Healthy Fast Foods
2 Comments
Healthy Fast Foods, Dream On: After the 2012 Olympics everybody is on a health kick, including McDonald’s. Be still my heart, finally healthy food at McDonald’s! They offer two, proclaimed to be healthy, breakfast items:
- Blueberry Banana Nut Oatmeal
- Snack Size Fruit & Walnuts
Then you click on their Nutrition tag and discover that the Banana Nut Oatmeal contains 21g (5 teaspoons) of sugar. The second item, Snack Size Fruit & Walnuts, contains 25g (6 teaspoons) sugar. In addition, two chemicals, BHT and TBHQ, are added as a preservative. TBHQ, a chemical preservative, is a form of butane; it is used to delay the onset of rancidness and greatly extends the storage life of foods.
Now, if you were to partake of these two ‘healthy’ breakfast treats, your total sugar consumption would be 46g (11.5 teaspoons) fist thing in the morning. The maximum recommended daily added sugar intake by the American Heart Association (AHA) for healthy children, women, and men is 3, 5, 9 teaspoons respectively. Why is it that the fast food companies can’t leave the copious amounts of sugar out? I don’t believe anyone would consume 11.5 teaspoons of sugar while eating two servings of breakfast foods at home. Remember the recommended maximum daily added sugar consumption by AHA for healthy women is 5 teaspoons, and for children only 3 teaspoons. Would you consider these types of fast food meals healthy? What do you think?
You are right. So much of what is proclaimed to be healthy really isn’t. We should eat more food in it’s original state, not processed. I might sprinkle a teaspoon or two on my oatmeal, but none on my fruit and certainly not 11 teaspoons.
I think if we try to eat mostly foods that don’t have nutrition labels (i.e., vegetables and fruits) we will be on the right path. It’s amazing how much better foods taste when you don’t eat added sugar on a regular basis.