Fast Food Dirty Secrets

We all know fast food is not healthy.   I laugh a little when I hear about lawsuits against KFC because their deep fried chicken contained trans fat.   To paraphrase the judge in that case, if you didn’t get unhealthy fat at KFC, where did you think you would find it?  

Since then KFC has actually gone to the trouble of eliminating transfats from their meals.   This doesn’t make KFC healthy, but it does help a little in the national fight against obesity.

But we all know that the fast food industry is slowly poisoning us.   Morgan Spurlock’s excellent documentary did a wonderful job of documenting the health deterioration of a pure McDonalds diet.   While companies try to downplay what they do to us, you can’t help but wonder how far they go for their profit.   Are they as bad as the tobacco companies that go out of their way to make an addictive product and market it to children?  

U.S. News put out an excellent story yesterday that I think many will find interesting.   They listed the top ten things food companies don’t want us to know.   Here they are:

Junk food companies throw billions of dollars into marketing campaigns targeting children.   The FTC says that junk food makers spend 1.6 billion annually in television and online advertising specifically to reach kids.  

This is not really news.   We have all been eating Cookie Crisp and Sugar Pops for a while.   After all, despite what the silly rabbit says, Trix are for kids.

Food companies invest in research that put them in the best light.   Again, not surprising that they will only spend money on studies that show their product to be healthy.  

Junk food companies donate significant money to nutritional associations.   For example, The American Dietetic Association, or ADA, takes money from Coca-Cola.   How I doubt the ADA will release a statement saying Coke is the missing food group, clearly their purchase of access to an association we trust should be some cause for concern.  

More processing equals more profits, but also equals less nutrition.   High margin items are derived from commodity crops that are higher in calories, while lower in nutritional value.   In general, the less healthy, the better the profits.

The healthier you eat, the less you eat.   High processed foods are less satiating than natural foods.   An apple will fill you up more than a cup of processed apple sauce. Eating foods in the rawest form gives you the best nutrition.  

Don’t fall for the healthier versions of food.   Most schools have gotten rid of the sugary sodas, only to replace them with sugary “sports drinks”.   Despite the marketing, these are not healthy alternatives to soda.  

Don’t trust the labels.   It’s not that the label is lying, but I certainly notice an awful lot of the “zero trans fats” labels.   All of a sudden cookies are supposed to be healthy because they don’t contain “trans fats”, despite the fact they contain a lot of saturated fat.   This is a great example of the food companies trying to play off public perception.   In case you don’t know, saturated fat is very bad, trans fat even worse.

The food industry applies a lot of pressure to keep things confusing.   While the government may want to tell us to not eat meat more than twice a week, this would not please some major parts of the food industry.   So instead we get advice like “avoid excessive intake of high saturated fats through meat”, or something like that.  

Beware of organizations like the Center for Consumer Freedom.   These are funded by food maker to fight anti-obesity campaigns.   These are the guys working for companies like Coca-Cola, and Wendy’s that try to stop schools from removing soda machines.  

Food companies will take drastic action to silent critics.   If an organization comes out with a study that displeases the food industry, they will likely get a lot of heat from multiple directions.   Look what the meat industry did to try to silence Oprah.  

In the end, we are responsible for ourselves.   Junk food companies are going to try to sell us things that we enjoy, and there is nothing wrong with that.   We simply need to start treating some things like the poison it is, regardless of how pretty the box, how good it tastes, or the fact it may have a free price inside. This is especially true when it comes to our children.   It’s time to start taking nutritional responsibility away from companies.   This means less restaurants and frozen meals, and more fresh cooking at home.