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Old Sun, Aug-18-02, 10:09
Dana114's Avatar
Dana114 Dana114 is offline
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Posts: 29
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 185/143/145 Female 5' 7 1/2"
BF:43%/19.6%/19.6%
Progress: 105%
Location: Texas
Default Fast Food Wars, or Whose Responsibility?

Hold the Toast
Dana Carpender
August 9, 2002



Fast Food Wars, or Whose Responsibility?

Surely all my American readers have heard by now that the fast food industry is under siege by lawyers, suing them for making various people fat and ill. Caesar Barber, a 56 year old maintenance worker who now tips the scales at 272 pounds at 5'10", is blaming McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken for his obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. He is quoted as saying, "They said "100 percent beef." I thought that meant it was good for you. I thought the food was okay."

Pardon me for being blunt, folks, but this is either (to be polite) disingenuousness, or Mr. Barber is too dumb to pour water out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel. I suspect the former, but won't discount the latter.

This is dopey on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start. First of all, did he really think that the hamburger bun was 100% beef? The fries? The soda? The milkshake? And how on earth could he think that fried chicken was 100% beef?

Furthermore, is there anyone in America who hasn't heard, over and over and over that a steady diet of fast food is bad for you? This is right up there with smokers claiming that they didn't know that smoking was a bad idea. Unless you've lived in a cave for the past 30 years, you knew, and you're going to have a damned hard time convincing me otherwise.

Mr. Barber's attorney, Samuel Hirsch, says that fast food joints should list the ingredients on their menus. Interesting idea, but I'd like to know why fast food restaurants should do this if every sort of restaurant, from the mom-and-pop corner coffee shop to the mega-pricey French gourmet places, don't have to? Unlike all those other restaurants, fast food joints do publish nutritional information - indeed, I was in a McDonald's just yesterday, and there, big as life, was a poster with a full nutritional breakdown for every item on the menu. That's a helluva lot more information than any other type of restaurant offers. What is the justification for holding fast food restaurants to a higher standard than Joe's Greasy Spoon, especially since you can probably get a virtually identical meal at Joe's?

But the thing that bothers me most - and this was predictable - is that everyone - Mr. Barber, his attorney, the media - are blaming Mr. Barber's weight gain and ill health on the fat content of his fast food meals. So far not one article I've seen has mentioned the sky-high carbohydrate content of fast food meals - a carbohydrate content that comes, I might add, from the worst sorts of high glycemic impact carbs. How much fat versus how much carbohydrate?

I looked it up. In a meal consisting of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a super-sized order of fries, and one of the new 42 ounce Cokes, you'll get 1644 calories - enough for a day, and that's a lot of the problem right there. But care to guess how many of those calories come from fat? Just 450. That's right - less than 30% of the calories in this meal come from fat, just the way we've been told a healthy meal should be. By contrast, there are 245 grams of carbohydrate here, or 980 carbohydrate calories. Yet we're supposed to believe that fat is the problem?

Of course, those aren't the only foods on the McDonald's menu. Mr. Barber could have had my usual picks when I eat at McDonald's - a grilled chicken caesar salad with a packet of full-fat caesar dressing, and a large iced tea, a lunch which contains just 250 calories - over half of them from fat, horrors! - and 8 grams of carbohydrate.

If he prefers beef, Mr. Barber could have had - as so many low carbers do - a hamburger without the bun, perhaps with a salad. Using the USDA nutrient database to work out the numbers for a Quarter Pounder with Cheese minus the bun, I get 327 calories, with plenty of fat, but less than a gram of carbohydrate. Add a Garden Salad and a packet of ranch dressing at 260 calories, once again washed down with iced tea - or diet pop if he preferred - and Mr. Barber still could have eaten a quick, convenient, inexpensive lunch that contained 587 calories, or just over a third of the calories, and a tiny fraction of the carbohydrates, in the Super Sized Carb Lunch From Hell.

How about at Wendy's? Mr. Barber could have chowed down on a Big Bacon Classic, a Great Biggie Fries, and a 16 ounce Frosty for 1540 calories. 560 of those calories would be from fat - but 776 of them would come from cheap, valueless carbohydrates. I can tell you which fraction of this meal I'd rather eat!

However, Mr. Barber could also have chosen a Chicken BLT Salad, with 310 calories, just about half of which would be from fat - and only 10 grams of carbohydrate. Add a packet of bleu cheese dressing, and you've added 290 more calories, and another 3 g. of carb - and we're still talking a meal with less than 40% of the calories in the carb-laden meal above. But, oh, gosh, it gets most of its calories from fat! Dear me!

Burger King can be a little less fun, since it's flukey, in my experience, which BK's carry salads and which do not. But assuming the salad option, Mr. Barber could choose between these two meals:

Double Whopper with Cheese
King Fries
Dutch Apple Pie
Large Coke

OR

Whopper with Cheese, no bun
Garden Salad with Ranch dressing
King Diet Coke

The difference? The first meal has 2390 calories, 113 grams of fat,116 grams of pure sugar, 262 grams of carbohydrate - again, notice the overwhelming preponderance of carbohydrate, not fat! Even though fat has more than twice as many calories per gram as carbohydrate, there are more carb calories in this meal than fat calories.

The second meal contains 780 calories, fully 580 of which come from fat. There are just 13 grams of carbohydrate (with 2 grams of fiber). There are 31 grams of protein here, making this is a lunch that will certainly keep anyone going all afternoon.

