80 calorie comparison pic

12346»

Replies

  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    NovusDies wrote: »
    I really wish we didn't always get stuck on big macs. I have a harder time arguing in favor of something I, personally, have not eaten for quite a long time. They are a taste of my childhood so if I ever crave one I will make it fit but that just hasn't happened yet and I am not sure it ever will.

    Next time we debate this can we go for a quarter pounder with cheese, no ketchup, and extra mustard? TIA Or how about something from Taco Bell? I still crave Krystals (aka White Castles) on occasion that would work.

    I actually agreed with the Culvers if one has to have fast food (I basically only have it when on a road trip), but I still find the idea that the McD's is nutritionally very different to be ludicrous.
  • BZAH10
    BZAH10 Posts: 5,702 Member
    NovusDies wrote: »
    I really wish we didn't always get stuck on big macs. I have a harder time arguing in favor of something I, personally, have not eaten for quite a long time. They are a taste of my childhood so if I ever crave one I will make it fit but that just hasn't happened yet and I am not sure it ever will.

    Next time we debate this can we go for a quarter pounder with cheese, no ketchup, and extra mustard? TIA Or how about something from Taco Bell? I still crave Krystals (aka White Castles) on occasion that would work.

    I would be down for some Taco Bell every so often if it was made like it was back in the 70s-80s. Then they used fresh ground beef with no fillers and fresh veggies. Total different taste than it is today. My favorite back then was the Enchirito and the original Burrito Supreme.

    Ditto! I used to love those things. Taco Bell does taste differently now to me, too.

    The mini shredded chicken quesadillas on their $1.00 menu are pretty good, though. I'll have a couple of those with a diet Pepsi every now and then.
  • bearly63
    bearly63 Posts: 734 Member
    I'm not a nutritionist....and new to MFP so sinning is right up my alley : ) I was looking at the stuff in the makings of a Big Mac....the preservatives, chemicals etc. Regardless of the calories, some of this stuff just can't be good for you.....ie low in nutrition density....and possibly detrimental. Azodicarbonamide in the bun? Propylene glycol alginate in the sauce...Yummy! And I guess it does vary by country....The US allows a lot of stuff banned in other places. Whatever. I will take a Double Double Animal style any day over a Big Mac! Don't mess with my In-N-Out. And yes to chips over popcorn, unless I get salt and butter.
  • ellie117
    ellie117 Posts: 293 Member
    edited October 2019
    Oh dear...there are times I would walk on hot coals to get to a bag of plain ruffle potato chips. I think it’s the salt. Other times they are noise sitting on my my kitchen counter and doesn’t even rate acknowledgement. Luckily I did learn early on to pour in a small bowl as that usually is enough satisfaction. Rarely do I go for another bowl.

    Oh. My. Goodness. Ruffle potato chips are definitely the easiest thing for me to binge on. During some of my worst episodes, I've downed almost an entire family size bag. I just keep them out of my house now so I don't get tempted.

    But I am definitely a salt person. Popcorn is delicious too, with salt. Makes me feel better eating popcorn though.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    And I said it could be done, but I've never suggested I thought it was a really great strategy, and I made it clear from the start that I would never be doing it (i.e., I said I'm a vegetarian).

    This is certainly what I understood from your post, and thanks for clarifying!

    I'd happily sign on to the rest of it too.
  • mmapags
    mmapags Posts: 8,937 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    And I said it could be done, but I've never suggested I thought it was a really great strategy, and I made it clear from the start that I would never be doing it (i.e., I said I'm a vegetarian).

    This is certainly what I understood from your post, and thanks for clarifying!

    I'd happily sign on to the rest of it too.

    As am I.
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    I am eating my maintenance calories currently so I am taking this opportunity to clean out the freezer from some purchases I feel are questionable on calories. One of those purchases was for a bag of root vegetables that were intended to be roasted. The whole bag added to 360 calories. Full of nutrients yes but it was also an extremely small and unsatisfying amount of food even eating the entire bag. I would not want to try to make a big mac fit into each day but I would also not want to try to fit in a bag of those vegetables.

    Not sure what you have there, but 7-10 raw carrot would be about 350 calories. Can't imagine a lot of people that would not feel full after eating that.

    Maybe the item you pitched had a bunch of calories from some sort of sauce?

