What is the last time in the menu on the large fast-food chains? Oddly enough, is the answer ... "health food!" Even more illogical, many are marketing their food to lose weight. Healthy weight loss eating at Taco Bell and McDonalds? Is this a noble movement to be welcomed, it is a big corporate money grab, or is it a double edged sword?
Almost everyone remembers the Jared weight loss campaign for the Metro. Jared Fogle was the guy who 245 pounds lost while eating at subway station regularly. He picked up just the lower calorie items in the menu.Seeing an opportunity, threw the local shop owner metro corporate with an idea. before long was Jared the spokesman of the company in their national advertising campaigns which was called, The Subway Diet.
Metro sales doubled to 8.2 billion. how much the increase came from the weight loss ads is unknown, but there is little doubt that using weight loss as a marketing platform was a blessing for the sandwich maker. Other fast-food chains grabbed the weight loss torch where metro.
The latest is the Taco Bell drive through diet.With its own dedicated website and advertising campaign, the station via the diet shows off their own "Jared": Christine! the ads, which may be conservative, (perhaps due to stricter laws of the FTC), say Christine lost 54 pounds more than 2 years by reducing her calories to 1250 per day, and share her success came from choosing the Taco Bell new lower calorie "Fresco" items.
These include "7 diet items with 150 to 240 calories and 9 grams of fat."For example, there is a soft taco chicken with only 170 calories and 4 grams of fat.
By swapping traditional foods with a number of these lower calorie menu items, you would take in less calories and less fat. If all else remains the same, can this help you lose weight. For people who refuse to give eating at fast food restaurants, this might be a good thing.
Take, for example, my brother, he is not a total junk food junkie, but left to its own devices, he will make a beeline Taco Bell and McDonalds and so will the friends he hangs out with.
I went to McDonalds with him a few months ago (not by choice-I was dragged there), and he was about to get a bacon cheeseburger. I looked at the menu, and said: "That is 790 calories!" I looked down on his belly than continued, "look, they have Chicken wraps. Why did you not one of these? "Without asking me, he agreed, apparently happy to just fix a McDonalds.
Entitled there on the counter they the nutrition information sheets:
Of McDonald's honey mustard grilled chicken wrap: 260 calories, 9 g fat, 27 grams of carbohydrates, 18 grams of protein.
That saved him 530 calories. I am happy that there is something about 260 calories on the menu and not only 700 calories across the Board?Absolutely. I applaud the fast-food restaurants for the provision of lower calorie choices? you bet.But here's the big question:
It can be nice to have these lower calorie choices in the fast-food menus (especially with calories posted) but are these really "healthy choices?"
A few journalists and bloggers caught the inconsistency and smart countered, "this new fast-food menu items are not healthy, they are only 'healthi-THERE. '"
I think they are both wrong.This food is not healthy, nor is it healthier.It is only lower in calories.
You could say that these lower calorie fast-food items are healthier choices in the sense that they help may apply for the total daily calorie intake, which can facilitate weight loss. If you weight, improve your health can lose.But what if your definition of healthy diet depends on the power supply, power density and absence of artificial ingredients?
Let's take a closer look at this very low calorie chicken wrap.Do you really think that it is healthier just because it has 1/3 the calories of a Bacon-cheeseburger?
Here's the ingredients directly out of McDonald's Web site:
Of McDonald's grilled chicken breast filet (wrap): chicken breast fillets with rib meat, water, seasoning (salt, sugar, food starch-modified, maltodextrin, spices, dextrose, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed [Corn gluten, wheat gluten, soy] proteins, garlic powder, paprika, chicken fat, chicken broth, natural flavors (plant and animal source), caramel color, polysorbate 80, xanthan gum, onion powder, extractives of paprika), modified potato starch, sodium phosphates. CONTAINS: SOY AND WHEAT.Prepared with liquid margarine: Liquid soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oil, salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, mono-and diglycerides, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservative), artificial flavor, citric acid, vitamin a palmitate, beta carotene (color).(and don't forget the 800 mg sodium).
HOLY CRAP!May chicken breast is not just a single ingredient ... chicken breast?!That is not in General what healthy, whole food-single ingredient?
This is not food. it's more like what author Michael Pollan would call a "edible food-like substance."
What about the honey mustard sauce?The first ingredient is after water ...SUGAR!
The ingredients of flour tortilla?Enriched bleached wheat flour, also made with vegetable shortening (one or more of the following can contain: hydrogenated soybean oil, soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, hydrogenated cottonseed oil with mono-and diglycerides added), contains 2% or less of the following: sugar, leavening (sodium aluminum sulfate, calcium sulfate, sodium phosphate, baking soda, corn starch, monocalcium phosphate), salt, wheat gluten, dough conditioners, sodium metabisulfite, distilled monoglyceriden.
Trans fats? sugar? Aluminum? Stuff you can speak and have to look up to get out of the preservatives and disinfectants to find?
Don't confuse the issues: weight loss and health .... Calories and nutrition. There is a difference!
This is what makes "healthy" fast-food a double edged sword.
Some people, like my brother, just go not fully to fast food ... If I make him to better determine bad choices can get that could help him his weight. If that works, then I'm glad that the fast-food restaurants have to offer such choices.
But if you are a good choice-a healthy choice wild-you forget would "drive through" everywhere for your diet. you would shop for whole, fresh, natural real food, keep a well-stocked kitchen ... and learn how to cook.
The subway diet, the diet Drive Through, the Cookie Diet or Weight Watchers approved McDonalds menu (Yes its true, what a pair that is!)Don't be fooled itself-this is not only not healthy, it is not healthier – it's lower calorie junk food.
"Welcome to our restaurant Sir. do you want a big plate of dog poop or a small plate of dog poop?"
"No thank you, I am neither. it doesn't matter what the serving size is still crap crap."
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