What I Learned from a McDonald's McGriddle

I've eaten a lot of McDonald's breakfast sandwiches in the last fifteen years. I'd hate to know the amount of calories and fat that my body had to process.

I even continued to indulge for many months into my year long quest to save myself from myself. I had a coffee habit from Tim Horton's and, more recently, McDonald's. I often included a breakfast sandwich with my morning coffee.

By coming up with a cup of coffee that works for me at home (a Keurig) at Christmas this year, I stopped going to those places and eating their high fat, high calorie breakfasts. Finally.

So I've been on the wagon in that regard for over three months. But I had my first breakfast sandwich a couple of days ago due to an unusual time management issue. I'm happy to say that I learned a lot from the experience.

Consistently, I have three slices of toast for breakfast made from Smart Bread. It includes fibre but hides it. It seems like white bread when you're eating it but it is more filling. I put lots of fat and sugar on my toast, but at least it has fibre.

I know how long I can last on that toast before getting hungry. The breakfast sandwich has about the same number of calories as my all-toast breakfast but I got hungry sooner. Much sooner. I could feel my blood sugar rise and fall quite rapidly. I also craved more fat, it seemed, after I got hungry again.

This confirms my belief that bad eating breeds more bad eating. That's also why I go in cycles with my diet. If I'm consistent and keep crap out, I crave it much, much less. If I eat something bad, I seem to hunger for more bad things in a physical--not emotional--way.

Thank you, greasy breakfast sandwich. You've taught me well.

McDonald's Canada: Switching Healthy Choices to Even Worse

I'm pleased to say I don't go to McDonald's nearly as much as I used to. It's more of an emergency that gets us there now rather than the thought that pleasure would be gained by eating their food.

I was out shopping with my daughter yesterday and we needed some lunch to keep going. I pulled into McDonald's and tried to order one of the very few healthy things on their menu: the chicken fajita, weighing in under 10 grams of fat each.

Well, I was told they are discontinued. A year ago they introduced 800 calorie Angus burgers (50% worse than the gold standard of bad food, the Big Mac.)

Needless to say, McDonald's is not committed to serving healthier foods. In fact, it's quite the opposite. They are concocting even worse foods to get us hooked on a drug-like fat fix.

They're not all that different than Big Tobacco. Or the drug dealer on the corner.

Interesting Nutritional Discovery in My Hot Cocoa

Santa brought me a Keurig single cup coffee maker (on sale for $44 at Walmart but I got Futureshop to price match it because the buggers were always out of stock.) Would-be environmentalists have been critical of my acquisitions, but in truth, my purchase has  been a boon for the environment, and my belly.

My habit of the last two years has been to go to McDonald's or Tim Horton's (a popular Canadian doughnut chain) and get me a fix of extra large coffee with lots of cream and sugar (I'm still a bit of a virgin coffee drinker.) Being a fat-body, of course I added things to my order: A breakfast sandwich, usually. Then there's the gas. Those restaurants are relatively close but there's sometimes a fifteen minute wait in line, idling the mini-van. This habit cost me calories and carbon emissions (including flatulence after the meal.) What a waste of time, money and pollution!

Thankfully, and unexpectedly, my Keurig cured me of that bad habit (or at least downsized the habit, depending on how you look at it.) I found the perfect coffee K-cup for me (the Donut House K-cup), used some filtered water, bought some coffee cream and I'm set. Furthermore, I'm enjoying a single, normal sized cup to start my day and not the giant XL cups from the stores (and their wasteful containers.) (Yes, I'm aware that K-cups produce waste in their lined plastic little cups, but surly it's less than my trips to the store.)

My breakfast consists of more modest, higher fibre (and therefore more slowly digesting) breakfast fares at home. I'm saving a fortune. With gas, it must have been at least a $6/day habit. That's nasty. When the kids tagged along on the weekends for some doughnut holes, it got more expensive.

Having said that, my trips out for coffee constituted some quality James Time. Usually, I was alone and in the relative peace and quiet of my vehicle (no screaming kids within earshot.) But now my James Time is on the couch with my coffee.

My Cocoa Discovery

We keep some hot cocoa K-cups around for a treat (a lazy treat.) I was surprised that each cup of Green Mountain Hot Cocoa K-cups are only 60 calories. More surprisingly to me, they contain 3 grams of fibre per cup.

