Healthy at McDonalds?

CAN McDonald's be healthy? That's the thought that's running around my mind. Naturally, as you might guess, I'm probably biased against the restauarant and you might be able to guess how this article will turn out. But stick around; I'll try to be creative and come up with ways they possibly could. If I can. For the sake of healthiness, it certainly WOULD be great if there was a fast food restaurant out there that you could actually trust was serving you healthy food.

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SAVE THE FARMS: Follow the money!

It is time to stop FDA tyranny against dairy farms! I woke up this morning and was almost immediately looking for any news about the S.510 Senate bill, the "Food Safety Modernization Act". It is beyond baffling that a bill like this could be recommended in its entirety by the committee to be voted on by the Senate. But then, knowing how infrequently (if ever?) our Senators and Representatives actually read the bills they're voting on, I guess I'm not surprised.

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Hungry Gamer? Buy Somethin' Will Ya?

Image by pinguino via Flickr

Having grown up with a love of video games and also having a love for Real Food, I felt a bit insulted when I came across a new snack being aimed at game players everywhere. It's called Gamer Grub and it's essentially cheap sugars and carbohydrates in a convenient but wasteful package.

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Fast Food Salads? Nope, won't trust 'em.

Wendy's restaurant recently introduced four new salads to their money - perhaps you've heard of them? They're calling them "real salads" as if they're made from real food or something. Ian Froeb of Riverfront Times wrote a piece yesterday that caught my eye and points out the fact that these salads contain more calories, salt, and fat* than a KFC DoubleDown.

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McDonalds to CSPI: Buzz Off

Image via Wikipedia

Guest blogger Doug Powers writes today on MicheleMalkin.com about the McDonalds CEO's response to CSPI's recent lawsuit threats. In a nutshell, McDonalds officially tells CSPI to buzz off.

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KFC Chicken Pot Pie. There are no words for this.

Image by hddod via Flickr

As a disclaimer, I apologize if this makes you lose your appetite. But then, if you were planning on going to KFC for lunch, I take that back.

Chicken Stock, Carrots, Potatoes (With Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate To Protect Color), Peas, Heavy Cream, Modified Food Starch, Contains 2% Or Less Of Wheat Flour, Salt, Chicken Fat, Dried Dairy Blend (Whey, Calcium Caseinate), Butter (Cream, Salt),

[much more after the jump]
 

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America and Sugar Sitting in a Tree

Image via Wikipedia

America (and other countries where a Western diet has taken root) is in a very abusive relationship with sugar. Wherever we go, sugar is there with us, trying to be part of everything we eat, and in more and more quantities. But like a textbook case of an abusive relationship, we take our beating and just keep clinging on to the abuser. We can't seem to let go. Even after Michael Pollan, a veritable Robin Hood of food, appears on Oprah, one of the most popular talk shows ever, to discuss what's wrong with the food we eat, people continue to turn a blind eye to what they're eating and then wonder why they can't lose weight, or why their kids are sick all the time. 

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Listen to This Man (Jamie Oliver)

This is really the first year that I've come to know Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef, and I don't really even know him very well at all. Additionally, I haven't really followed the TED awards and talks much before this year either. But I think the combination of both of them has come to be one of the most important events in the growth of our food supply. I find myself strangely torn between optimism and pessimism on this subject. I want so badly for people to be healthy, it thrills me beyond belief to see the subject come up as the First Lady's "problem to deal with" or as the central theme of the latest reality show. Yet when I peek over at the next checkout lane in the grocery store to see it piled high with the very processed junk that is poisoning our children everywhere, I can't help but feel that some people are going to be beyond help, forever.

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Your Money or Your Health

Image via Wikipedia

It's interesting to see what pops up when you concern yourself with the food that you eat. After recent conversations about restaurants and local "health drinks" I was shown a website about a local weight loss program, Hopkins Fusion,  that sells Herbalife, the same protein powder/sports mix that City Blendz sells, and out of optimistic hope to be able to make a difference I wrote to the company to see if, at least, they knew about the unhealthy ingredients in their "health" shakes, forwarding the link to my recent article about their product. I was a bit taken aback by the response I received.

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Who Told You About Girl Scout Cookies?

Image by The Suss-Man (Mike) via Flickr

As a result of my recent post about Girl Scout cookies, a couple of conversations came up from friends and acquaintences of mine, and it occurs to me that a lot of people might have similar questions.

