Is Fast Food Getting Any Healthier?
With all of the recent commercials fast food chains are airing, touting all their wonderful new healthy choices, you may be wondering: is fast food getting any healthier? From premium salads, to sides of apple slices, and milk rather than soft drinks, these restaurants certainly want us to think they are getting healthier. Couple these new menu selections with the fact that “supersizing” and “biggie sizing” have been eliminated and one might really think this is the case.
However, unfortunately, this is not the case. Fast food restaurants are not getting any healthier. Not only have regular servings gotten much larger than ever before, these chains are taking part in a deceptive game to make customers think they are ordering healthier options or smaller portions when they are not.
In the last three years, all of the major fast food chains have introduced sandwiches that contained at least twelve ounces of beef (which is equivalent to twice the amount recommended per day for an adult), and one thousand calories. In addition to these new sandwich options, many of the chains have also introduced seemingly “healthier” wrap choices. These wraps, while alluding to the fact that they are better for you, actually contain upwards of nine hundred (and in some cases more) calories, and nearly sixty grams of fat. This one wrap contains an entire day’s worth of fat for an average adult.
To make matters worse, the drinks have also gone in the wrong direction. When fast food restaurants first opened in the 1950, a regular sized soft drink was just seven ounces. This was considered to an appropriate serving size for an adult. Today, the child size soft drink is twelve ounces, the small is sixteen ounces, the medium (sometimes large) is thirty-two ounces, and most chains now offer the option of a drink that is between forty and forty-four ounces. These large drinks often contain more than four hundred calories! It is hard to believe that people can really be that thirsty.
The fact of the matter is we tend to eat or drink whatever is put in front of us. If we are given a portion of food, we think it is perfectly acceptable to consume all of it. We also do not realize how much fat or calories the foods we choose contain, and we have a tendency to not even count drink calories. We are also being a bit sabotaged in our attempts to eat healthier. Even when we try to order a small portion, we are still getting much more than we realize. Perhaps fast food chains need to go back to the drawing board and go back to the way things were when they first opened. It is most definitely not a coincidence that the obesity rate has grown right along with fast food profits.
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