How bad for you is a plain McDonald's burger?

Factual Questions
41

[QUOTE=pulykamell]

To summarize: McDonald’s in the US has not fried in beef tallow since 1990; however, they do use beef extract to flavor the oil in the US, thus their fries are not vegetarian. .
[/QUOTE]

No longer. And, they are phasing out the transfats. A single Hamburger- or even one of the larger double meat sandwiches- is not bad for you. What is bad for you is eating too many hamburgers sodas and fries, or worse yet- only hamburgers sodas and fries.

On occassion, if you don’t overdo it, nothing wrong with fast food (assuming normal healthy metabolism, not odd alergies, medical conditions etc). Nothing wrong with a big slice of birthday cake either- but eating cake every damn day is very bad for you.

42

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
Trying not to appear rude, I will ask if you know what those metabolic problems are? Are you saying that you can eat less than other people, and yet gain more weight? I don’t understand how that would work, biologically.
[/QUOTE]

Lets see. diabetes [so I seriously control my useless carbs and concentrate on high fiber veggies and limit my fats heavily] Thyroid problems the navy refuses to diagnose [despite the fact I have every symptom mrAru has, and using his synthroid relieves, except the shredding fingernails. I gained 150 lbs over 3 years without changing my diet or activity level.] Badly damaged back and assorted joint problems that restrict me to gentle walking as exercise. I average 1200-1500 kcal a day and barely maintain my weight. My metabolism is exceptionally sluggish. I was stuck in bed for 3 months and unable to eat at all back when I was still healthy as a frosh in university and lost all of 4 lbs on water and broth [i could only keep down very fat free unsalted chicken broth and water.] I gained weight on iv feeding when the doc finally decided to hospitalize me. I used to gain weight running 5 miles a day when I played soccer in high school and was still eating much less than 2000 cal a day.

I joke that I have an exceptional ability to survive famines :frowning:

43

[QUOTE=BrandonR]

Of course if you add 2 other patties of meat and cheese and load it with bacon and mayo it’s going to lose most of those benefits, but still… Many foods get bad hype. Just like many people avoid foods with any fat in it like the devil, not realizing that fat is something required by the body, and there are good fats found in various food items such as nuts.
[/QUOTE]

Blargh … I suppose the craptastic beef used by fast food places does need something to make it taste better, but a home made burger from good quality beef, with a tiny dash of worchestershire sauce needs nothing more than a really great homemade cibatta roll and trimmings like a microthin slice of red onion, some leaves of butter lettuce and a thin slice of homegrown beefsteak tomato to make it perfect.

Cant abide catsup - for some reason I react badly to teh high fructose corn syrup in it - makes my glucose go crazy. I really wish there was a brand of catsup that used cane sugar. I can tolerate cane or beet sugar in the tiny amount that would be in catsup but not the HF corn syrup.

Isnt there some rumor around that HF cornsyrup is causing all sorts of health problems now?

44

[QUOTE=Otara]
Without a rigid food diary, claims like this are extremely suspect though. Its amazing how much food we can filter out of awareness without realising it, and Id wonder about his activity levels as well.

I like the junk diet comment, I agree that focussing on any single food is a mistake. I think beating on McD is as much an ideological declaration as its based on an analysis of thier food and marketting tactics though, they’re used as one of archetypical symbols for capitalism gone wrong.

Otara
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Actually, I have kept a food diary for years [I adore my PDA, frees me from the little notebook of doom=)] as part of monitoring. It is why I can eat MSG as it has apparently never triggered a migraine, and avoid HF corn syrup like the plague as I noticed my pp glucose readings going wonky when I have catsup or something with FH cornsyrup in it. Cane sugar doesnt do the wild swings like the corn syrup, just a single spike.]

I was thrilled when I got onto the internet and discovered the USDA site that has all the nutritional info on pretty much anything you can think of eating. Great fun looking at stuff you thought was healthy to realize how much sodium or fat is in it=)

45

[QUOTE=Polerius]

b) Do they fry it in some godawful high-fat oil?
[/QUOTE]

There’s no such thing as low-fat oil. Oil is, by definition, fatty acids, i.e. fat. Some oils are worse for your health than others and some are more reusable than others, but they’re always “fat”.

