Junk Food - A Question of Snobbery?

I can't eat any of that stuff but the only thing I would consider 'junk' is the Mc Donald's meal. IMO, processed food is junk food.

http://seattlefreepress.org/2013/05/14/the-racist-myth-of-msg-and-chinese-restaurant-syndrome/

From the Knowing Coves:

This is the story of a racist myth that began with a light-hearted letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 and subsequently exploded in North American culture — in direct opposition to every shred of scientific evidence — becoming so prevalent that credulous eaters buy into it to the point of experiencing its effects on a purely psychosomatic basis.
It’s often been called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” and its premise is that MSG in Chinese food results in unpleasant allergic reactions. Interestingly enough, higher quantities of MSG in non-Chinese foods are not reported to have the same effects. MSG is a naturally occurring amino acid, and some of the highest levels of MSG a North American consumer is likely to ingest come in vine-ripened tomatoes, aged cheese, and dry-aged steak — yet there is no reported medical phenomenon known as “Italian Food Syndrome” or “American Steakhouse Syndrome”.

Monosodium glutamate was first isolated from the seaweed kombu, commonly used in the Japanese broth dashi, by biochemist Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University in 1908. He named its taste umami because it differed from the five conventional flavours of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and spicy. Ikeda patented his discovery and MSG became commercially available in 1909. It was found to enhance flavours with one third of the amount of sodium as traditional salt, i.e. sodium chloride. In this sense, monosodium glutamate is probably healthier than sodium chloride because it achieves flavour with reduced sodium levels.

MSG was immediately popular in Asia and became common in the North American food industry after World War II, used in baby food, canned soup, vegetable juice, frozen food, as well as seasoning mix brands such as Accent. Yet somehow in the 1960s, this popular food additive became associated with Chinese food and deemed a health hazard. Why? Because Chinese people, culture, and food have been targeted by widespread and effective racist hate campaigns in North America since the 19th century, buttressed by wild claims that the Chinese are “unclean”, carry diseases, are sexually-deviant opium addicts, inscrutable and sneaky, a Yellow Peril.

The 1968 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine which solidified the myth of MSG was actually written by a Chinese immigrant named Robert Ho Man Kwok, who described “numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitation” after eating in American Chinese restaurants. The letter opened the floodgates to a barage of letters and related articles complaining of headaches, dizziness, paralysis of the throat, tingling in the temples, tightness of the jaw, irregular heartbeat, depression, hyperactivity, and all manner of digestive ailments.

Given this preponderance of anecdotal evidence, numerous scientific studies have been performed since then attempting to identify this “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. The funny thing is that no study has ever been able to do so. When people don’t know that they’re consuming MSG, they don’t suffer adverse reactions. All national and international food safety bodies have concluded that MSG is perfectly safe. People in Japan eat MSG every single day and the Japanese have the longest life expectancy in the world.

Fear of MSG is a racist remnant of the Chinese Exclusion era which exists only in North America and has been thoroughly debunked by science. Yet racist socialization is so powerful that people actually experience physical effects such as headaches, depression, and indigestion based solely on their indoctrinated fear of Chinese people and Chinese food. Think it over next time you eat parmesan cheese or a vine-ripened tomato.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/12/msg-allergy-chinese-restaurant-syndrome-myth
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19389112
http://yourdoctorsorders.com/2012/12/msg-does-chinese-restaurant-syndrome-exist/
http://extoxnet.orst.edu/faqs/additive/ificmsg.htm

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).

That was my thought! I wait all year for the Cadbury cream eggs...I'm imagining them raining from the sky in GB....:laugh:

Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

Just like meeeeeee, they long to beeeeee....close to youuuuuuuuuuuuu.....

KAREN CARPENTER ROCKS!!!!

!

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?

Interesting concept. Here's an insignificant two cents...

I would say that people criticize what they've heard criticized. McDonald's is notorious for being junk food (Super Size Me documentary, etc.), while those other options are not. However, why is that? Perhaps that's where the "snubbing" begins...

Because options 2-5 tend to be considered more gourmet options (I think... I'm "po," so I don't know for sure), nobody has ever really investigated them or criticized them for their nutritional value. There are probably a couple reasons for that.

1. Everyone kind of figures that McDonald's is bad for you... but people love their gourmet food. It's a status symbol... it shows that you're "cultured" and that you can afford to spit out terms like "truffle mash" and "seafood linguine." Perhaps when you start taking that away from people, you might be met with a little more resistance. So, maybe McDonald's is just a cheaper shot.

2. Gourmet food is less accessible, so when people want to criticize obesity in America, they usually beat up on readily accessible, "cheap" options such as McDonald's. That's when they do their exposès and their documentaries and their investigative reports, and that's how the cheap options get a bad rep. Then, people who want to maintain their own cultural reps and don't want to be associated with the apparent irresponsibility of fast food are first in line to comment on how disgusting it is.

3. Part of the criticism of McDonald's is the quality of the food itself. I suppose caloric content isn't the whole reason McDonald's gets a worse rep than options 2-5.

I say all that to say that perhaps the susceptibility of fast food to criticism because of its popularity in the "less affluent" community starts a lot higher up than your everyday person.

Yes, exactly. It's lazy thinking and journalism. On many levels seems nothing more than well to do folks deigning to lecture poorer folks on the error of their ways - the oh so brave, well educated New York journalist with sufficient disposal income to eat organic produce stooping down to eat like dem dere poor folks with McDonalds to show them the error of their ways.

There is more than a more than a touch of moral criticism in it. Junk food = junk character. Obese = unworthy. Mixing food and morality is a very bad idea in my view.

Applause.

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....

Yes!! This is so true! I mentioned this to my family a couple months ago and I'm pretty sure they had no idea what I was saying. On the one hand, there's a push for "organic," "natural," "super foods," etc. (All in quotations to note the problematic nature of all these terms.) Yet there's also a trend that indulges comfort or "junk" foods in high end restaurants. I know many people who profess to eat super healthy and would never set foot in McDonalds, yet would choose to consume three miniature burgers in a high end restaurant with a side of fries cooked in truffle oil. Granted, I would choose that any day over a Big Mac, but that's my own snobby taste buds talking. However, I am under no illusions that they are any better than consuming a Big Mac.

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!

Wrong. McDonald's is frankenfood. Period.

Yeah because just calling something "frankenfood" is not a logical fallacy or circular reasoning or anything.

It does come down to portion size and how often you have pretty much anything. I'm pretty sure that I couldn't afford to eat any of the 2-5 meals more than once in awhile, assuming I ate them in a restaurant. So I would consider them a treat, and I wouldn't over do any of them. I could probably afford to eat at McDonald's every day, so the temptation could be there to go too often.

On the other hand, I don't have much difficulty choosing more healthy choices at McDonald's. Big Macs aren't that great anyway. However, if I'm going to pay a lot to eat out, I'm not likely to have a salad.