Fast food is America's great invention and ultimately our downfall when it comes to nutrition. There may have been a time, decades ago when fast food became what it is, that the products they used actually had some nutritional value. But those days are long gone and you will never be able to find a beef patty, or a piece of chicken that has only beef or chicken in it. These days, every product is "enhanced" with extra flavoring and packed full of preservatives to maintain its freshness and to keep it looking juicy. These additives are not by any means healthy and are often times actually detrimental to our health. There have been movies made about the industry, where the meat comes from, what kind of ingredients go into them, and what it actually does to your body. If anyone were to actually eat only fast food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that person would be slowly eating themselves into a grave. As good as the food may smell, it is not good for us. I came across an article yesterday that will keep me even farther away from any fast food joint than I have been. This article, from Natural News, is about the famous Chicken McNugget. It appears that if you look at the ingredient list of all the food that McDonalds serves (linked on the Natural News website), you will only be able to pronounce about half of the ingredients. The other half are chemicals and preservatives with long drawn out names that don't mean much to most of us. There is an interesting one that is at the bottom of the ingredient list of the McNugget though. It is anti-foaming agent, TBHQ, that is used in the oil that cooks the McNugget. Essentially, if it is used in the cooking of the chicken, then it is inherently ingested by the consumer. In addition to TBHQ, there is also a type of silicone that can be found in the McNugget, similar to ones found in popular caulks and also breast implants (although it is being replaced in the implants due to safety issues).
What is McDonalds doing to us? TBHQ is a petroleum based product that is also used as a stabilizer in perfumes, resins, varnishes, and oil field chemicals. Sounds tasty doesn't it? Most of the other ingredients aren't much better. One of them, a preservative, contains aluminum, which has been shown to accelerate the onset of Alzheimer's disease. So what are the options here? In my mind, they are pretty simple; either eat this crap and put your lives in the hands of the fast food chains, or avoid them completely and live a longer life (this last statement has not been verified or approved by the FDA). It is amazing that we are so concerned with what products go into making children's toys, yet when it comes to fast food, as long as it resembles food and smells like it, we will eat it. Did you know that TBHQ, over long periods of time, increases the risk of stomach cancer? Fascinating. I realize that we are all dealing with this recession and less money, but to simply resign ourselves to fast food because it is cheap is the absolute wrong way to go. If you drive by any McDonalds, or any other fast food chain, there are always people there. There never seems to be a moment when the "restaurant" is empty. It is sad in ways that we have resorted to this type of eating. Our country is currently dealing with an obesity epidemic yet most of us can't figure out what is going wrong. It is really quite simple, eat healthy home cooked meals and get plenty of exercise.
I myself have not eaten at a McDonalds in close to a decade. The only thing I will get from there is a soda and even then, I would rather get the soda elsewhere. I can't even remember the last time I walked into one. We will never get rid of fast food; it is cheap, convenient, and there are plenty of people who are addicted to it (mostly due to the sugar that is added to everything). I feel that as long as people know what they are eating, then they are free to eat it. It just so happens that most people, I feel, don't know what they are actually eating and would be surprised to find out what they are putting into their bodies. I know on a daily basis what I put into my body and there are very few preservatives involved in my food. For this blog, I only wanted to touch on the scariest of ingredients found in one product at McDonalds, but just for fun, check out their ingredient list and see what else makes it into their food that on a normal day, you would never think of putting into your body. General health starts with taking control of what you do, how you eat, and what you eat. If we let others tell us what is good for us and tell us it is perfectly OK to eat everything, then of course our health will suffer. But enough about fast food, I am getting sick just writing about it. If you do eat fast food, try going a day or two without it, maybe even a week. See how you feel after a week of no fast food and see if you can take it. Lets all make an effort to be a little more conscientious of what we are eating and putting into our bodies. It is only for our own good that we do these things.
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