McDonald's -- Official Restaurant of the Olympic Games

zimfour

I guess its mine turn to chime in.....McDonalds is at the Olympics to MAKE MONEY to endorse all those ATHLETES, MCds feeds their families and spectators..... I guess as they say in London.....CHEERS MATE!!!!!!!

ericgAU

I actually dont mind McD's sponsoring the Olympics. Dont care too much for their food these days but not enough is said about the work and funding that goes towards community events, charities and the like. I think we should all be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. You don't have to like the food to appreciate their social contribution.

sathor

I can't vouch for the Olympians, but what is the harm in a 1,200 sandwich after a long bike ride? For my weight, that is a 20 mile bike ride. (1,200 is a sonic burger, its under 400 for the filet-o-fish or a McDouble, but that sonic burger...)

Once after a 30 mile ride I had a double chicken sandwich.

Of course, those addicted to world of warcraft shouldn't eat that way, but some of us can. I think the guys who did the road race in the olympics can eat damn well whatever they want.

michellekicks

I can't vouch for the Olympians, but what is the harm in a 1,200 sandwich after a long bike ride? For my weight, that is a 20 mile bike ride. (1,200 is a sonic burger, its under 400 for the filet-o-fish or a McDouble, but that sonic burger...)

Once after a 30 mile ride I had a double chicken sandwich.

Of course, those addicted to world of warcraft shouldn't eat that way, but some of us can. I think the guys who did the road race in the olympics can eat damn well whatever they want.

Of course they can. And, as I said, on occasion they probably do. I ran 20km this morning and burned over 1500 calories. Sometimes I'll eat my favorite restaurant sandwich, which is 1140 calories (mind you, I usually only eat half now) after a run like that... but I'm not a contender for a medal at the Olympics. If I were, I'm sure I'd make sure I made up those 1500+ calories with something that was going to do my body some good.

I wish we had some Olympic athletes in here to set the record straight.

Chipmaniac

During the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles McDonald's had a game where you get cards with each purchase that had an Olympic event. If an American won the gold, you get a free Big Mac, silver gets you a free fry and bronze a free drink. The only problem was McDonald's did not anticipate that the Soviet Union would pull its athletes from the games to protest America doing the same in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Americans cleaned up that year due to our main rival not even competing. I was a young teenager and ate McDonald's for free the entire summer. There was even one swimming event where two Americans won the gold and thus I received two Big Macs. I actually developed a BigMac addiction due to that promotion which I didn't really kick until I became a vegetarian a decade later.

Chipmaniac

My guess is that the "Organic Lettuce Growers of America" probably don't have a lot money to sponsor the Olympics. Since the "clean eaters" associate anything processed, despite the fact that almost all food is processed in some way, with unhealthy I can't imagine a food-related corporate sponsor that would satisfy that crowd. Subway is close to being healthy depending on how you design your sandwich but alas it has sodium and the anti-sodium crowd would crow about it.

miss_september

Not trying to stir the pot, but in a pre-olympics interview they did on NBC with Ryan Lochte, he admitted to "living in the McDonalds" in Bejing in 2008. He has since changed his diet and cut out junk food...so there will always be the one "renegade" who eats there. I also noticed that McDonalds is specifically offering their "win free stuff" promotion only on items that are less than 400 calories, so at least they are making an effort to encourage people to gravitate to their version of "healthier" options.

ninerbuff

It's funny how all these people are commenting on Olympic athletes when they really have NO IDEA on their diets. Well let me give you some accurate info.
Many of the athletes use up energy well into 6,000+ calories per day. They train an average of 5 hours (some even more) per day at their sport and then there's physical training (lifting, plyo work, flexibility, etc.) for another couple of hours. It would be difficult to eat "clean" an support an 6,000 calorie daily expenditure with 7-10 hours of it training hard. So guess where they get a lot of their calories from? Junk food. Yep. You heard it right.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
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Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

And what says you know the diet of an Olympic athlete? Do tell.

