The Truth about Fast Food

The Truth about Fast Food. What Can You Actually Believe?

When you see fast food advertisements today it's tough to tell the factual information from the false advertisements. In nearly every advertisement the food is shown in an extremely positive light. Fast food companies show their food to be fresh and healthy, but how much of this can you actually believe?

Let's start with the discrepancies between advertisements and reality on the appearance and freshness of their food. In the ads all of the meat looks fresh and juicy, with all of the vegetables looking fresh and delicious. These perfect ingredients are combined in the commercials to form the perfect fast food meal, whether it be a delicious looking sandwich or salad. Fast food companies emphasize this perfection by showcasing satisfied looking people who are eating this food. This ad below is a perfect example of these tactics. 

However, these ads are definitely far from the truth. When was the last time you ordered food from McDonald's and got something that actually looked like the product on the menu? I honestly can't ever remember a time that the ads were the truth. When you get your sandwich it is always a greasy, old beef patty with some cheese on top along with some sad looking vegetables. It is always far from the shining images shown just above the counters or in the television ads. 

Advertised McDonald's Big Mac

Store Bought McDonald's Big Mac

The appearance isn't the worst part about the advertising falsehoods portrayed by these companies. They also tout their food to be always fresh and never frozen. However, many of their products contain artificial flavors and preservatives that are unhealthy for human consumption.

• Pink Slime: basically the leftover scraps of meat that are combined and then treated with harsh chemicals like ammonia and citric acid to kill off bacteria
• Some McDonald's salads contain propylene glycol alginate, which is a product that is "safe" for human consumption but is not legal as an additive in cat food, for fear of unhealthy side effects. This compound is also used as a poison to kill beetles.
• Subway sandwiches contain azodicarbonamide, which is a compound that is banned in Australia and the UK because it can cause respiratory problems
• Countless fast food products contain MSG, which can be linked to many brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease.

Now I don't know about you, but seeing these ingredients that these products contain doesn't exactly conjure up images of fresh food. These additives also bring up the next topic of the healthiness of fast food. Many companies are now pushing the concept of healthier meals to the public. Is this food actually healthier though?

It seems to be common knowledge that if you are looking to eat a healthy diet you should stay away from fast food items. When looking at the nutritional content of popular fast food items it is even more obvious about the unhealthy nature of this food. The USDA set daily recommended guidelines for the average person of around 2,000 calories, no more than 65 grams of fat and no more than 2,400 milligrams of sodium. McDonald's Nutrition Facts show that a Big Mac has 550 calories with 29 grams of fat and nearly 1,000 milligrams of sodium. This alone would represent a significant amount of your daily intakes. But this alone doesn't comprise a meal at McDonald's, this is usually combined with an order of fries and a drink. Adding just a small Coke and fries brings the calorie content up to 830 calories, with 40 grams of fat and over 1100 milligrams of sodium. This comprises a large part of your daily intake and eating this food multiple times a week can be very damaging to your health. The large amount of fat and salt can cause obesity, which can lead to heart disease and diabetes. The very real effects of eating too much of this food is shown in the documentary Supersize Me, where a filmmaker only eats McDonald's for a month straight to demonstrate the consequences.

In conclusion fast foods are not at all what they appear to be. They aren't fresh or healthy as they are claimed to be, they are loaded with artificial preservatives and flavors that are potentially harmful to your health. They also have very high calorie and fat contents which can cause serious health problems if let unchecked. All in all my advice would be to cook your own meals at home instead, you know for sure what is in them and the home cooked food will almost always have a higher nutritional content than the fast foods. The best tip for a healthy lifestyle is to avoid these foods as much as possible.