15 Shocking Truths About Fast Food
We all know that fast food is unhealthy; that’s nothing new.
We know it tastes good, it’s not that expensive and you don’t even have to make chaos in your own kitchen.
But it’s also very bad and you never know what you are buying.
Despite all of the many facts about the unhealthy nature of fast food, it’s amazing to know that the consumption of foods from fast food restaurants continues to grow year by year.
Here are fifteen incredibly shocking truths about the production of some of the world’s favorite fast foods.
1. Modified starches help producers save on real food
Any time you buy fruit juices, tomato sauce that is ready-made or fruit-flavored yogurt, you are getting a lot less of the actual fruit and vegetables than you think you are.
In order to save on manufacturing costs, modified starches, along with various food coloring and flavoring agents, are added to these foods to mask the lack of actual fruits and vegetables that are contained within each serving.
It looks right, it tastes right, but actually the content isn’t right.
That’s the tradeoff that you are required to make, but at least now you’re aware of it.
Of course, this is something that’s really hard to avoid because of the fast paced society that we live in.
People are sometimes forced to buy these types of foods because of their convenience alone and of course, buying fresh food and preparing it doesn’t not only take more time, it also costs more money.
But if you have the money and the time, buy fresh and prepare these types of foods on your own. It’s about the only way to avoid modified starches.
2. Taco Bell salads are no healthier than burritos
So, you’re trying to eat healthy and you’ve chosen to eat a salad at Taco Bell instead of a taco or burrito.
Did you know that these taco salads contain over 50 grams of fat? It would take 5 or more tacos or burritos to match the amount of fat found in their salads.
Another important thing to mention when we are talking about salads is the dressing that depending on the choice, can bring a Taco Bell salad to the levels of fat that quarter pounders with cheese have.
A dressing in disguise sort of speak.
This is also the case with most of the other products that are being marketed as something healthy and something that will actually help you lose weight but are in fact the very opposite.
Having a real salad with a side of chicken is a better option but if you’re craving Taco Bell at least have Taco Bell Chicken Fiesta Taco Salad (240 calories).
Just to put things in perspective 5 salads (240 calories) cover your recommended daily intake of calories.
Of course, the number one recommendation is to avoid Taco Bell entirely. Generally, there really is nothing healthy about eating any type of fast food, and Taco Bell is probably among the least healthy.
If you are having a craving for tacos, make them on your own or visit a Mexican restaurant that uses fresher ingredients and makes the tacos, burritos and salads in a much healthier fashion.
But if you can’t resist the craving for Taco Bell, at least follow the advice of getting a salad separately and simply eating your favorite wrap along with it.
3. There are insects in your peanut butter
I know it sounds horrible, but it’s the truth and peanut butter isn’t alone in this.
There are actually laws governing this section of the food industry, so don’t worry people, the government is here to protect you.
So let’s check out those laws, just to see if they actually exist.
According to the laws that are upheld by the Food and Drug Administration, 100 grams of peanut butter is allowed to include an average of 30 insect fragments.
In case you missed that last part of the sentence here it is again: allowed to include an average of 30 insect fragments.
In what kind of world are we living in when this is actually a law that’s supposed to prevent these things from happening?
How are they manufacturing those products if they cannot eliminate insect fragments from their products?
Just how are those insects finding their ways to their plants and what are the conditions in them?
Not only that, but also one rodent hair is allowed per 100 grams as well.
Scale these numbers across months and years and you will realize that we are the true definition of the omnivore.
This is simply one of those things that you are better off not knowing about. Will this make peanut butter unhealthy to consume?
Of course not – but it does say a lot about the ways in which modern society prepares food and it is a little scary.
Peanut butter generally is a very healthy snack, but should be eaten in moderation. It provides a lot of protein, but there are also a lot of calories in there as well.
How many come from the insects? Not sure.
4. Is there any chicken in chicken nuggets?
Chicken nuggets sound simple enough to make.
They are breaded pieces of chicken, right?
There are over 20 ingredients that go into making the “meat” and the “breading” of the chicken nuggets that you buy at any fast food chain restaurant.
Let’s be honest for a second here, we don’t want to say that there’s no chicken meat in chicken nuggets, because there is.
Tests have shown that chicken nuggets have at best 50 % of meat in them and the rest is fat, blood vessels, nerve, connective tissue and ground bone.
With wheat starch, dextrose and sodium phosphates in the mix, you are actually eating more of everything else that’s not chicken or bread.
Any one of those ingredients should be a cause for alarm, but all of them together seem just too overwhelming.
Once they managed to lower the standards of the industry when it comes to labeling and the allowed content, once they managed to push their foot in the door, we were done.
Just take these numbers and extrapolate them over a longer period of time and you will realize that your children will be eating something called chicken nuggets, but that something will be made up of basically everything else but chicken nuggets.
The obvious solution here is to stop buying these processed chicken nuggets and make them yourself. There are not many foods that are easier to prepare.
All you have to do is take some white meat and cut it up into small pieces and then bread and fry them. It’s a very easy recipe that anyone can conquer.
Team them up with some honey mustard sauce that you’ve made yourself and you are in for a treat that is much healthier than buying them from a fast food joint.
5. There’s silly putty in your deep fried food
The chemical called dimethylpolyiloxane is used to deep fry foods.
I know that this fact doesn’t mean much to you, so let’s learn a little more about dimethylpolyiloxane.
