Junk Food - A Question of Snobbery?

myofibril

Please consider the following restaurant meals:

1) Big Mac with fries followed by a Cadburys Caramel McFlurry
2) Har kau (steamed prawn dumplings) followed by nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice) served with chicken skewers and satay sauce
3)Steak au poivre with brandy and cream reduction, frites (fries) and aparagus spears tossed in garlic butter followed by salted caramel chocolate torte
4)Poulet Breton (chicken) served with wild mushroom sauce, truffle mash and salade verte followed by crepe with fresh strawberries and Chantilly cream
5)Breaded calamari rings (squid) with tartare sauce and lemon wedges followed by seafood linguine

Which of the above would you consider junk food and harmful to your well being? All of them? Some? Just one?

I ask because I have eaten meals 2-5 in the last month or so. When I have told people I know in RL about them they have all been positive and I have even been positively commended for eating them. I haven't eaten a meal like 1 in some time but I have in the past. This has, on occasion, been met with abject horror along the lines of "why would you eat that rubbish..."

However, I am pretty sure that meals 2-5 are equal, or on occasion dwarf meal 1 in terms of portion size, calorie content, sodium, sugar and saturated fat levels. I say "pretty sure" because the only restaurant that actually listed the nutritional info was McDonalds.

Objectively should we be focusing more of our attention not on restaurants like McDonalds but other restaurants? Isn't it the case that in context it is less harmful than other options with larger portion sizes irrespective of the supposed quality of the ingredients? Is it ok to rag on junk food perhaps because there is a perception that it is what less affluent people eat and is therefore an easier target? Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

cappri

Is it ok to rag on junk food perhaps because there is a perception that it is what less affluent people eat and is therefore an easier target?

Ding ding ding we have a winner here!

myofibril

Is it ok to rag on junk food perhaps because there is a perception that it is what less affluent people eat and is therefore an easier target?

Ding ding ding we have a winner here!

Let's hope I don't get a fried chicken dinner then or I will never hear the end of it

WendyTerry420

The notion of "junk food" is definitely one brought to us by the Food Police and snobs. Some of the foods listed in the OP are ones that I have never even heard of, let alone tasted. It makes me want to eat a hot dog though. :laugh:

myofibril

Some of the foods listed in the OP are ones that I have never even heard of, let alone tasted.

It's just a fancy way of saying I eat chicken, steak, fish, rice and pasta with a few other things thrown in....

The constituent parts aren't all that different to what you would find in a "junk" food meal

ngyoung

I would guess that 2-5 are more micronutrient dense then a big mac and fries. Depending on the quality of ingredients and how they are prepared they will have more beneficial nutrients and less processed chemicals then typical american fast food. Some of those meals seem pretty carb rich for me though. Also can depend on portioning. There is a semi-fancy Italian restaurant that used to be THE place for gourmet Italian but all they did was give you a boat sized plate of pasta swimming in sauce and a few chunks of protein and veggies. Once a real actual authentic Italian place opened up people finally realized how amateur the first place was. The new place had reasonable portions and you could actually taste the flavors of all the ingredients. The pasta complimented them instead of just being a sponge for a quart of sauce.

cappri

Is it ok to rag on junk food perhaps because there is a perception that it is what less affluent people eat and is therefore an easier target?

Ding ding ding we have a winner here!

Let's hope I don't get a fried chicken dinner then or I will never hear the end of it

But fried chicken is yummy!

oddyogi

Did someone say McFlurry?

Witchdoctor58

Types of fat make a difference. So does cooking temperature. So does quality of the base ingredients. All of the above menus are full of fat and white carbs. However, I'd rather have the torte vs. fast food shake, and the steak vs the Big Mac with high fructose corn syrup dressings and pink slime meat, as at least all of the ingredients are found in nature, rather than chemical stew.