    Medley of potato, sweet potato, carrot, and parsnip. You would have to be accustomed to very small portions for a single serving to be enough even as a side. There were 3 servings in the bag and the total was a pitiful amount of food.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    I’d choose the popcorn. I love popcorn!

    I just read that a guy ate a Big Mac every day for a month and lost 7 pounds. Just last month. He was eating 1500 calories a day, not just eating Big Macs
    5’4” he was posting on Instagram. Showing there are no bad foods. I think he was a personal trainer, or something like that.

    What the guy proved was that if one eats fewer calories then you burn you lose weight, nothing more. Ask any any Registered Dietitian if a 1500 calorie a day diet that includes a Big Mac every day is sustainable for health.

    Instagram posts giving nutrition or exercise advice from someone who people think "was a personal trainer or something like that", IMO is not a good idea.

    Big Mac, per McD web site:

    540 Calories
    28 grams Total Fat
    46 grams Carbs
    25 grams Protein

    If a person really wanted to, they could fit one in every day, and get overall decent (healthy) nutrition on 1500 calories, IMO.

    Not me, though: I'm vegetarian. ;)

    I'm thinking a registed dierition would not agree with your conclusion long term IMO.

    I'm thinking you have no idea what a registered dietitian would think on this topic.

    You might want to go back and carefully read my comments. I said I doubted a dietitian would think a Big Mac daily was healthy long term, especially on a 1500 calorie a day diet. Heck the trainer mentioned above that ate a Big Mac daily for a month and lost weight said the following:

    "I don't want anybody doing this challenge," he said. "I do not think that this challenge is healthy. I don't think it's smart but sometimes you have to do something extreme in order to make a simple point."

    Syatt merely wanted to hammer that point home.

    "The whole point of it was to show people that you can include your favorite foods into your diet in moderation and not only not lose progress, but actually continue to make progress, because so many people worry about ruining their entire diet if they go off track for one meal, whatever it is."


    I would agree with the trainer, and I believe most dietitians would say that a Big Mac is an "occasional" food and not an everyday food.

    If you can cite something where an actual nutrition professional says a Big Mac a day is fine long term for one's health, please post as I would be interested in reading it.

    Who said anything about a Big Mac per day? And, based on the macros, why would it not be in the context of an diet that had good balance overall? These kind of judgements don't really consider context and amount and, honestly come across as orthorexic.

    Please refer to the post by @AnnPT77 above which I responded to originally stating that IMO I do not believe for health reasons a dietitian would suggest that a diet that included a Big Mac a day would be healthy. As I stated above, and I believe would be in line with most dietitians, a Big Mac is an occasional type of food.

    Here is the post I responded to:

    Big Mac, per McD web site:

    540 Calories
    28 grams Total Fat
    46 grams Carbs
    25 grams Protein

    If a person really wanted to, they could fit one in every day, and get overall decent (healthy) nutrition on 1500 calories, IMO.

    Not me, though: I'm vegetarian


    I absolutely said that, and I own it.

    The point is: What matters is the whole way of eating, not one food or meal. The Big Mac is not the devil. It's basically meat and bread, plus some condiments and negligible veggies . . . normal foods, but nutritionally unbalanced on its own.

    If the rest of the person's day tops up protein, and includes a bunch of nice veggies and fruits, maybe some whole grains, MUFAs, PUFAs, they're good.

    Even as a vegetarian, I eat meals that have a similar macro profile to a Big Mac. I don't see why I should deprecate it even though (1) I wouldn't eat it unless under major duress, and (2) I think spending a third of calories on that makes the rest of the day unnecessarily more challenging. It wouldn't be my daily choice even if I ate meat. But it's food, with meaningful nutrients.

    It doesn't make sense to me to look at it in any other way. But I'm certainly not a dietitian, and don't pretend to be.

    Got into an argument Sunday with a family member who claimed that blueberries were healthier than black beans. I didn't bother asking why he thought that, but went with essentially your position "What matters is the whole way of eating, not one food or meal."

    This reminds me that one of my least favorite types of questions are things like:

    What's healthier, chicken or salmon? Or what's healthier, kale or spinach? Or potatoes or sweet potatoes (or claims that sweet potatoes are healthier and should replace potatoes in all cases). Or "what's the healthiest vegetable? Grain? Fruit?

    It's like people think they should identify the 5 most nutrient dense foods (one in each category, perhaps) and eat only them. As if there were no benefits to, you know, having a somewhat varied diet since different foods have different positives.