46

aru, several years ago I had a severe bout of gastrenteritis. The only thing I could have for over two weeks was water; the following week I was able to convince my stomach that Golden Apples Are Good For You If You Chew Slowly. I was working 14h days.

Weight loss: zip. I’m still trying to figure it out.

47

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
True, most people who eat a hamburger at the golden arches aren’t going to go home for bean sprouts afterward. People eat what they eat. My point is not that McDonalds is surrepticiously ruining people’s nonexistent attempts to eat healthy. I was simply trying to illustrate the deficiency of their burger using their own numbers regarding recommended dietary intake.

The OP was asking what’s so bad about a McDonalds hamburger. While you could go on for days about specific isolated misdeeds of the company, and whether or not all of them are publicly known, blah, blah, blah, I just felt like sticking to basics: It’s not so much that the burger is actively harmful to you, it’s just that it doesn’t offer much in the way of actual nutrients for all the calories, fat and salt it delivers. Hence the term “junk food”.
[/QUOTE]
So your answer is “no,” then I take it.

48

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]

The OP was asking what’s so bad about a McDonalds hamburger. While you could go on for days about specific isolated misdeeds of the company, and whether or not all of them are publicly known, blah, blah, blah, I just felt like sticking to basics: It’s not so much that the burger is actively harmful to you, it’s just that it doesn’t offer much in the way of actual nutrients for all the calories, fat and salt it delivers. Hence the term “junk food”.
[/QUOTE]

What nutrients do you think it lacks? It has penty of protien, and we don’t usually look to meat dishes as a source of fiber. The vitamin content isn’t bad.

You could do far worse than a cheeseburger, side salad and OJ.

Agreed: skip the fries, and the HFCS laden sodas.

49

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
Yes, but that all goes back to the McLibel trial in England. McDonalds sued the members of a grassroots public action organization for circulating a leaflet criticizing McD’s for a wide variety of misdeeds. The defendants had the choice of proving the statements in the flyer with evidence to convince a judge, or following an “out” in England’s then-current law where they could publicly apologize to McDonalds to get the case dropped, which is the option most of the group chose. Two of them didn’t however, and set about taking on McDonalds, Inc. with donated legal help and resources. The case dragged on for years. While the judge ultimately ruled in favor of McDonalds, it was only in the sense that the activists had not proved every single item in the pamphlet. The judge found they HAD made their case on a number of points, such as exploitation of children through advertising, and other things very damaging to McDonalds public image.

One of the areas in which the judge ruled McDonalds was in misleading advertising in terms of the healthiness of their food. Up to that point, NO McDonalds advertising even remotely suggested that eating every meal at McDonalds was in any way an unwise choice (true, you’d have to be an idiot to think it was wise, but still), and they cultivated a false air of health around their products.

Right around the time a documentary about the trial became known, Morgan Spurlock did his month of Mickey D’s stunt, and suddenly, McDonalds was all about only eating their burgers occasionally, and out came the salads and fruit.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I’d suggest you read the judge’s summary of his decision before you start throwing this cite around. The only two defamatory statements that the judge found were “true” (and thus not libelous) where that McDonald’s was “responsible” for the inhumane treatment of animals by their meat and egg suppliers (page 8), and that they targeted children in their advertising (page 7). The judge also disagreed with McDonald’s that characterizing their food as “low quality” or “at best mediocre” was not comment, and thus defamatory. Overall, however, the judge disagreed with virtually everything the Defendants said, both in their pamphlet and in the course of their defense. The six highlights that the McLibel people have drawn out are weak enough when taken out of context as they’ve done, but are no vindication at all when considered in situ.

