McDonald’s online nutrition guide makes it easy for people to see how many calories, total fat, cholesterol, sodium, protein, and more they’re getting from a hamburger, chicken sandwich, or fish fillet. But, as is the case with other food manufacturers, the information is sketchy and somewhat misleading, particularly when it comes to trans fatty acids.
In years past, scientists, the media, the medical community, and the general public believed that cholesterol and saturated fat in the diet were the root of age-related health problems, particularly heart disease. and some types of cancer.
High levels of fats or triglycerides in the bloodstream increase a person’s risk of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. Imbalanced cholesterol levels (high LDL and low HDL) play a role in heart disease, age-related eye disease, and stroke, among other things.
Being overweight or obese is a threat to a person’s health and longevity. The extra weight puts too much strain on the heart. Central obesity, or visceral fat, puts too much stress on vital organs and increases a person’s risk of heart disease and type II diabetes.
Many people are interested in the new McDonald’s nutrition guide because they need to lose weight, but eat out regularly. But, it is not simply the caloric content that is important.
Calories are the basic energy requirements that allow the cells of the body to function. The typical advice for someone who wants to lose weight is to consume fewer calories and exercise more. In other words, you burn more calories than you consume. But that’s only part of the story, when it comes to good health and feeling full after a meal.
The calories in the food we eat come from fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and sugars. According to McDonald’s online nutrition guide, a regular hamburger, which isn’t much food when you think about it, provides 250 calories. 80 of those calories come from fat.
One of the popular diet schemes, for many years, and still recommended by some sources today, is to limit fat intake to no more than 30% of total caloric intake. Using that formula, a regular hamburger is not an acceptable food, because more than 30% of the calories in it come from fat, and this is one of the lowest-fat sandwiches on the menu.
Another concern is that the sandwich contains half a gram of trans fat. This is where McDonald’s nutrition guide and the labels used by other manufacturers in the US are misleading. Manufacturers can advertise their products as containing zero grams of trans fat, as long as the product contains half a gram or less. Half a gram may not sound like a lot, but it can easily add up.
Trans fats raise LDL (bad) cholesterol levels and lower HDL (good) cholesterol levels. People who eat a lot of foods that contain trans fats have higher levels of C-reactive protein, another factor that indicates an increased risk of heart disease.
If it were entirely accurate, a McDonald’s nutrition guide would say that eating its burgers regularly could increase your risk of heart disease. And, that’s just one of the items on the menu. Think before you eat.