Acg67

Types of fat make a difference. So does cooking temperature. So does quality of the base ingredients. All of the above menus are full of fat and white carbs. However, I'd rather have the torte vs. fast food shake, and the steak vs the Big Mac with high fructose corn syrup dressings and pink slime meat, as at least all of the ingredients are found in nature, rather than chemical stew.

ZOMG! White carbs and chemicals?

FYI: Natural ingredients are chemical stews as well

Also are you familiar with the appeal to nature fallacy?

Timshel_

Is it ok to rag on junk food perhaps because there is a perception that it is what less affluent people eat and is therefore an easier target?

Kinda true.

The data collected on obesity always shows that as income rises obseity rates drop. But what happens is the media and non-scientific community "researches" then simply looks at what the average poor person eats (the McD's vs. some high end meal) and claims it is correlated and causual, which is just ridiculous. So what you are saying is true at that level. The premise there is that obesity rates are higher in lower income people becuase they eat at McD's more often than people with more income.

However, there are also a great deal of studies that show people who eat fast food more often have a higher likely hood of having issues with obesity. Other data suggests that people who eat out more often in general have a higher likely hood of being obese. So with that in mind income really would not define obseity, which supports that correlating income and food choices is NOT a casual effect.

There is something else in the mix there. My guess is access to education and the culture/environment.

And we all know it still comes down to calories for weight gain or loss. Moderation is where the battle is won or lost.

The nutritional value of each of those meals is where the discussion of 'junk' vs. 'healthy really is.

MyChocolateDiet

Yum Chicken Satay!

(It's because, just like you, they long to be, close to me.)

I also think the McDonalds issue is due to that movie supersize. Nobody says anything really when you eat at Carl's Junior or Jack in the box though right? At least not to me.

rahlpn

Did someone say McFlurry?

Seriously, I had a hard time interpreting the rest of the post after I read that line. CADBURY CARAMEL McFlurries??! I'm moving to GB like today (I'm assuming OP lives in GB because we don't have Cadbury Caramel McFlurries here in the US).

dandelyon

I shouldn't even be posting in this thread as a vegetarian, but most of the food joints that I stay away from have to do with horrifying stories I've heard from employees about mishandling food (picking it up off the floor and serving it, spitting, putting a moldy pizza in the oven and scraping off the mold) or because the place showed up in the newspaper for having rat feces present in the kitchen.

Those gross kitchens happen to be in places like McDonalds, Pizza Hut, etc.

I've also never had a french fry or pizza that made me close my eyes and sigh with contentment, although I have had that experience at some nicer restaurants. If I'm going to eat a thousand calories and a hundred grams of fat, 1) fancy cheese is involved and 2) I should be giddy with food joy.

myofibril

at least all of the ingredients are found in nature, rather than chemical stew.

But that was part of my point really.

I presume that the ingredients were better quality in the other restaurant foods but in all likelihood the actually quantities of other things including calories salt, sugar and so forth were much higher. Nobody seems to bat an eyelid about this and the potential impact on health. In fact it seems a positive thing to do socially and is actually encouraged.

To me this seems more of a problem yet there is very little social stigma attached to fine dining. Why is that? In the context of an otherwise balanced diet the less risky option seems to be the McDonalds meal....

dandelyon

To me this seems more of a problem yet there is very little social stigma attached to fine dining. Why is that? In the context of an otherwise balanced diet the less risky option seems to be the McDonalds meal....

In my circle, at least, it's not fast food vs fine dining. Fast food is up against bringing your own lunch to work, fine dining is something special you go out and do for an anniversary or birthday.

I wouldn't compare them, but you're right, if you do, you'll get very different feedback.

romdeussen

Myofibril, I think it comes down to accessibility. I'm going to be blunt: As you go down the economic scale, waistlines tend to go up. McDonalds is cheaper and more accessible to someone who is a single mom with 5 kids who has to work 3 jobs, than a meal at Pamplemousse for the family. And since a majority of this nation is economically challenged, it's an affordable option, and thus what you hear about in the news since a majority eats it.

