McDonalds 'cheapest, most nutritious and bountiful food' ?

For $1 I can get a burger with 390 cals in it. $1 dollar!!!!

Dont know where you live, but thats a lie. Theres no more $1 menu. Its called the value menu now and that burger now costs $1.39 or $1.49 (cant remember which). The good news is they dont charge like gas prices. One week your cheeseburger is $5, the next week its 50 cents.

Living on an island has some benefits, but food, especially fruit and non local vegetables like avocado kill my bank account.One grapefruit for $1.29 CDN are you kidding me? I want a bag of fries and gravy crisps instead !!
That being said, I haven't eaten fast food since February and my wallet is gaining weight, while I've lost. Sweet trade off!

I didn't read the whole thing.

and i am not a fan of fast food, nor do i think it's nutritious and good. I do indulge once in a blue moon (maybe 4-5 times a year) mostly foods of the falafel/shwarma ilk, which to me are more "real food" and less of the McDs et al.

however, this sentence

Produce may seem cheap to environmentally aware blond moms who spend $300 on their highlights every month, but if your object is to fill your belly, it is hugely expensive per calorie,' Smith writes.

is really really stupid, annoying and untrue. I am not a blond mom, nor do i spend 300$ a month on highlights. in fact, i don't spend ONE dollar on highlights. and yet, i would prefer to buy fresh produce , organic/sustainable when possible , and not fast food. It's a question of priorities and not a question of money.

It is very true though. When you have a family of five to feed, enough produce for a salad for everyone could cost a lot of money. I bag of baby spinach-$2.50 2 tomatoes-$2 A cucumber $1 Even if its just that and thats a boring salad, that's $5.50 for sometihng that wont keep your kids belly full all night. Add in chicken breast, thats around another $4-5. Now, let's assume eating is the priority.

You live where I live (new hampshire). You benefit bc there is no food tax.

You work for minimum wage at a place where they dont keep anyone fulltime, because thats the most common wage situation here. So lets assume you make $7.25x25hrs a week. Thats $181 per week. Now, you choose the cheapest, smallest apartment in the projects to live in that you can. Its a 2 bdrm, because your kids need their own room. Its $740 per month. Well, that costs $185 per week. You are already not making enough money to be not homeless, let alone eat any food.

So you start dating some *kitten* because you want someone to help support your kids. This double your family income when he moves in. Now your family income is $362. You can take out about $20 of that for social security, medicaid whatever they deduct. So you have $342. You need gas to get to work, because poor people housing is several miles away from anywhere to work. Assuming you only both drive to work,childcare/school and the grocery and have no friends,we budget $20 for gas. $322. Now we deduct our weekly rent need. We have $141. Now, these apartmnets generally don't include utilities. Everything runs on electricity, incl the water heater and the heater heater. It's an oven in the summer because there are so many apartments, so you have to choice to run something to cool it down (either the built in AC or fans). Your electric bill is around $120 a month, average in the area. Broken down, its $30. You have $111. Now, you aren't married to this guy and he isn't just handing his check over to you to spend so you can deduct $50. You have 61 dollars to: get toiletries, feed your kids, keep your kids in school supplies, medical care, credit card bills? Do your kids have beds? Shoes? Do you have clothes to wear to work? Hope you don't have christmas coming up. etc.

The point of this, please don't be smug and assume everyone has money enough that they can "prioritize" their money and have enough for like organic produce and ****. Even foood stamps can be hard enough to get on and its often not enough to feed yourself, especially if you are working and cant stay home learning how to cook from scratch and use a 10lb bag of dried kidney beans.

And then let us add in the fact that advertisers spend a lot of money brain washing the poorest,least educated people to buy products like nutrigrain bars and fruit gummy snacks because they;re "made with real juice".

I have heard this from a Doctor as well... Whose specialty is weight loss... The reason some may say this is because in some items you can get your macronutrients from just one thing.

Now whether I agree with this or indulge in their food is a different matter all together.

Despite being an article in the New York Post (but I have read only the article linked, not the ariginal one) , I think it's absolutely stupid what it says.
Firstly, I don't know in UK, but in most European countries (Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Switzerlanad) Mc Donalds isn't cheap at all and I suppose that that article could be valid only for US.
Second, it makes no sense consider totallly organic-super expensive-only from farmers-food as the only possible alternative to macdonald. It's absolutely not true in Europe and, for what I know, even in the United States.
Third, of course mcdonald offers nutrients that we actually need at very affordable prices, but cheesburgers also contain things we don't need at all (too much sugar, saturated fat). Assuming a diet of 1500 calories (4 double cheese) in which we eat only double cheeseburgers, we actually eat 46,2% of fats (too too much), 28,2% of carbohydrates (too few), 25,6% of proteines (too much, considering that is only from meat). Moreover, tha article considers positive that a double cheese covers our fiber needs for 7% but 7x 4 (number of cheesburger in a 1500 kcal diet) is 28%...And what about vitamines?