It's hard to find a non-fruit/vegetable that has that much fibre in a 60 calorie snack. Even harder to find one that does something to satisfy one's chocolate cravings. However, it's got 3.5 grams of fat and it's all saturated!

I couldn't find much info on the Net but the cocoa industry seems to be including part of the cocoa husk to up the fibre in their products and therefore make them more appealing to health-conscious consumers.

Is Wendy a Good Spokesperson for a New High-Calorie, High-Fat Burger?

Wendy Thomas in TV ad

The Wendy's fast food chain has new ads for a new high calorie burger featuring the namesake of the restaurant, Wendy Thomas, daughter of the late Dave Thomas. What my family and friends find unusual about her in this ad is that she's significantly overweight. Although there's certainly nothing wrong with overweight people selling burgers, it seems odd because there's a special context here.

800 calorie double Big 'n' Juicy burger

What if Ronald McDonald was fat? We know that she grew up with her dad owning this successful chain of restaurants and here she is, beautiful, radiant, and charming, but noticeably overweight, seemingly proof that being around fast food may not be healthy. What's worse is that she's selling one of their fattest, most calorie-ridden burgers yet. The Dave's Big 'n' Juicy as pictured is 800 calories, competing perhaps with McDonald's' new 800 calorie 1/3 pound Angus burgers (I thought fast food was supposed to be getting healthier. I'll say it again: The Big Mac at 500 calories now looks like a 'lite' burger.)

• See MSNBC story on the new burger

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this ad and my (our) response to it, but it is certainly something to think about. I will say this: It took some chutzpah on the part of Wendy Thomas and the ad agency to use an overweight spokesperson who happens to be the face of the chain, normally in caricature as a child, now grown up and presumably not a picture of perfect health.

48 grams of fat, for crying out loud, and she brags about the buns of this burger being buttered! Because they just didn't have enough fat in the ground beef, cheese and mayo!

The Crack House on the Corner

Once we're hooked we come here looking for another fix.

Last summer there was an over-blown kerfuffle in the North American media over KFC's introduction of the Double Down sandwich (no buns, just chicken, bacon, etc) that the chain boasted had 610 calories and enough salt to do you for a day or two. The attention this sandwich got bothered me because the media was ignoring the larger picture: the fact that this item was hardly the worst thing on fast food menus.

Again this spring there was a flurry of media reports on the return of the KFC Double Down. This time it has a little less sodium. But since last summer's introduction of this obscene concoction, McDonald's has changed it's menu with marquee items that put the Double Down to shame.

McDonald's quietly changed their Angus burger from one version to three more nutritionally disastrous versions, two of which clock in at a startling 780 calories with up to 47 grams of fat. A Big Mac only has a 540 calories and 29 grams of fat. Many people assume Angus beef is healthier because it's more lean. That's not the case here.

McDonald's new Angus burgers

Big Macs used to be what we compared all unhealthy food to ("Don't eat movie popcorn, it's got X number of Big Macs in it!") But every new major fast food item these days seems to be worse than anything that came before it. So much for fast food chains responding to the obesity epidemic. (There's a myth, by the way, that McDonald's and other restaurants got rid of the "super-size" option. This is not the case!)

Where I live, breakfast biscuits are a new option for McDonald's breakfast sandwiches, introduced just a few months ago. Biscuits sounded harmless to me at first but I discovered that they are not. A bacon and egg sandwich on a biscuit instead of an English muffin adds 140 calories and almost twice the fat!

Before that McDonald's introduced the McGriddle which also had many more calories than their original English muffin breakfast sandwiches. It was all over the financial sections of newspapers that this product was a great success to the corporation's bottom line.

Fat sells. And they know it.

I keep coming across a business-related documentary on the history of McDonald's, airing on a cable news channel. In it we see the modern McDonald's headquarters where they've hired the top chefs available out of chef schools. They come up with all kinds of new things from gourmet salads to lobster and they spend a lot of time getting feedback from paid taste testers.

I laugh when I see these elite chefs talk about exciting and nutritious potential new products. The fact is they could offer good food but the corporation knows it's the high fat, high calorie food that sells best. Not only is that the preferred food in their restaurants, but more importantly, it's the food that gets people hooked on the physiological rewards that such food gives us. It keeps people coming back for more. And more...

McDonald's and other fast food restaurants are legalized crack houses catering to our fat addictions. Addictions created by the food they knowingly devise with that end in mind.

The first one is always free.