I've trained college athletes (last stint was a GMU) and know the amount of calories they have to eat. I currently train young athletes now in a variety of sports and just the swimmers alone (teenagers) easily burn up to 6000 calories a day. Kids this age usually don't like to eat at all when in sports, so IF they ate nothing but "clean" food, then they'd be eating all day long and that's simply not the case.
Read up on all the pasta and pizza that Michael Phelps eats. Heck even Janet Evans scarfed down on Snickers (not just one) before all her meets and during.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
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slkehl

It's funny how all these people are commenting on Olympic athletes when they really have NO IDEA on their diets. Well let me give you some accurate info.
Many of the athletes use up energy well into 6,000+ calories per day. They train an average of 5 hours (some even more) per day at their sport and then there's physical training (lifting, plyo work, flexibility, etc.) for another couple of hours. It would be difficult to eat "clean" an support an 6,000 calorie daily expenditure with 7-10 hours of it training hard. So guess where they get a lot of their calories from? Junk food. Yep. You heard it right.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

And what says you know the diet of an Olympic athlete? Do tell.

I've trained college athletes (last stint was a GMU) and know the amount of calories they have to eat. I currently train young athletes now in a variety of sports and just the swimmers alone (teenagers) easily burn up to 6000 calories a day. Kids this age usually don't like to eat at all when in sports, so IF they ate nothing but "clean" food, then they'd be eating all day long and that's simply not the case.
Read up on all the pasta and pizza that Michael Phelps eats. Heck even Janet Evans scarfed down on Snickers (not just one) before all her meets and during.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I remember reading about all the crap Phelps eats. Doesn't seem to slow him down!

Laces_0ut

dont kid yourselves. elite athletes eat fast food.

marywilsoncline

I know, right? It's crazy. What's even crazier is when you see Olympic athletes endorsing them for money... we all know they don't eat there, except for maybe a coffee here and there.

LOL.

you would be surprised.

once you're actually in shape, not trying to lose weight... with enough muscle that your daily calorie requirements are decently high.. a McDs meal every once in awhile doesnt mean much.
I know some high level athletes that eat fast food 2 or 3 times a week... should they? thats debatable. can they? yeah.

Exactly. Once your in shape and exercise regularly, a fast food meal won't hurt because your workout will cover it!

chuckyp

Here's an example of Michael Phelps daily 12,000 Calorie diet from a Wall Street Journal article. Not at all uncommon for elite athletes. You aren't going to get the kind of Calories you need from a bowl of parsley, a chicken breast, and a glass of water when you're at that level.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/08/13/the-michael-phelps-diet-dont-try-it-at-home/

subcult

dont kid yourselves. elite athletes eat fast food.

wrong they eat gazelles. That they chase down and kill with their bare hands

ninerbuff

It's funny how all these people are commenting on Olympic athletes when they really have NO IDEA on their diets. Well let me give you some accurate info.
Many of the athletes use up energy well into 6,000+ calories per day. They train an average of 5 hours (some even more) per day at their sport and then there's physical training (lifting, plyo work, flexibility, etc.) for another couple of hours. It would be difficult to eat "clean" an support an 6,000 calorie daily expenditure with 7-10 hours of it training hard. So guess where they get a lot of their calories from? Junk food. Yep. You heard it right.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Actually there is a lot of information available online about the US Olympic Training Centre and it's nutrition science and meals. The facility was featured on a Biggest Loser episode if memory serves and this recent article talks about the types of foods served there. They actually just replicated this kitchen in London to serve the US athletes during the Olympics:

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/nutrition/Americas-meal-ticket-20120801.html

"Moreman and a staff of 23 work with five sports nutritionists to design menus, from a protein-rich recovery shake that will help a wrestler make weight to a calorie-dense dinner that will ensure a swimmer replaces the 12,000 calories burned that day."

I'm sure the sponsored athletes are not replacing their "12,000 calories burned that day" with McDonalds non-food. Maybe when not training. Maybe when taking their kids out after a soccer game. Maybe when on a road trip with buddies. But not when training and not when competing. Everything in moderation, sure. But moderation is a relative term.

Think about it for a minute: Let's say they get 8 hours of sleep. That leaves 16 hours to train and eat. 5 of those hours are at least training hard and heavy and let's say they consume 2000 calories during that time. That leaves 11 hours to eat 10,000 calories. That's over 900 calories that is ingested each hour on the hour average. Could you imagine eating "clean" 900 calories every hour for 11 hours? They would be STUFFED full of food all the time.
When I was working on gaining muscle, I was eating every 2 hours and usually about 600 calories each meal. And I was stuffed all the time.
Again if people think that Olympians have perfect clean diets, then they'll be disappointed to find out that they do eat high fat, high calorie junk food along with the rest of their meals to sustain the energy they need to compete.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
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Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Rayman79

Here's an example of Michael Phelps daily 12,000 Calorie diet from a Wall Street Journal article. Not at all uncommon for elite athletes. You aren't going to get the kind of Calories you need from a bowl of parsley, a chicken breast, and a glass of water when you're at that level.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/08/13/the-michael-phelps-diet-dont-try-it-at-home/

This is why I wish I had more time to train :laugh: . More cals burned, more calories earned... Sitting behind a desk is not ideal. Thank goodness for IF at least!