At KFC, Mr. Barber could have lunched on a Chunky Chicken Pot Pie, mashed potatoes, a biscuit, and a 16 ounce Coke - a lunch with 1210 calories, 478 of them from fat. He'd also have gotten 153 grams of empty, valueless carbohydrate, or 612 calories worth - once again, more calories from rubbish carbs than from fat.

Also at KFC, Mr. Barber could have chosen an Original Recipe chicken breast, with 400 calories, and 16 grams of carb - less, if he peeled off the breading, something I always do - or a couple of Original Recipe chicken thighs, at 500 calories for the two of them, and 12 grams of carb, most of which, again, could be peeled off and discarded. Either way, he would have gotten in the neighborhood of 30 grams of protein. Add a side of green beans at 45 calories and 7 grams of carbohydrate - 3 of them fiber - and he'd have a lunch with less than 600 calories. Heck, he could have two sides of beans and stay under 600 calories! Of course, I'm assuming he'd drink iced tea or diet soda, not sugared pop.

I trust that a couple of points have been made - one, that fast food joints offer reasonably healthy food choices for those of us who want them, and choose them. That he didn't do so is Mr. Barber's responsibility, and nobody else's.

Secondly, far from hiding nutritional information, fast food restaurants make more nutrition information, and more complete nutrition information, available more widely than any other sort of restaurant. I found the vast majority of the information in this article on the websites of the companies cited. Many restaurants post nutritional info on the wall. And I have never asked for nutritional information at a fast food restaurant only to be told it was not available. Try that at Tony's Italian Ristorante, or Chez Francais, or even the Veggie Organic Health Food Café - and good luck.

It should also be clear by now that fat is not where the unreasonable calorie load is coming from in fast food meals - it's coming from the super-sized fries and the bathtub-sized sodas. Blaming the calorie load on fat is worse than misleading, it borders on dishonest. Once again, America is demonizing fat to avoid confronting our real addiction: carbohydrates. To blame the problem on ground beef, cheese, bacon, and the like is to avoid the real issue.

I worry that the high fat, high protein fast foods with a minimum of carbohydrate will become unavailable, leaving nothing but starchy, sugary garbage for me to eat - or, more likely, that fast food will be taxed to high heaven in an attempt to save the Caesar Barber's of this nation from themselves.

Think I'm an alarmist? Attorney John Banzhaf, best known for suing the tobacco companies, has now joined the fray, and has made it clear that his aim is to change the eating habits of America through litigation, since regulation seems unlikely. Know the new, ever increasing sin taxes on cigarettes? Mr. Banzhaf would like to see the same thing on "high fat junk foods."

Heaven forfend that people should make their own choices, and take responsibility for the consequences. You and I have made the decision to eat consciously, with our health in mind. If we can do it, so can others, and it is not the job of the courts, or the Congress, or anyone else, to force that decision. And which decision? Given the proven cluelessness of the government and the medical establishment where nutrition is concerned, we may soon find that everything but fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and tofu is heavily taxed, in the name of "saving" us from the evils of fat - and we'll be paying taxes through the nose for our pork rinds and mixed nuts and cheese.

The hell with that. Let me choose what I want, and let Mr. Barber - and everyone else - take responsibility for his own choices, and his own waistline, whether at a fast food restaurant, or anywhere else.

Because I find it very, very hard to believe that Mr. Barber got fat solely on fast food. Is he claiming he never downed a bag of chips in front of the TV? Ate three or four Mrs. Field's cookies while driving home from the mall? Begged his wife to make his favorite lasagne, with garlic bread on the side? Grabbed a soda a few times a day from the machine at work? Let's face it, the fast food companies are the easy target, with the deep pocket. Is Mr. Barber going to sue his mother for getting him addicted to chocolate chip cookies, and baking him birthday cakes? Nope. It's the big, easy sitting duck he's after - the big, easy sitting duck with billions upon billions of dollars.

The bottom line is personal responsibility, and individual freedom, a concept we claim to revere. Whose job is it to decide what we may or may not put in our bodies? Whose job is it to decide whether we value health, or immediate gratification? Who is to decide what is a healthy diet for our own personal bodies?

Let Mr. Barber destroy his body with his meals with less than 30% fat, and an ocean of cheap carbohydrates. Leave me my healthy, low carb, low calorie, high fat food - and the freedom to make my own choices.


http://www.holdthetoast.com/archive/020809.html
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  #2   ^
Old Mon, Aug-19-02, 09:03
Karla's Avatar
Karla Karla is offline
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Posts: 414
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 240/205/145 Female 5' 9-1/2"
BF:
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Location: Bristol, Rhode Island
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You go, girl!!!

But I am feeling a definite urge to track down that sleazy lawyer John Banzhaf and give him a dose of the truth about fat and carbs. And that tobacco law suit was the ultimate in idiocy. I don't smoke and never have, but I still don't understand how you can sue someone who makes a product that, whatever its harmful effects, is legal. Why not sue the government for not outlawing it if it's so bad (which it is, of course). Tobacco would never pass FDA scrutiny if someone were trying to put it on the market today. And what about personal responsibility? You'd have to be from Mars not to know that smoking is bad for you.

I could go on, but I won't (and aren't you relieved?)

Great article, Dana.

Karla
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