50

The problem IMHO is not the hamburger, it’s the stuff added to the McDonald’s hamburger that causes problems…the amount of preservatives and sugar added to this piece of beef is disgusting…rent the movie Super Size Me and you will probably not eat at a fast food joint for quite some time…there is a scene toward the end of the movie where they take a McDonald’s Burger and a “home made” burger and put them in a jar to see what will happen over time…the McD burger basically sits there almost unchanged, while the other starts to mold an disintegrate into mush…and whatever you do, don’t eat that french fry you found under your car seat, although it looks like you may have just dropped it, it could have been there for years and still looks exactly the same…on that note, I am off for a double cheeseburger from the dollar menu…

51

I thought that scene in Supersize Me had fries decomposing and not the fries…?

52

[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
I think he also forced himself to eat when he wasn’t hungry, or to keep eating when he was full. If you do that, pretty much no matter what it is you’re eating, you’re going to have problems.
[/QUOTE]
Morgan Spurlock ate 5000 calories per day, from what I’ve read in the reviews (haven’t seen the movie). And you’re right, he didn’t eat at McD’s every day…he stuffed himself at McD’s every day. If you stuffed yourself with 5000 calories everyday at Salads-R-Us you’d get fucked up as well. Additionally, he restricted his exercise during the month that the movie was shot. And finally, his girlfriend is a vegan chef. Uh, can you say “political agenda?” Not that I’m necessarily defending McD’s…it’s just that I resent scare tactics by muckrakers.

53

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
…the recommended 2000 calories for men…the 1200 calories recommended for women.
[/QUOTE]

Cite?

I’ve heard of the 2000 calorie rule of thumb, but 1200 for women?

Where do these numbers come from?

-FrL-

54

[QUOTE=Frylock]
Cite?

I’ve heard of the 2000 calorie rule of thumb, but 1200 for women?

Where do these numbers come from?

-FrL-
[/QUOTE]

Oops, ne’er mind. Asked and answered.

-FrL-

55

[QUOTE=brk913]
The problem IMHO is not the hamburger, it’s the stuff added to the McDonald’s hamburger that causes problems…the amount of preservatives and sugar added to this piece of beef is disgusting…
[/QUOTE]

I think we have shown the beef is 100% pure beef. Perhaps not the best beef, but beef.

Do you have a cite that shows that sugar or perservatives are added to the beef?

Spurlock is a liar and a liar with an agenda.

56

[QUOTE=Malienation]
Morgan Spurlock ate 5000 calories per day, from what I’ve read in the reviews (haven’t seen the movie). And you’re right, he didn’t eat at McD’s every day…he stuffed himself at McD’s every day. If you stuffed yourself with 5000 calories everyday at Salads-R-Us you’d get fucked up as well. Additionally, he restricted his exercise during the month that the movie was shot. And finally, his girlfriend is a vegan chef. Uh, can you say “political agenda?” Not that I’m necessarily defending McD’s…it’s just that I resent scare tactics by muckrakers.
[/QUOTE]

Heh, Supersize Me had spin like the hubcaps on a pimped up El Camino. Even more jarring because it was contrasted with the spin put forth by McDonalds. My favorite example is towards the end, where he talks about how even the McDondals salads have sugar in them, with a shot of a McSalad, complete with tomatos. Tomatos are fruit. Fruit has lots of sugar. For all I know, there could have been a layer of Pixie Stick dust underneath the lettuce, but he didn’t give me enough information there for me to know that the sugar WASN’T naturally occuring fructose. I don’t recall the shot of the salad including any extra salad dressing or anything either.

Incidentally, his girlfriend gave up veganism soon after Morgan quit his month-long force-feeding binge, according to the little title cards at the end of the movie.

As for the burgers having preservatives… ARE preservatives bad for you? We’re talking the stuff they put in McBurgers and twinkies and Smuckers Jelly, not formaldyhide, of course. Used to be that it wasn’t all that unheard of for meat to be spoiled before it got out of the packaging plant. Bunch of US soldiers in Cuba suffered from severe food poisoning during the Spanish American War because their rations had all gone bad before being packaged and shipped to the front lines. I think I like the idea of the hamburgers being specifically designed NOT to go bad, thankyouverymuch.

