A number of fast food restaurants have launched salads as a healthy alternative to their high-calorie hamburgers and fries. A little problem as explained by Your Health:
Doctors Rate New Salad Entrées Hyped by ChainsI'm flabbergasted (NOT). And a quick reminder for those who saw the film Super Size Me. In this film, Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's fast food for thirty days and suffered various physical problems as a result of this diet. What Spurlock does not say is that he specifically increased his caloric intake to over 5,000 calories/day -- over double the amount the average person needs. He also restricted his movement to keep his caloric outflow as low as possible. From the excellent Morgan Spurlock Watch website:
McDonald's Chicken "Salad" Packed with More Fat and Calories Than a Big Mac
Offering a salad entrée is the latest marketing push for fast-food and quick-serve chains, but according to a new analysis by the nutrition experts at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), many fast-food salads are not any more healthful than a greasy burger. For example, McDonald's Crispy Chicken Bacon Ranch Salad with dressing has a hefty 51 grams of fat and 660 calories while a Big Mac has 34 grams of fat and 590 calories. Surprisingly, this salad entrée also has just as much cholesterol, 85 milligrams, as the Big Mac.
All six of McDonald's entrée salads are packed with fat and cholesterol, mainly from chicken and cheese, earning them all the lowest rating of one star. Other artery-clogging salads include Wendy's Chicken BLT and Subway's Meatball Salad. Two salads out of the 34 rated by PCRM earned five stars: Au Bon Pain's Garden Salad and Subway's Veggie Delite.
"We did not expect these new salad entrées to be so loaded with fat and cholesterol," says Brie Turner-McGrievy, M.S., R.D., the clinical research coordinator at PCRM. "Americans thinking about getting in shape and heading to the beach this summer should steer clear of the heavily hyped "salads" that are smothered with chicken, cheese and other fatty foods. Real salads with plenty of fresh veggies and chickpeas or beans for protein are best for heart health and slimming."
Les SayerFrom Sayer's website, he has really put his money where his mouth is:
Sayer is a biology professor who replicated Spurlock's thirty-day experiment to teach his students about how the documentary medium can be abused to further a political agenda. The difference between Sayer and Spurlock: Sayer didn't deliberately double his daily calorie intake, nor did he stop exercising. He ate three meals per day at McDonald's, diversified what he ate, and was able to keep his calorie count between 2,000 and 3,000. Over 30 days, he lost 17 pounds. His blood pressure dropped. And his cholesterol basically remained the same. He suffered none of the effects Spurlock shows in Super Size Me.
McDonald's for a Year!Sayer also provides links to seven JPG Lab Test Printouts of his blood chemistry workups. Lookin' good!
A quick summary of my blood tests show that all measurable results are within normal parameters. Eating McDonald's for a year has not had the deleterious effect that many people predicted. During the concluding minutes of the Super Size Me movie, Spurlock asked one of his physicians if he should eat McDonald's for a year, and in an unusually uninformed response from someone in his profession, he said no, wrongly assuming that Spurlock's weight gain and ill-health were a result of eating McDonald's food for a month.
Well, after McDonald's for a year, I am thoroughly satisfied that my hypothesis has been proven: McDonald's is not the issue, it's the lack of exercise.
My final weight on June 1st was 217 lbs (the same as it was in March 2005), and my blood pressure was 143/81 (taken by my college's registered nurse. It was 148/79 taken by the same person in March 2005).
Other blood work included: Cholesterol: 3.98 mmol/L (<5.20 mmol/L is normal); HDL (good cholesterol): 1.20 mmol/L (>0.90 mmol/L is normal); Sodium: 140 mmol/L (133-146 is normal); Triglyceride: 1.51 mmol/L (<2.30 mmol/L is normal).
