Let’s start this party off with an easy one. Imagine, if you will, that you have woken up, started your day, and gotten to work. You work feverishly all morning, as Sisyphus did, trying to push your boulder of work up your proverbial mountain. Your co-worker/kinda friend pops his/her head into your cubicle and says “hey! wanna get some lunch?!”. Starved, you say, “sure! what’s on the menu?”. Your friend/coworker says:
Well, I was thinking of getting some chicken that as been caged up and has never seen the light of day while ingesting TONs of antibiotics, processing it with some ammonia, you know, to kill the harmful stuff, grinding it up, then combining it with water, salt, and some sodium phosphates. After that, I was going to batter it up with bleached white flour, water, wheat flour, modified food starch (whatever THAT is, hahaha), salt, a little BAMBAM spices, wheat gluten, paprika, diglycerides, maybe a little leavening from some sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, ammonium bicarbonate, and monocalcium phosphate. Then we need some flavor… hmm… lets use some “natural flavor!” from some unspecified plant source with some paprika extractives. Once all that is done, I was thinking about cooking it in some handily dandily prepared vegetable oil which, FYI, is a mix of canola, corn, soybean, and hydrogenated soybean oil with perhaps some TBHQ (tert-Butylhydroquinone) and citric acid, you know, for freshness. Lastly, we’re gonna get some foam, so we will need to add some dimethylpolysiloxane to keep that stuff from acting up. 1
Wow! You wonder if you coworker is a chemist or if they just want something to eat. You decide to choose your own adventure and eat a salad.
Can you guess what this is?
Come on give it a shot. This is an easy one!
DING DING DING! Yes, it’s everyone’s favorite McDonald’s Chicken McScienceProject. You win the knowledge to not eat this crap ever again!
Oh, it’s not that bad. Right?
Let’s look at some nutritional data2. Don’t pay a TON of attention to protein, carbs, and fat. If you are zoning and eating some McNuggets, I think you are doing it wrong, but that’s another topic. Take a look at the nutrient breakdown. Wow… not a lot going on there. Whoa!!! Look at the Fats & Fatty Acids, in particular, the ratio between Omega 6 and Omega 3 (3505mg/191mg). Did you know our ancestors had a 1-1 or 2-1 ratio of n6/n33. This is an 18/1 ratio! That’s not good and actually, I suspect will be a VERY common thread that we will see in many of the foods that are reviewed. This is why you have to take your fish oil is such high quantities4 – to balance this crap out.
When EVERY food that you eat has such a terrible n6/n3 ratio, guess what. Come on, try. YOU will have a terrible n6/n3 ratio. You really are what you really eat.
Back to the ingredients list for a sec. Among other substances, did you notice that when you eat a chicken nugget, you are eating corn and soy, the 2 top American produced crops which are the most heavily genetically modified? Again, the same concept applies as with the n6/n3 ratio. Sure, a piece of corn with dinner isn’t going to kill you. A soy product here and there isn’t going to cripple you or give you boobs if you’re a dude. What I hope to illustrate here is that corn and soy are in almost every processed food that you eat. I challenge you to go the store and try to find a boxed product that does not contain corn or soy in some way.
You might be thinking to yourself “hey buddy, I don’t go to McDonald’s. I know that stuff’s bad for me. I go to Wendy’s”. Yeah, you sure do “know when it’s real”, don’t you. Here’s the ingredient list from Wendy’s version5:
Crispy Chicken Nuggets: Chicken Breast, Water, Modified Corn Starch, Sodium Phosphates, Salt, Whey Protein Concentrate. Battered and Breaded with: Wheat Flour, Water, Bleached Wheat Flour, Salt, Modified Corn Starch, Spices, Leavening (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate), Dextrose, Yellow Corn Flour, Yeast, Garlic Powder, Citric Acid, Spice Extractives, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Xanthan Gum. Cooked in Vegetable Oil (soybean oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural flavor [vegetable], citric acid [preservative], dimethylpolysiloxane [anti-foaming agent]). Cooked in the same oil as menu items that contain Egg and Fish (where available). CONTAINS: MILK, WHEAT.
Wow. That doesn’t really look much better or “real” for that matter. Lots of corn, soy, wheat, and more chemicals and preservatives. Hm. What about the nutritional data6, though? These seem to have a bit more in the way of minerals than the McDonald’s version but is comparable if not worse in the way of vitamins. As far as the n6/n3 ratio goes, again, we see 3.6g of omega-6 and .1g of omega-37. That’s a 36:1 ratio. Read that again. 36:1. That is horrible.
Conclusion
Earlier on, I referred to these things as a “McScienceProject” because that is exactly what they are. Yeah, they do taste great, and sure there’s some real food in there somewhere, but the overall affect is a manufactured piece of caloric intake that is virtually devoid of any nutritional value. Can you survive on it? Yes. Can you thrive on it? No.
Maybe you are thinking “dude, this is just one food, lighten up”. Look at that ingredient list, look me in the eye and tell me that you are cool with your child eating everything that list a few times a week or everyday in some cases. Go ahead. I couldn’t do it.
As we profile more “foods” in this series, my hope is that you will start to see some common threads and realize that you are not getting things “in moderation” as you think you are nor are you eating foods that help the body be the best that it can be. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Until next time!
References
Ingredients
- 1 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_McNuggets#Ingredient_List
- 5 – http://www.wendys.com/food/pdf/us/nutrition.pdf
Ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 Fatty Acids
- 3 – http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fish-oil-health-benefits/
- 4 – http://whole9life.com/2010/03/robb-wolf-fish-oil-calculator/
Nutritional Data