Wednesday, January 28, 2009

What's so unhealthy about McDonald's food?


What's so unhealthy about McDonald's food?

McDonald's try to show in their "Nutrition Guide" (which is full of impressive-looking but really quite irrelevant facts & figures) that mass-produced hamburgers, french fries , colas, etc., are useful and nutritious parts of any diet.



What they don't make clear is that a diet high in fat, sugar, animal products and salt (sodium), and low in fiber, vitamins and minerals - which describes an average McDonald's meal - is linked with cancers of the breast and bowel, and heart disease. This is an accepted medical fact, not a cranky theory. Every year in Britain, heart disease alone causes about 180,000 deaths.


FAST = JUNK



Even if they like eating them, most people recognise that processed burgers and synthetic chips, served up in paper and plastic containers, is junk-food. McDonald's prefer the name "fast-food". This is not just because it is manufactured and serve up as quickly as possible - it has to be eaten quickly too. It's sign of the junk-quality of Big Macs that people actually hold competitions to see who can eat one in the shortest time.



PAYING FOR THE HABIT

Chewing is essential for good health, as it promotes the flow of digestive juices which break down the food and send nutrients into the blood. McDonald's food is so lacking in bulk it is hardly possible to chew it. Even their own figures show that a "quarter-pounder" is 48% water. This sort of fake food encourages over-eating, and the high sugar and sodium content can make people develop a kind of addiction - a 'craving'. That means more profit for McDonald's, but constipation, clogged arteries and heart attacks for many customers.



WHAT'S YOUR POISON?


MEAT is responsible for 70% of all food-poisoning incidents, with chicken and minced meat (as used in burgers) being the worst offenders. When animals are slaughtered, meat can be contaminated with gut contents, feces and urine, leading to bacterial infection. In an attempt to counteract infection in their animals, farmers routinely inject them with doses of antibiotics. These, in addition to growth-promoting hormone drugs and pesticide residues in their feed, build up in the animals' tissues and can further damage the health of people on a meat-based diet.





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