F__7

I worked at McDonald's last summer and the salads are actually very popular.

Too bad many people believe that bc is a salad is healthy... wrong!!.. what's in it is what it makes it healthy.. and fresh.. many salads of restaurant chains and others are rather poor (high cal/poor content)... better go with some steak somewhere..

happythermia

APPLES! The Official Sponsor or the Olympic Games.

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

ninerbuff

Not trying to stir the pot, but in a pre-olympics interview they did on NBC with Ryan Lochte, he admitted to "living in the McDonalds" in Bejing in 2008. He has since changed his diet and cut out junk food...so there will always be the one "renegade" who eats there. I also noticed that McDonalds is specifically offering their "win free stuff" promotion only on items that are less than 400 calories, so at least they are making an effort to encourage people to gravitate to their version of "healthier" options.

Maybe he should have kept eating it because he COULDN'T finish strong and get the US a medal in the relay just now.

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slkehl

I worked at McDonald's last summer and the salads are actually very popular.

Too bad many people believe that bc is a salad is healthy... wrong!!.. what's in it is what it makes it healthy.. and fresh.. many salads of restaurant chains and others are rather poor (high cal/poor content)... better go with some steak somewhere..

That is true, people can make the salads crazy high in calories if they want to with the croutons/dressing/meat options.

However, I was surprised by the choices people made. Most people opted out of croutons and chose the vinaigrette or low fat Italian. And if meat was ordered, it was usually the grilled chicken, which, yes, is high in sodium, but not too bad as far as calories go. McDonald's salads include 3 servings of veggies, so if you make the right choices, as most people seemed to do, it's not bad.

Got to give my lovely customers some credit

abberbabber

dont kid yourselves. elite athletes eat fast food.

wrong they eat gazelles. That they chase down and kill with their bare hands

This totally made me :laugh:

Cheri_Moves

It's funny how all these people are commenting on Olympic athletes when they really have NO IDEA on their diets. Well let me give you some accurate info.
Many of the athletes use up energy well into 6,000+ calories per day. They train an average of 5 hours (some even more) per day at their sport and then there's physical training (lifting, plyo work, flexibility, etc.) for another couple of hours. It would be difficult to eat "clean" an support an 6,000 calorie daily expenditure with 7-10 hours of it training hard. So guess where they get a lot of their calories from? Junk food. Yep. You heard it right.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

This is true... A friend of mine is a University of Oregon Cheerleader, and she's always eating junk food, but I know how hardcore her training is during the season. It May not be healthy, but when you need calories, McDonald's has plenty! lol

Stowguy2012

i think all the athletes are better off promoting subway then mcdonalds. just because of the obesity problem in this country in the kids since the kids look up to these athletes as role models.

MrDude_1

i think all the athletes are better off promoting subway then mcdonalds. just because of the obesity problem in this country in the kids since the kids look up to these athletes as role models.

so crap food that APPEARS healthy is better then crap food thats honest about being crap?

next you're going to tell me their whole wheat bread is best, because it contains caramel color (the main diff between their whole wheat and white is nothing more then the dye...)

LaMujerMasBonitaDelMundo

Uh they're humans too & I doubt if they never once tasted a McD cheeseburger. Let's get real people. Although McD is clearly a bad choice if you're on a diet but remember that one big mac meal alone won't hurt you if your macros still fit. In contrast, you can be obese with eating clean if you eat more than your body needs.

As one poster mentioned that these athletes, on average have TDEE's that are triple from what the general population needs. And since its hard to compensate these number of calories by eating fruits, veggies & lean products so they do it by eating junk. So we must not compare ourselves with these people unless you're one of them.

LonLB

I must be doing something wrong because McDonalds in my mind is the BEST CHOICE to get a decent lunch that isn't a belly buster.

A 250cal grilled honey mustard snack wrap and a unsweatened Iced tea with 3 pack of equal.
Even TWO of these and your lunch ends up at about 508 cals.

twilight_princess

I know, right? It's crazy. What's even crazier is when you see Olympic athletes endorsing them for money... we all know they don't eat there, except for maybe a coffee here and there.

