What’s Really in Your Fast Food?

I've never been a fan of fast-food or burger bars 👎....here's some of the reasons why.  If this doesn't put you off, I don't know what will!  😱

French Fries 
The humble potato, fried in a vat of simmering oil, and finished with a sprinkling of salt. What could be simpler? Apparently, quite a lot. Fast-food fries often have more than 15 ingredients, including sugar and artificial coloring. They also have preservatives like sodium acid pyrophosphate and tert-butylhydroquinone, which in high doses has been linked to vision problems.


Hamburgers 
Ground beef, right? Sure -- but there also may be growth hormones and antibiotics, which can end up in your system. And in one study, some burgers had over 100 calories more per serving than the fast-food places said they did.

Soda
It’s the same soda you buy at the grocery store. But when you get it at a fast-food chain, you get more calories because the drink sizes are so large. And we’re not talking “supersize.” A medium soda at a typical fast-food place is about 30 ounces and has about 300 calories. And studies show that if you order it, you’ll drink it.

Breakfast Sandwich
Some of the ingredients listed for what one national outlet calls a “fried egg” include modified corn starch, soybean oil, medium chain triglycerides, propylene glycol, artificial flavor, citric acid, xanthan gum, and -- oh yeah -- egg whites and yolks (listed separately). If you didn’t bargain for all of that, ask for the propylene glycol (also used in fog machines and to make polyester) on the side.

Hot Dog
What’s in them? Let’s just say they make full use of the animals that supply the meat. They’re also loaded with salt and saturated fat (which most Americans get too much of) and with nitrates, a preservative linked to diabetes and cancer.

Chicken Nuggets
A piece of chicken breast battered and fried to golden perfection? Not exactly. There’s meat in there, but there are also bones, blood vessels, nerves, connective tissue, and skin. And they have loads of salt and fat, which are linked to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Strawberry Milkshake
Besides milk and sugar, one leading fast-food outlet also adds high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives like sodium benzoate, and artificial flavors and colors to this drinkable dessert. One thing that appears to be missing: actual strawberries.

Sauces 

The first ingredient listed for almost any sauce served at a fast-food restaurant is sugar. It may be called sucrose, dextrose, maltose, rice syrup, barley malt, high-fructose corn syrup, or any number of other things, but the end result is the same: quick delivery of lots of calories with almost zero nutritional value.




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Why We Crave Junk Food

Read on if you find yourself not able to resist junk food, here's why...

Steven Witherly is a food scientist who has spent the last 20 years studying what makes certain foods more addictive than others. Much of the science that follows is from his excellent report, Why Humans Like Junk Food.  

According to Witherly, when you eat tasty food, there are two factors that make the experience pleasurable. 

First, there is the sensation of eating the food. This includes what it tastes like (salty, sweet, umami, etc.), what it smells like, and how it feels in your mouth. This last quality — known as “orosensation” — can be particularly important. Food companies will spend millions of dollars to discover the most satisfying level of crunch in a potato chip. Food scientists will test for the perfect amount of fizzle in a soda. These elements all combine to create the sensation that your brain associates with a particular food or drink.

The second factor is the actual macronutrient makeup of the food — the blend of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that it contains. In the case of junk food, food manufacturers are looking for a perfect combination of salt, sugar, and fat that excites your brain and gets you coming back for more.

Here’s how they do it…

How Food Scientists Create Cravings

There is a range of factors that scientists and food manufacturers use to make food more addictive.

Dynamic contrast. Dynamic contrast refers to a combination of different sensations in the same food. In the words of Witherly, foods with dynamic contrast have “an edible shell that goes crunch followed by something soft or creamy and full of taste-active compounds. This rule applies to a variety of our favorite food structures — the caramelized top of a creme brulee, a slice of pizza, or an Oreo cookie — the brain finds crunching through something like this very novel and thrilling.”


Salivary response. Salivation is part of the experience of eating food, and the more a food causes you to salivate, the more it will swim throughout your mouth and cover your taste buds. For example, emulsified foods like butter, chocolate, salad dressing, ice cream, and mayonnaise promote a salivary response that helps to lather your taste buds with goodness. This is one reason why many people enjoy foods that have sauces or glazes on them. The result is that foods that promote salivation do a happy little tap dance on your brain and taste better than ones that don’t.


Rapid food meltdown and vanishing caloric density. Foods that rapidly vanish or “melt in your mouth” signal to your brain that you’re not eating as much as you actually are. In other words, these foods literally tell your brain that you’re not full, even though you’re eating a lot of calories.

In his best-selling book, Salt Sugar Fat (audiobook), author Michael Moss describes a conversation with Witherly that explains vanishing caloric density perfectly…

"I brought him two shopping bags filled with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it … you can just keep eating it forever.”


Sensory-specific response. Your brain likes variety. When it comes to food, if you experience the same taste over and over again, then you start to get less pleasure from it. In other words, the sensitivity of that specific sensor will decrease over time. This can happen in just minutes.

Junk foods, however, are designed to avoid this sensory specific response. They provide enough taste to be interesting (your brain doesn’t get tired of eating them), but it’s not so stimulating that your sensory response is dulled. This is why you can swallow an entire bag of potato chips and still be ready to eat another. To your brain, the crunch and sensation of eating Doritos is novel and interesting every time.

Calorie density. Junk foods are designed to convince your brain that it is getting nutrition, but to not fill you up. Receptors in your mouth and stomach tell your brain about the mixture of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in a particular food, and how filling that food is for your body. Junk food provides just enough calories that your brain says, “Yes, this will give you some energy” but not so many calories that you think “That’s enough, I’m full.” The result is that you crave the food to begin with, but it takes quite some time to feel full from it.


Memories of past eating experiences. This is where the psychobiology of junk food really works against you. When you eat something tasty (say, a bag of potato chips), your brain registers that feeling. The next time you see that food, smell that food, or even read about that food, your brain starts to trigger the memories and responses that came when you ate it. These memories can actually cause physical responses like salivation and create the “mouth-watering” craving that you get when thinking about your favorite foods.


These factors all combine to make processed food tasty and desirable to our human brains. When you combine the science behind these foods with the incredible prevalence of food (cheap fast food everywhere), eating healthy becomes very hard to do.

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For the full article from James Clear click here