I was raised in Europe. Meals 2-5 were common there in my family, and I still make many of those (I'm a fierce cook). BUT yes, while they are just as fattening, plate sizes are smaller. Serving sizes are smaller. It's like comparing a small piece of liver pate to a quadruple bypass burger at Heart Attack Grill. The fat content is the same--the portion size is what the difference is.

I get called a food snob all of the time. Dinner at my house is on salad plates, smaller portions (annnnnd then I discovered this amazing American dish called mac and cheese and that's where the problem started), sometimes rich food but small portions of it. And by definition, YES! It is "junk food" when I make the raspberry chipotle sauce with sheared almonds to go on that chicken, but it's all in presentation, isn't it.....

I have a great article I saved about this sort of thing---if you'd like, I can scan it and get the .pdf to you somehow.

bcattoes

I wouldn't consider any of them junk food. When I think "junk food" I think candy, chips (American, as in Frito Lay) and snacks of that nature with little nutrition beyond sugar.

I don't think of junk in terms of serving size or cost, but more in terms of lack of nutrition. A single handful of chips or a fun size candy bar is still junk. Godiva chocolate is as much junk as Hershey's chocolate.

I think of McD as crap food because of how it tastes. But I would judge it closer to junk than the other suggested meals because of the lack of vegetables and lower quality ingredients.

bcattoes

The notion of "junk food" is definitely one brought to us by the Food Police and snobs. Some of the foods listed in the OP are ones that I have never even heard of, let alone tasted. It makes me want to eat a hot dog though. :laugh:

Oh, it so made me want steak au poive! Hold the fries, I'll be too full for them. Box up the dessert to go. I'll be too full for it too, but it did sound delicious.

auria17

Besides the amount of calories that are in fast food, consider the main type of fat (worst one) preservatives, colors, chemicals. The other meals by clean eating standards are also not that great, but sound like they may not have as much transfats and the rest of the above. If you ate the same amount of calories for all those foods, 2 - 5 would be healthier. But not by all that much...

And that is why very clean eaters only go to restaurants once a week or less.

rowanwood

I shouldn't even be posting in this thread as a vegetarian, but most of the food joints that I stay away from have to do with horrifying stories I've heard from employees about mishandling food (picking it up off the floor and serving it, spitting, putting a moldy pizza in the oven and scraping off the mold) or because the place showed up in the newspaper for having rat feces present in the kitchen.

Those gross kitchens happen to be in places like McDonalds, Pizza Hut, etc.

I've also never had a french fry or pizza that made me close my eyes and sigh with contentment, although I have had that experience at some nicer restaurants. If I'm going to eat a thousand calories and a hundred grams of fat, 1) fancy cheese is involved and 2) I should be giddy with food joy.

Just from experience, I worked in food service in college and the McDonalds and Taco Bell were clean enough to eat off the floor. There are people cleaning all the time. Some other restaurants? Yeah, not so much.

So next?

myofibril

I have a great article I saved about this sort of thing---if you'd like, I can scan it and get the .pdf to you somehow.

That would be terrific, thanks. If you PM once you have the PDF then I will let you have my email address.

The discussion is interesting. It seems the question of junk food is one more of a) frequency b) portion size and c) lower nutritional value rather than simply having the label "McDonalds" or whatever on it.

Therefore, if a relatively high calorie meal from a fast food joint was consumed in the context of a diet which was otherwise well balanced and was kept to a reasonable size and done on occasion then it should be no more problematic than a fine dining choice.

UpEarly

I eat plenty of farm-to-table food that is beautiful, fresh, seasonal, local, organic, etc. It's wonderful, delicious, and it completely dwarfs the calories/fat/sodium of a meal from McDonald's or KFC.

I LOVE fine dining, but overconsumption is still overconsumption - whether it happens at a great local restaurant with carefully sourced food or the Burger King around the corner.

