U.S.A.! Number One!

A New England Journal of Medicine study finds that fast food in America, even within the same international chain, tends to be higher in trans fats than the same items in other countries. Well, the eagle may be flying slow and flag hanging low 'cause we're too damn fat, but as Neil Young once sang, if you hate us, man, you just don't know what you're sayin'.

Comments

[Mark]

Fast food rocks my world.

I pop a boner everytime I order a Big Mac.

We have pissy portions in the UK. The states RULES!!

U
S
A!

U
S
A!

[David]

That's odd. I thought that our McDonalds's fried only in high fructose corn syrup.

[Ron Hardin]

When Kraft bought Boca Burger, they immediately started adding trans fats to all the soy products, the ingredient that large corporations know makes Americans say yum.

This has done a lot to make Morningstar number one. (I recommend the bacon (don't overnuke!) and the steak strips.)

Boca always required a lot of condiments anyway. You can eat the Morningstar stuff as-is.

[smacky]

As I was suggesting in another thread a few days ago, my hypothesis is that Americans tend to find unhealthier foods tastier than say, Europeans. Either that, or American corporations are penny-pinching on their own countrymen, while making their products better quality in other countries (yes, as a company it is a lot cheaper to add soy, high fructose corn syrup, and preservatives than it is to deliver genuinely fresh produce, etc).

I lived on MorningStar Farms veggie burgers when I was a stoner.

[smacky]

Boca burgers, on the other hand, taste like shit. Like soy glued together with corn syrup. Oh wait, that's what they are!

[Mark]

On a serious note though, if you guys give up on fast food and trans-fat then you're done for. Fast food IS America and it is the goddammed greatest thing ever.

Anyone who says they don't like trans-fat or McDonalds is full of shit. Those cheeseburgers are developed by the greatest scientific minds in the world - these guys have more doctorates than pubes so they KNOW THEIR SHIT.....

That first taste of a cheeseburger. Is it sweet? Is it savoury? Is it cow? I do not know, but I'm hot!

My girlfriend and her family took me to some wack french Michelin star restaurant for some bullshit celebration (as if I care that her parents have been married for 30 years?). This French turd comes over and he's like 'ooohh would you like some pate and fried lambs nuts?'
So I said 'Hell NO! Get me a goddamn burger and some ketchup you dickweed!'

That's one frenchman who learnt a lesson that day....

Stay fat America. And stay great. You're our only hope. I don't want to eat European food...it tastes like bum.

[Cartman]

I don't know Smacky. Sometimes you get a really tasty European...even tastier than unhealthier foods 😉

[smacky]

Ah ha ha, Cartman! It's all in the context of how you read it, I see. 🙂

[Bee]

Keep 'em coming, Mark. I'll snigger all day.

[mitch]

I think "transfats" are the new carbs; my girlfriend and I were doing our usual super-double-plus unhealthy shopping at Gristides earlier in the week, and we noticed that all the junk food we were considering had "0 trans fats!" written all over them.

[M'Tuklavier]

What about the fat people that watch their diets?

It seems like every one I speak to says, "I'm
on a diet" or whatever.

And to make matters worse every time I go into a fast food joint, the only fat people are the ones working there and all the customer seem to have quite a reasonable BMI.

Something doesn't add up.

Anyone who says they don't like trans-fat or McDonalds is full of shit.

I hate McDonalds! It fucking sucks. Their "meat" is mostly filler like Burger King. Try Wendy's: real meat and tons of grease.

My favorite food is still sushi anyway.

[Penry]

McDonalds fries used to be cooked in trans-fat free beef tallow. They switched to vegetable oil in the '90s after a campaign by the CSPI, who objected to the saturated fat. Unfortunately, to get the same taste and texture with vegetable oil it has to be artificially saturated (through hydrogenation) which adds the trans-fats and makes it far more unhealthy than the original animal fat. Thanks, Ralph.

[lunchstealer]

And to make matters worse every time I go into a fast food joint, the only fat people are the ones working there and all the customer seem to have quite a reasonable BMI.

That's because the fat slobs are all at the drive-through, too lazy to heave their pendulous backsides out of their cars and remain standing long enough to get their next fix from the counter.