I'm actually working at the Olympic Village currently as a chef and have to say that the McDonalds in the dining room is as busy as the other eateries. I'm not pro-McDonalds but some of the food that is coming out of the other kitchens is not any better than them. Because of the scale of the whole thing there is a lot of processed foods (I've never in my careeer seen pre-made scrambled eggs before). They have nutrition cards but the chefs do not keep to the recipes given and add and omit items as they please.

It doesn't suprise me as many athletes have talked about the junk food they eat.

slkehl

Article in today's Wall Street Journal: "Olympic Alchemy: Turning Junk Food Into Gold"

U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte ate McDonald's food for nearly every meal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and won four medals, including gold in the 200-meter backstroke. He's since turned over a new leaf, cutting out fast food and winning gold last weekend in 400-meter individual relay. But, really, why bother?

The Olympic workouts of elite swimmers burn up thousands of calories and trigger training table menus that sound like the wish list for a kid's birthday party: Big Macs, Mountain Dew, Skittles, chocolate milk.

"I love fatty desserts," said Nathan Adrian, who swam on the silver-medal-winning 4-by-100-meter freestyle relay. He can't resist milk with warm "Funfetti," a home-baked white cake stuffed and topped with rainbow sprinkles.

"I live with two girls, my housemates, and for the longest time I was like, 'Dude, I'm training for the Olympics and the Olympic trials. You can't make me these stupid Funfetti cakes,' " he said. "But if they're just sitting there, I can't not eat them."

Adrian's ripped 6-foot-6, 220-pound physique hasn't suffered.

Olympic butterfly swimmer Kathleen Hersey's name echoes her indulgence. "Dark, white, milk—I can't find a chocolate I don't get along with," she said.

American breaststroker Scott Weltz isn't big on dessert—he's lactose-intolerant so ice cream is out. But he is a "greasy cheeseburger kind of guy," he said, "cheeseburgers, grease, anything like that, I'm a big fan of."

Few doctors would recommend a fast-food or high-sugar diet, but Olympians don't play by normal rules.

Breaststroker Breeja Larson eats about 7,000 to 9,000 calories a day during peak training, said Diana Harbourt, assistant director of performance nutrition at Texas A&M. The 6-foot Larson doesn't show it. She has 11% body fat. "It's not recommended for women to go below 12%," Harbourt said. "But each individual is different, and she's just exceptional."

Distance swimmer Conor Dwyer likes brownie sundaes. Gold medalist Missy Franklin prefers regular sundaes topped with Gummi bears.

"I cringe when I see these reports about refined sugars being bad for people," said Joel Stager, a physiologist and the director of the Counsilman Center for the Science of Swimming at Indiana University. "That may be true. But athletes, that's about the only way they can get the stuff in. You certainly wouldn't recommend that to the general population, but when you're training five, 5½ hours a day in the water, it's tough to make that up with bagels and cornflakes."

Stager and his associates discovered several years ago that the sugar and nutrients in chocolate milk made it the optimal after-swim food. Allison Schmitt was swigging some after her 200-meter freestyle semifinal Monday.

Michael Phelps told Details magazine he eats what he wants, including "Sour Patch Kids, Reese's or a bag of chips." His coach, Bob Bowman said, "I don't think he eats a lot of garbage."

Lochte, Phelps's teammate, cut out most fast food in the years leading up to the London Games. He blistered Phelps and the field in the 400-meter individual medley on Saturday to win his second-ever individual gold.

"We sat down the other night, he had a salmon salad," said U.S. team coach Gregg Troy during the Olympic trials last month. "That's a whole different deal."

Lochte still has a sweet tooth. Each night of the trials, Lochte's father handed him a favorite childhood treat—Skittles, the rainbow-colored candy.

Garrett Weber-Gale, who won two golds during swim relays in Beijing, has since apprenticed at restaurants in Italy and New York and started AthleticFoodie.com. He has railed against refined sugars and connected his Olympic prowess at the last Games to his hand-prepared meals.

He won't get another chance in London. At the trials last month, he finished eighth in 100-meter freestyle.

taylor5877

nm, just checked the datestamp on the original post...may be the 1st.

slkehl

I must be doing something wrong because McDonalds in my mind is the BEST CHOICE to get a decent lunch that isn't a belly buster.

A 250cal grilled honey mustard snack wrap and a unsweatened Iced tea with 3 pack of equal.
Even TWO of these and your lunch ends up at about 508 cals.

True. My skinny guy friends don't like eating there because the portion sizes aren't "big enough". Compared to other fast food places, it's easy to pick something that's not over the top.