    (This would be an argument against the "eating a BigMac a day" concept (which I don't, in fact, consider a good idea), but related to the broad concept that good nutrition is about avoiding certain foods rather than getting in a variety of positives from what you in fact do eat.
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
    edited October 2019
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    Medley of potato, sweet potato, carrot, and parsnip. You would have to be accustomed to very small portions for a single serving to be enough even as a side. There were 3 servings in the bag and the total was a pitiful amount of food.

    I normally agree with you but your root veggies thingy has me confused. Are you using correct values/weights etc?
    Carrots tend to be low calories per gram. Potatoes and sweet potatoes tend to be higher valued but fairly satiating.

    Assuming 77/100g for potato with skin and 86/100g for sweet potato, 41/100g for carrot, and 75/100g for parsnips, we are at about 70 per 100g or just over 500g for your 360Cal portion.

    About double the uncooked weight of a big mac :wink: (per McD's GB: 74g bun, 90g raw patties, 14g cheese, 28g lettuce, 7g pickles, 7g onions, 20g thousand island special sauce)

    (actually after an exhaustive comparison of the nutritional value of regular vs sweet potatoes and personal satiety evaluations I've concluded that for the calories I prefer regular potatoes, and the sweet potatoes are relegated to when I am attempting to make "a brownie-like-dessert-that-includes-veggies" or "pumpkin and sweet potato soup or curry", or other weird stuff like that... but really, calorie wise the regular potato doesn't lose to the sweet potato, to the contrary nutrition and vitamin wise they are very similar, and the sweetness pushes the sweet potato more into dessert than meal while the imagined health benefits remain... imagined)... but I digress...

    Yes sir. I actually have a good sweet potato curry soup recipe. I make it for Thanksgiving every year. Sweet potatoes have a caloric density of .8 cals a gram. Carrots are about .5 cals a gram, so I would have to eat over 600 grams of sweet potato to get the calories of a big mac.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,393 Member
    psychod787 wrote: »
    Yes sir. I actually have a good sweet potato curry soup recipe. I make it for Thanksgiving every year. Sweet potatoes have a caloric density of .8 cals a gram. Carrots are about .5 cals a gram, so I would have to eat over 600 grams of sweet potato to get the calories of a big mac.

    I am discombobulated by the changes made by the USDA to the access we had to the now "legacy" standard reference databases :cold_sweat:

    Still figuring out if the "new" access they redirect us to is better or worse.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    Worse!
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,393 Member
    Unfortunately "worse" is my current feeling too :disappointed:
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    Medley of potato, sweet potato, carrot, and parsnip. You would have to be accustomed to very small portions for a single serving to be enough even as a side. There were 3 servings in the bag and the total was a pitiful amount of food.

    I normally agree with you but your root veggies thingy has me confused. Are you using correct values/weights etc?
    Carrots tend to be low calories per gram. Potatoes and sweet potatoes tend to be higher valued but fairly satiating.

    Assuming 77/100g for potato with skin and 86/100g for sweet potato, 41/100g for carrot, and 75/100g for parsnips, we are at about 70 per 100g or just over 500g for your 360Cal portion.

    About double the uncooked weight of a big mac :wink: (per McD's GB: 74g bun, 90g raw patties, 14g cheese, 28g lettuce, 7g pickles, 7g onions, 20g thousand island special sauce)

    (actually after an exhaustive comparison of the nutritional value of regular vs sweet potatoes and personal satiety evaluations I've concluded that for the calories I prefer regular potatoes, and the sweet potatoes are relegated to when I am attempting to make "a brownie-like-dessert-that-includes-veggies" or "pumpkin and sweet potato soup or curry", or other weird stuff like that... but really, calorie wise the regular potato doesn't lose to the sweet potato, to the contrary nutrition and vitamin wise they are very similar, and the sweetness pushes the sweet potato more into dessert than meal while the imagined health benefits remain... imagined)... but I digress...

    I went with the calories on the bag. I did not weigh it out because I didn't want to pick it apart. I am in recovery at the moment eating maintenance so I am not being as precise as normal.

    I was incorrect. It was supposed to be 6 serviings. It was still a very pitiful amount so I probably should have weighed it.

    https://pictsweetfarms.com/product/sweet-potatoes-red-potatoes-carrots-butternut-squash/vegetables-for-roasting/how-to-roast/97090/

    Mine had parsnips instead of squash so I guess they have changed the recipe since I bought it but the calories are the same.