Dan, a guy came into our office today helping his daughter with her girl scout cookie sales so I looked at his sheet tallking about all the kinds of cookies and EVERYONE of them stated that they had 0 trans fats. So who told you they were loaded with trans fats?

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Trans Fat Ignorance

via @labnol on Flickr

It took a decade starting from 1989 before the government even agreed to make a decision about trans fats. Three four after THAT it was finally made law - but producers had a grace period of until 2006. Thus it is 2010, four years after the final deadline for manufacturers to label the amount of trans fat in products, ...and many people everywhere are still unaware of how much trans fat might be in their food.

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City Blendz Definition of Nutrition

City Blendz Nutrition opened a retail location in the skyway near our work. I'm not sure whether it's part of a chain or not, but if it is, it's probably a small chain because no one here as ever heard of them. I usually get excited for mom & pop -sized stores, because usually only with individual entrepreneurships will you see innovation in menu choices. None of my group could really tell whether this was going to be a coffee shop or not, because we could see syrup bottles while they were setting up shop, which usually implies coffee. However, as one could also tell by their website, www.mycityblendz.com, it's a smoothie joint. And not just any generic kind, either - one that advertises its food is good for weight loss.

Uh, oh.

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The Supply of Restaurants

I stumbled into today's story. My family and I were planning to attend the "Minneapolis Healthy Life Expo" and meet up with a friend there. The expo turned out to be more of a joke that I expected it to be; I supposed there would be simply a showing of health-related vendors and if I were lucky maybe a semi-interesting spontaneous seminar, but it the vendors weren't even entirely health-related. There were housing/repair and vacation vendors as well. Since it was as much an insult as a disappointment, we called our friend and told her to not even bother showing up.  Our friend and her family were at the moment shopping at a very nearby restaurant supply store, and thus we met up with them there.

Inside it looked like most any regular buying club-style grocery store. You may already be familiar with Sam's Club or CostCo, and that's the same kind of impression I got when I walked inside. The only thing you have to keep in mind was that this particular business is catering specifically to restaurants as clients. I believe you're supposed to have a registered business in order to sign up with their club. With that in mind, the feelings I had after that ranged from disappointed to appalled when I saw what kinds of things were on the shelves.

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We are so Lucky! Eating Locally, part two.

Image via Wikipedia

Part Two of this series on eating locally takes us to the very popular LocalHarvest.org. I actually remember when this site first started out, thinking to myself that I hope it becomes really useful. I believe it has done so, and is continuing on its journey to become the place to bring farmers and consumers together.

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What you can do: Eating Locally, part one

If there's one thing that you could do to really change the food industry - and leave an amazingly positive impact on your own health - choosing to eat locally is right up there with the best options. However, this is one of those things that's easy to say, but a little harder to actually do, because the people - farms, cooperatives, and so on - that sell the best products directly to you have neither time nor money to advertise to you. And on the other hand, the corporations selling you junk products that are supposed to be good for you spend millions of dollars to have massive, dedicated teams that sit around thinking of ways to make you buy their products. I have firsthand knowledge of this, so I know what I'm talking about.

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InGREEDients the Movie: Another for your Watch List

David Burton, a registered nurse, discovered that he was feeding himself - and his family - with foods that were slowly killing them. Being a nurse, his job is essentially, supposedly, focused on being healthy and maintaining that good health. Yet as we can all see, even doctors and nurses can be as unknowing as the rest of us. David's experience with hydrogenated oils starts out in a typical fashion. He had heard these oils were bad for your body, but didn't really know why they were bad or how much damage they really did.

This film is the result of finding that information out.

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Should people be freed from trans-fats?

Image by FranciscoDiez via Flickr

Update: Please review the comments following this post for a change in my position on this political issue.

It seems that along with a few major cities around the nation, the entire state of California will begin banning trans fats beginning with 2010, with a grace period for some (bakeries) continuing up until 2011. While it's fantastic to see that people are finally starting actually do something about trans fats, is this the way it should be done?

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Book Review: The Unhealthy Truth

Cover via Amazon

I literally just finished The Unhealthy Truth by Robyn O'Brien and cannot emphasize what a blessing it is to the state of health for anyone who may read it. The book follows the discoveries of a woman who can easily be described as a very typical working mom. 


Her first awakening came with an unexpected allergic reaction of her youngest child to some eggs, and this discovery eventually leads her to the revelation that the people and organizations she thought were looking out for her health were more concerned about how much money they could fit in their bank accounts. 

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