57

[QUOTE=Polerius]
My question is: If you buy ground beef at the store and grill it yourself, will the resulting burger be any more nutritious than the one you get from fast food places?

Do fast food burgers lose a lot of their nutritional value because of processing/freezing/etc?
[/QUOTE]

This site, from the About.com people, has nutrition information on a wide variety of items.

I took the information for 1/4-pound of 75% lean ground beef, (the fattiest variety of ground beef I could find listed), pan-broiled (which, seemed to be reasonable parallel to whatever McDonalds is doing to their meat these days), on a Mrs. Baird’s sesame seed hamburger bun (the only sesame seed bun listed).

I compared that to McDonalds’ nutritional information for a quarter pounder stripped of everything but the sesame seed bun and the “grilling spices”, which again, I assumed can’t be removed at point-of-sale.

I realize we were wondering about the regular hamburger, but on Calorie-Counter, I had a choice of a 1/4 pound, or doing the math to compare a McD’s hamburger to whatever multiple of 3 oz I would need for an apples-to-apples comparison. No one is paying me to do this math, so I went for the QP.

The results (%'s are RDA for 2000-calorie diet):



Item                McDonalds       Homemade
Calories                 420            361
Calories from Fat        160            145
Total Fat                18(27%)        16.2(24%)
Saturated Fat            7(37%)         5.4(28%)
Cholesterol              70(23%)        64(21%)
Sodium                   730(30%)       307(13%)
Carbohydrates            40(13%)        30(10%)
Dietary Fiber            3(11%)          1(4%)
Sugars                   8               4
Protein                  24              23.1
Vitamin A                100(2%)         0
Vitamin C                2(2%)           0
Calcium                  15%             8%
Iron                     25%             21%

The McDonalds Quarter Pounder contains:
16% more calories than if you made it yourself with some of the fattiest ground beef available
10% more fat (by weight and calories), including
1/3 more saturated fat
almost 10% more cholesterol
more than double the sodium
33% more carbs, including
twice the sugar,

all for
a negligible protein advantage
trace amounts of Vitamins A and C
and
sizeable increases in Calcium and Iron, the one area they scored well in.

58

…sigh…

After all that, it turns out I made a mistake. At some point, when I went back to the McDonalds site to check my numbers, I forgot to remove the condiments before calculation.

In the spirit of honesty, please consider my previous post amended to read:



Item                McDonalds       Homemade
Calories                 400            361
Calories from Fat        160            145
Total Fat                18(27%)        16.2(24%)
Saturated Fat            7(37%)         5.4(28%)
Cholesterol              70(23%)        64(21%)
Sodium                   460(30%)       307(13%)
Carbohydrates            35(12%)        30(10%)
Dietary Fiber            3(11%)          1(4%)
Sugars                   5               4
Protein                  24              23.1
Vitamin A                0               0
Vitamin C                0               0 
Calcium                  15%             8%
Iron                     20%             21%

The McDonalds Quarter Pounder contains:
more than 10% more calories than if you made it yourself with some of the fattiest ground beef available (the extra calories are in the ketchup, apparently)
10% more fat (by weight and calories), including
1/3 more saturated fat
almost 10% more cholesterol
50% more sodium (it was in the condiments)
16% more carbs, including
25% more sugar
almost 5% LESS Iron

all for
a negligible protein advantage
and
sizeable increases in Calcium, the one area they scored well in. (Butter in the mix?)
(No vitamins and C in the stripped QP. Reagan was right! Ketchup IS a vegetable!)

59

If you ask they should leave off the burger seasoning to keep the sodium down. It’s a common tactic to get a fresh meat patty instead of one that’s been sitting in the heater for half an hour.

60

[QUOTE=Snarky_Kong]
If you ask they should leave off the burger seasoning to keep the sodium down. …
[/QUOTE]

I wasn’t aware that was an option. If so, that would take 120mg of sodium of the Quarter Pounder.