Of course, I wouldn't know about the inside customers, since I mostly just get drive-through myself.

[Timothy]

Man, fast food is bad for you, WHO KNEW?

[David T]

An article in the New York Times a few years ago, arguing that McDonald's had had a positive effect on Russia's economy, added:

"Whether this represents an improvement in culinary or nutritional standards
in Russia is another conversation, although those who want to argue the evils
of cholesterol should know you're talking about a country where a slab of
pork fat on buttered bread is considered the ideal accompaniment to a jolt of
vodka."

[M'Tuklavier]

That's because the fat slobs are all at the drive-through...

I thought someone might remark about that.
I haven't seen anything different in the drive-through either when I'm able to observe people in other cars. I really think people that aren't prone to be overweight feel more comfortable eating that stuff and actually avoid it less.

---

Thanks, Ralph
<corn alert>Yeah, Ralph Nader was just trying to live-up to his name.</corn alert>

[coyote1284]

Interestingly enough, I'm seeing more MSG slowly creeping back into our junk (like the seasoned sunflower seeds I'm sucking on to curb my smoking.) And what happened to saturated fat? Where did these new fats come from? What the hell is a "Trans" fat anyways? (Not an obese crossdresser?)

I think Big Macs have been steadily shrinking since at least 1989.

[M'Tuklavier]

Trans-fat is short for trans-dimensional fat. It producted weight gain in the tiny curled-up space-time dimensions.

Which would explain all the thin fat people and why we're gaining weight in hidden places.

[Rex Rhino]

When I was hardcore into working out, I was "morbidly obese". Fortunatly, now that I don't work out regularly, I am technically "obese" (although I was thinner when I was "morbidly obese"). Of course, most people consider me tall and skinny, but those scientists talking about an obesity epidemic don't seem to understand the concept of muscle density, bone density, etc.

So, when we are talking about an "obesity epidemic", know that people like "Tom Cruise" are considered at the worst stages of obesity. (I think time cruise sneaks by just under being morbidly obese... Robert Dinero, however, is clearly life threateningly fat, clearly in the morbidly obese category).

[M'Tuklavier]

Rex, yes there are literally "thin fat people" (a term I heard from some magazine photographers) whom people would say are "anorexic" but a closer look at them show that they are indeed flabby. Some of those "wafer thin" supermodels fall into that category.

[Rex Rhino]

Rex, yes there are literally "thin fat people" (a term I heard from some magazine photographers) whom people would say are "anorexic" but a closer look at them show that they are indeed flabby. Some of those "wafer thin" supermodels fall into that category.

Yes, but when I was "morbidly obese", I actually wasn't in any way, shape, or form flabby. In fact, I am a vegetarian, and so wasn't getting enough fat in my diet, and my doctor said that I DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH FAT, and it was actually unhealthy for me. He recomended that I eat more butter, cheese, eggs, etc., so that I would get more fat.

The problem isn't that skinny people are "flabby" whatever that means. The problem is that the BMI is in no way a scientific measure of fatness. It only considers weight and height, and not percentage body fat, muscle density, bone density, etc.

Most professional athletes are overweight, or obese!

[M'Tuklavier]

Rex,

I know what you're talking about. I'm 5'6" and 190lbs - heavy for me but I don't look really "fat". My family and I are just dense Polish people as my sister says.

What I'm talking about re: "skinny fat people" is a result of relatively high body fat percentage while having a small physical size.

[dan]

Fat is good. Fat people die younger, get more illnesses, and buy more stuff like walkers. All of this stimulates the economy. Ask the undertakers, doctors, and the people who sell gadgets for criples. We can thank fat people for the good times we're all enjoying. It's the healthy, slim folks that will drag us down. Look at France.

[dead_elvis]

The best fast food is Backyard Burger. Makes McWendyKing taste like cardboard. And damn good waffle fries, and excellent cobbler to top it off.

Unfortunately it's a chain that, as far as I know, hasn't expanded beyond the midsouth/southeast part of the country. But if you're ever there visiting, GO!