Witchdoctor58

QUOTE:

Types of fat make a difference. So does cooking temperature. So does quality of the base ingredients. All of the above menus are full of fat and white carbs. However, I'd rather have the torte vs. fast food shake, and the steak vs the Big Mac with high fructose corn syrup dressings and pink slime meat, as at least all of the ingredients are found in nature, rather than chemical stew.



ZOMG! White carbs and chemicals?

FYI: Natural ingredients are chemical stews as well

Also are you familiar with the appeal to nature fallacy?

I'm not foolish enough to believe natural = healthy; otherwise I'd be fine with all the arsenic in rice and apple juice. However, if my body does not know how to metabolize something, forget it. My little brother has lyphoma, which is a mutation in a stem cell triggered by something. As a long-time junk food eater, that trigger could easily have been the steady diet of sheer crap he ingested over the years.

I choose not to consider pop-tarts and Mc processed offerings to be edible. There are so many good things to eat; why would I deliberately undo all the work I've done, set off a sugar binge, and stress my immune system?

Monsanto once put out an ad listing all the chemicals in an orange. I'm not someone who will freak out because of the dihydrogen monoxide semantics trick. However, Monsanto's MSG is a drug. Period. It dilates the taste buds to make you think something tastes better, and it also can act as a neurotransmitter. Who needs that? I won't be a slave to corporate advertising. It's not snobbery; it's just science (and I am a preventive medicine physician).

MsEndomorph

Please consider the following restaurant meals:

1) Big Mac with fries followed by a Cadburys Caramel McFlurry
2) Har kau (steamed prawn dumplings) followed by nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice) served with chicken skewers and satay sauce
3)Steak au poivre with brandy and cream reduction, frites (fries) and aparagus spears tossed in garlic butter followed by salted caramel chocolate torte
4)Poulet Breton (chicken) served with wild mushroom sauce, truffle mash and salade verte followed by crepe with fresh strawberries and Chantilly cream
5)Breaded calamari rings (squid) with tartare sauce and lemon wedges followed by seafood linguine

Which of the above would you consider junk food and harmful to your well being? All of them? Some? Just one?

I ask because I have eaten meals 2-5 in the last month or so. When I have told people I know in RL about them they have all been positive and I have even been positively commended for eating them. I haven't eaten a meal like 1 in some time but I have in the past. This has, on occasion, been met with abject horror along the lines of "why would you eat that rubbish..."

However, I am pretty sure that meals 2-5 are equal, or on occasion dwarf meal 1 in terms of portion size, calorie content, sodium, sugar and saturated fat levels. I say "pretty sure" because the only restaurant that actually listed the nutritional info was McDonalds.

Objectively should we be focusing more of our attention not on restaurants like McDonalds but other restaurants? Isn't it the case that in context it is less harmful than other options with larger portion sizes irrespective of the supposed quality of the ingredients? Is it ok to rag on junk food perhaps because there is a perception that it is what less affluent people eat and is therefore an easier target? Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

Not just the poor, but places like McDonalds are synonymous with poor, OBESE people. Like Chinese buffets. For me (a foodie and snob) it probably has to do with personal experiences with McDonald's/junk food frequenters and their completely opposite view of health and life. As I said in the topic about the cost of healthy food, for families who are truly poor, McDonald's is a luxury or a bad financial decision if it's routine.

But that's putting the food quality aside, and for a foodie, you can't really separate that from disdain for a place. Or my general dislike for their marketing practices. Or the smell of their food. Or the taste.

I just don't like it!

Acg67

I'm not foolish enough to believe natural = healthy; otherwise I'd be fine with all the arsenic in rice and apple juice. However, if my body does not know how to metabolize something, forget it. My little brother has lyphoma, which is a mutation in a stem cell triggered by something. As a long-time junk food eater, that trigger could easily have been the steady diet of sheer crap he ingested over the years.

I'm sure there are plenty of other factors that are equally if not more likely culprits than junk food

I choose not to consider pop-tarts and Mc processed offerings to be edible. There are so many good things to eat; why would I deliberately undo all the work I've done, set off a sugar binge, and stress my immune system?