In conclusion, I think that a cheeseburger occasionally do not kill you, but to pretend that it's a healthy meal seems to me pretty busive.

:flowerforyou:

It depends on your definition of health. The macronutrient breakdown of a McDouble isn't ideal, but it can fit very nicely into my day any day if I were to choose to have one. It isn't 390 calories worth of chips or some other calorie dense food with few micros. The micronutrient breakdown is better than many home cooked foods that people think are healthy.

I pay very close attention to my macro and micronutrients (and 75 grams of protein is hardly too much protein for any adult, I eat twice that daily because of my nutritional and body comp goals). I rarely miss them, don't take multivitamins to hit them, and I occasionally enjoy fast food. When I do want fast food, the McDouble is always the treat that I pick. Unless I am at a Wendy's, then it's their double cheeseburger version of the same sandwich, which has a slightly better micro and protein profile.

Food shouldn't be demonized. It wouldn't hurt people to learn the basic micro and macro breakdowns of what they are eating, however, so they can make more intelligent choices without resorting to deprivation and demonizing.

I love where this is going.

I make burgers from scratch out of grass fed 85/15 ground. I am also a fan of the occasional McDouble. Balance is key here. The McDouble does have pretty good macros and if you paired it with a salad or small fries it wouldn't be a terrible meal.

At 390 calories, 23 grams of protein, 7-percent of the daily value of fiber, 20-percent of daily calcium and 19 grams of fat.

Those are good numbers, you add a salad to that and you have a great meal that will fill you up and keep you moving.

My mouth just started watering. I've been proudly McD free since last Halloween though.

Yeah - but when did you ever see a McD's burger look like that?! They're always all smashed - not nearly so delicious looking!

I was thinking the same thing!

I love where this is going.

I make burgers from scratch out of grass fed 85/15 ground. I am also a fan of the occasional McDouble. Balance is key here. The McDouble does have pretty good macros and if you paired it with a salad or small fries it wouldn't be a terrible meal.

I'd like to live on the planet where McDonald's wouldn't be a terrible meal LOL.
Once giving up fast food, I'd never go back. It turns my stomach to just think about anymore.

Well if you don't like it that's different. I like both lol

It won't be cheap anymore if they get their way and get $15 an hour. Ridiculous.

Despite being an article in the New York Post (but I have read only the article linked, not the ariginal one) , I think it's absolutely stupid what it says.
Firstly, I don't know in UK, but in most European countries (Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Switzerlanad) Mc Donalds isn't cheap at all and I suppose that that article could be valid only for US.
Second, it makes no sense consider totallly organic-super expensive-only from farmers-food as the only possible alternative to macdonald. It's absolutely not true in Europe and, for what I know, even in the United States.
Third, of course mcdonald offers nutrients that we actually need at very affordable prices, but cheesburgers also contain things we don't need at all (too much sugar, saturated fat). Assuming a diet of 1500 calories (4 double cheese) in which we eat only double cheeseburgers, we actually eat 46,2% of fats (too too much), 28,2% of carbohydrates (too few), 25,6% of proteines (too much, considering that is only from meat). Moreover, tha article considers positive that a double cheese covers our fiber needs for 7% but 7x 4 (number of cheesburger in a 1500 kcal diet) is 28%...And what about vitamines?

In conclusion, I think that a cheeseburger occasionally do not kill you, but to pretend that it's a healthy meal seems to me pretty busive.

:flowerforyou:

It depends on your definition of health. The macronutrient breakdown of a McDouble isn't ideal, but it can fit very nicely into my day any day if I were to choose to have one. It isn't 390 calories worth of chips or some other calorie dense food with few micros. The micronutrient breakdown is better than many home cooked foods that people think are healthy.

I pay very close attention to my macro and micronutrients (and 75 grams of protein is hardly too much protein for any adult, I eat twice that daily because of my nutritional and body comp goals). I rarely miss them, don't take multivitamins to hit them, and I occasionally enjoy fast food. When I do want fast food, the McDouble is always the treat that I pick. Unless I am at a Wendy's, then it's their double cheeseburger version of the same sandwich, which has a slightly better micro and protein profile.

Food shouldn't be demonized. It wouldn't hurt people to learn the basic micro and macro breakdowns of what they are eating, however, so they can make more intelligent choices without resorting to deprivation and demonizing.