[Akira MacKenzie]

It used to be that we leavened our high calorie, high fat diets with a great deal of back-braking toil be it on the farm or in the factory. Now, with an economy that has moved away agriculture and industry, we've become more sessile in the Information Age. However, mental labor can be just as taxing as physical labor. The last thing I want to do after a long day of being bitched at by customers or filling out their locate tickets is exercise. I'm pooped! I want to watch CSI reruns on Spike and go to sleep, not run a mile and make myself feel worse.

(I've never understood the jocks who claim that they feel "better" after a work out. I must have some sort of deficiency in endorphins because every time I ever exercised, I wanted to die afterwards.)

Also, let's not forget the dreadful role that genetics plays in this fitness farce: My father is 5'8" and weighs about 130 lbs. With his blast furnace metabolism, he can eat damn near anything and not gain a gorram pound. Ditto my svelte sister. Ditto the rest of his side of the family. On the other hand, my mother and her relations qualify as morbidly obese, many of them topping out at the low-to-mid 300s. Guess who inherited those morbidly obese genes? Me. I'm 6'and my weight see-saws from 260 to 280 depending on my level of activity. I'm fat and no amount exercise is going to change that. (Thanks for your lousy DNA, Mom!)

[Lowdog]

Akira - you generally have to get beyond a certain fitness level before your workouts actually make you feel "good" afterwards. Your genetics (and the excess weight they "help" you carry around) may be why you feel like ass after working out. I'll bet if you stayed with it for a long enough period of time, you'd get to where you felt "good" after a workout, too.

All that said, I hear you about long days and mental fatigue. On top of that, I like to have a good time, which usually includes alcohol and possibly other mind-altering substances, which doesn't necessarily inspire me to get into the gym the next day.

However, since I enjoy playing sports, I've always been able to maintain a decent fitness level. I did stop working out for a few years and gained a bunch of weight, but now I'm back going to the gym and playing ice hockey...now I've just got to loose the spare tire.

[Lowdog]

Also, concerning BMI, even if I got to where I'd really like to be, fitness-wise, I'd still be on the high side of "overweight". But I'd be a 5'10, 190lb brick shit-house.

As it is now, I'm a 5'10, 200lb, mud shit-house, where the mud is still drying. 🙂

[Jersey McJagoff]

If we really want fast food companies to go out of business, the most effective way to do that would be to subsidize them.

we'll give McDonald's all kinds of free money, and then once we have them hooked they'll be junkies for the stuff and then we'll put all kinds of conditions on them like "no beef tallow" and "no trans fat" and "living wages" and then the food will be SOOO shitty only the super-poor and Europeans will eat the stuff and then pretty soon the ONLY income they have will be the subsidies and then we can claim we're running out of money...

Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot.

[Phil]

However, mental labor can be just as taxing as physical labor. The last thing I want to do after a long day of being bitched at by customers or filling out their locate tickets is exercise. I'm pooped!

That's why you do it before work. I get up at 5:00, work out at the gym for an hour, shower, dress and go to work from 7:30 to 4:30, and I'm home between 5:00 and 5:30. Doing this helped me lose and keep off more than 40 lbs.

[Mr. F. Le Mur]

Poll results from AOL article:
Should fast food restaurants be required to reduce trans fats?
Yes ----- 84%
No ----- 12%
Not sure 3%

Statists, statists everywhere, and not a decent burger to be found.

But in Germany, Russia, Denmark and Aberdeen, Scotland, the same meal had less than a gram.
Most Scottish food is based on "I dare you!"

[Rex Rhino]

Yeah, like here in Canada, after the head of the NDP started threatening companies that they had better lower their transfats, or the government is going to force them to.

The companies responded by using pork-lard instead of cottonseed oil (pork-lard doesn't contain any transfats!). So yes, they got companies to lower transfats, but fucked over all the vegetarians, vegans, Jews, Muslims, etc. Thanks nanny state!

[James Anderson Merritt]

I thought Neil Young was a Canadian. Is he a US citizen now?

[jon fortune]

Bush and his wife, Laura, departed the White House on Thursday afternoon to spend four days at the wooded presidential retreat of rustic cabins in the Maryland mountains. http://www.mikesAmericanblog.com
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