My heart sinks every time I hear one of my sons friends talk about going to McDonalds or my 5 year old mention it cos one of her friends has been. We have to tell her….No it’s not good for you, let’s get something better.
What concerns me even more is the elation of local parents about the proposed new McDonalds drive through in our nearby town. The worst food combined with litter and over packaging which will be thrown out of car windows into the beautiful countryside here. You might tell, I’m not a fan.
But this article was inspired by TV Chef Jamie Olivers victory in court to halt some of the practices of Burger chain McDonalds. Read about that here
I don’t believe that good parents knowingly feed their children bad food,
but I do believe most of them are far too busy to research the benefits of good nutrition, they are often far too consumed with day to day life to spend hours preparing food from scratch, baking more wholesome alternatives to the poor quality faire of most major supermarkets and many are too poor to invest a high percentage of their household income into actually decent, well sourced food.
So the answer becomes that many families start to rely on pre packaged, salt and sugar filled processed food which is made mainly for profit and certainly not for nutrition. Even if you could remove the toxicity of many of the ingredients, in itself this would not fix the fact most these foods have very little, if any actual nutritional value. Empty calories mixed with toxic preservatives, salt and sugar….Hmmmmm sounds great doesn’t it?
Then comes the the family treat, the kids love it as they’ve been seduced by cheap plastic toys and a slightly evil looking clown….Let’s all go to a budget fast food outlet like McDonalds… But then again, It’s not even that cheap!
Many quality independent restaurants offer packaged kids meal deals for under £5, offering far better quality food and a much better experience, what has really happened is the marketing won and whilst people somewhere in their mind know McDonalds is bad for you, they suspend that idea, because it’s convenient to do so.
So when you make your children or even yourself food, do you ask this question:
“What is the nutritional value of what I’m preparing or buying?”
My guess is that 99% of the time the answer is no.
When they do, they do so because they literally have no idea about what they are doing, they are unfortunately not educated on nutrition at school where the teachers are generally as ignorant as the kids. You only have to look at the physical shape most of your kids teachers are in to know that to be the case.
Parents on the whole would not knowingly choose to feed harmful products to their children but large (and sometimes evil) corporations do feed your children bad food on purpose because bad food equals big profits.
Take a look at this article from Grocery Secrets:
Top 10 toxic ingredients used by McDonald’s
McDonald’s has a very complicated brand image: entirely unhealthy, yet an affordable option that is almost universally available. McDonald’s isn’t a place we go to get our nutritional needs met, and with most research connecting our Western/fast food diet directly to various diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, one begins to wonder why this company continues to serve billions and billions.
Read the full article here
Nutrition is one of those subjects so few people really bother to investigate but the old phrase of “You are what you eat” is essentially true and if you want to avoid many of the lousy diseases that may end up killing you, then good nutrition is a great start.
When I was around 25 years old I read the Optimum Nutrition Bible by Patrick Holford. Since then I have literally bought it for at least ten people personally (Along with Rich Dad Poor Dad and a few others)
I literally never set foot in McDonalds or similar ever again. I also changed the way I ate and paid attention to good nutritional practice. I often wonder whether my overall health would have been
I’m not going to preach any further, I’m going to ask people to look into the best way to provide good nutrition to their children and for themselves.
Never setting foot again in a McDonalds is not a bad start on the road to good overall nutritional health, and whilst I may have appear to have singled out McDonalds, this article will equally apply to many of the international fast food chains whose goal is profits not nutrition.
UNBX 