Monsanto once put out an ad listing all the chemicals in an orange. I'm not someone who will freak out because of the dihydrogen monoxide semantics trick. However, Monsanto's MSG is a drug. Period. It dilates the taste buds to make you think something tastes better, and it also can act as a neurotransmitter. Who needs that? I won't be a slave to corporate advertising. It's not snobbery; it's just science (and I am a preventive medicine physician).

So metabolically speaking how does MSG differ from naturally occurring glutamate? Also wasn't aware Monsanto made MSG, I have ajinomoto brand in my pantry

cappri

I've also never had a french fry or pizza that made me close my eyes and sigh with contentment, although I have had that experience at some nicer restaurants. If I'm going to eat a thousand calories and a hundred grams of fat, 1) fancy cheese is involved and 2) I should be giddy with food joy.

On the rare occasion I have a McDonald's french fry it makes me giddy with food joy and pizza on occasion has made me close my eyes and sigh in contentment.

ninerbuff

Types of fat make a difference. So does cooking temperature. So does quality of the base ingredients. All of the above menus are full of fat and white carbs. However, I'd rather have the torte vs. fast food shake, and the steak vs the Big Mac with high fructose corn syrup dressings and pink slime meat, as at least all of the ingredients are found in nature, rather than chemical stew.

I've never seen a steak absorbed as steak or a Big Mac absorbed as a Big Mac by the body. Our bodies "chemically" break both down to simplest form and absorb amino acids, glycogen, and lipids.................kinda like a chemical stew.

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myofibril

Not just the poor, but places like McDonalds are synonymous with poor, OBESE people. Like Chinese buffets. For me (a foodie and snob) it probably has to do with personal experiences with McDonald's/junk food frequenters and their completely opposite view of health and life. As I said in the topic about the cost of healthy food, for families who are truly poor, McDonald's is a luxury or a bad financial decision if it's routine.

But that's putting the food quality aside, and for a foodie, you can't really separate that from disdain for a place. Or my general dislike for their marketing practices. Or the smell of their food. Or the taste.

I just don't like it!

Loooool, well at least you are honest.

I guess though this type of thinking may influence the messages that get pushed to dieters. Rather than objectively seek to understand if in fact McDonalds, Burger King or whatever is truly that bad in the context of their diet all they hear is "it's garbage, don't eat that, the horror!" and so on.

Not really problematic if you don't like fast food. Much more problematic if you do like it and feel you must avoid it to be successful for long term health / weight loss.

dandelyon

I've also never had a french fry or pizza that made me close my eyes and sigh with contentment, although I have had that experience at some nicer restaurants. If I'm going to eat a thousand calories and a hundred grams of fat, 1) fancy cheese is involved and 2) I should be giddy with food joy.

On the rare occasion I have a McDonald's french fry it makes me giddy with food joy and pizza on occasion has made me close my eyes and sigh in contentment.

Then you should definitely eat it

jwdieter

Please consider the following restaurant meals:

1) Big Mac with fries followed by a Cadburys Caramel McFlurry
2) Har kau (steamed prawn dumplings) followed by nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice) served with chicken skewers and satay sauce
3)Steak au poivre with brandy and cream reduction, frites (fries) and aparagus spears tossed in garlic butter followed by salted caramel chocolate torte
4)Poulet Breton (chicken) served with wild mushroom sauce, truffle mash and salade verte followed by crepe with fresh strawberries and Chantilly cream
5)Breaded calamari rings (squid) with tartare sauce and lemon wedges followed by seafood linguine

Which of the above would you consider junk food and harmful to your well being? All of them? Some? Just one?

#1 is the only meal with no vegetables or fruit, and likely has the lowest amount and percentage of protein among the meals. Almost no fiber, carb city.

Plus I think Big Macs are to hamburgers what a tricycle is to a Harley, but that's not the question. Look at what you're getting out of the meal, and #1 is not providing. There are much better meal choices at McDonalds.