the first small bite that might be good, and the rest is filler. If an item is “made with” something, all that means is that part of it is made with that something. This could be a small part or a big part.
To illustrate: if you see that a burger is made with 100 percent grade-A beef, that doesn’t mean the whole thing is grade-A beef. A small amount could actually be grade-A beef and the rest could be useless filler. And since they’re the one who made the burgers, you can’t know how much of it actually is grade-A beef.
The best option continues to be to simply limit your consumption of fast food, regardless of the restaurant’s efforts.