It sounds scary and long enough without us knowing its proper usage and the way it affects our bodies.
It not only helps to keep the frying oil from foaming, but it’s also used to create silly putty.
Let that fact sink in for a moment, the same way those fries are now sinking in your stomach.
Although you’re not drinking that slush that’s left after deep frying, it stills a little weird that you’re eating silly putty.
These are the things that we as a society allowed to happen, things that make absolutely no sense otherwise.
One little word helps to clarify all these bad choices and health risks: money!
People are willing to bend rules, use dangerous chemicals in food preparation and use any other means at their disposal just to make a little more profit.
Obviously, there is nothing healthy about fried food to begin with. It is one of the unhealthiest and fattening ways to prepare food that exists.
But it’s popular because it’s fast and incredibly easy to do. It is always better to prepare meat without all of the greasy oil.
If you can, buy some organic vegetable oil and try frying your food with that if you absolutely have to eat fried foods. Another good tip is to not reuse oil when frying and to salt after you fry.
6. Duck feathers in your burger buns
What makes your bun so chewy and delicious?
Even if you are not an expert on this subject, I think that you most definitely felt that something is up and wondered how come they have such tasty buns that make you eat more and more.
What could possibly be that secret ingredient that’s responsible for that perfect taste, you might ask.
The answer is: a combination of duck feathers and human hair in most cases.
Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Cysteine is an α-amino acid and a semi-essential amino acid, which means that it can be biosynthesized in humans.
Cysteine is the ingredient that makes those buns so yummy but is actually used in many other industries.
In a 1994 report released by five top cigarette companies, cysteine is one of the 599 additives to cigarettes. Like most cigarette additives, however, its use or purpose is unknown.
Some slightly healthier options include buying whole wheat buns or making your own bread for your burgers.
However, there are some great and creative work-arounds. Who said that you needed to eat your burgers with bread?
You can split a big, juicy tomato in two and stick the burger in between. Think about it – it’s incredibly tasty and adds a whole new element of juicy flavor to the dish.
And to top it all off, you’ll never have to worry about feathers again.
7. Sand in your ground meat
Sand is used when making ground meat so that the meat does not clump up during production.
Anything that can be manufactured at a large scale is possibly the source of contamination and weird stories that are going to be discredited in such a small time frame that you will be wondering how did they know what and how to discredit.
But wait, there’s more!
If you haven’t heard rumors about sand being in fast food, you must’ve been a victim of a marketing campaign constructed by Fast Food industry.
Nevertheless, due to the growing number of questions about sand found in burger meat, the Industry had to respond somehow.
In their carefully written announcement, you can read that there’s no sand in their meat, wait for it, wait for it, but silicone dioxide, a totally “harmless” food ingredient, that just “resembles” sand.
Whenever you see some report from the Fast Food industry outlets and it contains the words and phrases like: “totally harmless” or “totally harmless to humans” and “approved in certain amounts”, remember the food in question and try to avoid it altogether.
Just like with many things on this list, they are unhealthy to begin with. Ground meat is the worst kind of meat to eat if you want to eat something healthy, because you never really know how pure it is.
The sand might be the least of your concerns. Many reports show that the absolute worst parts of an animal are used to make ground meat.
It’s usually all of the leftover meat that is used to make ground meat once you get the nice chops, drumsticks, breasts and everything else off an animal.
8. Coke’s sugar overdose
Once you have consumed a can of coke, you are at the limit for the amount of sugar you should consume per day.
Now ask yourself have you ever been able to drink just one can of coke?
Have you ever wondered why you just keep chugging Coca Cola and other soft drinks although the same amount of water you couldn’t drink if your life depended on it?
The reason is quite simple they are made that way.
They are not something natural but a chemical compound created in a laboratory with only one goal in mind: boost sales!
In order to accomplish this goal, they made drinks tastier and with more sugar so that you cannot ever drink enough of them.
It’s actually not even the reverse process but a total perversion of everything that hundreds of generations learned the hard way.
Drinking things that local witch-doctors fashioned in their bathtubs and that can cure all known ailments.
Make some fresh ice tea instead, it’s much healthier and you can actually regulate the amount of sugar you want to intake.
As for the Coke’s amount, it roughly comes down to a roughly ten teaspoons of sugar, that’s about 40 grams per can.
Apart from bringing physiological changes, that are of course negative, there’s also the question of the psychological damage, as mood swings are often associated with intake of soft drinks and sugar.
We all know that hamburgers are made from cow meat, that’s pretty much common knowledge.
There is nothing wrong with cow meat, well, unless the cows are mad, which they are not, but the advent of the industrial production and never-ending quest for more money caused the following fact: One fast food hamburger contains meat from up to 100 different cows!
Yes, all grinded up into those delicious burgers we all love and eat.
These are the facts, ladies and gentleman, so we are wondering just how much of their production process they are keeping a secret and not letting anyone see or learn.
Not to mention the conditions in these meat factories, that are at best appalling.
If you put profit first and the consumer second, this is what you will get and it is our responsibility to force the lawmakers to make the necessary changes.
However, without lobbyists and huge amounts of money we are left and at the mercy of big corporations that are racing each other for profits, disregarding all guidelines when it comes to the health of the consumer. 
9. Hamburgers and Cows
We all know that hamburgers are made from cow meat, that’s pretty much common knowledge.
There is nothing wrong with cow meat, well, unless the cows are mad, which they are not, but the advent of the industrial production and never-ending quest for more money caused the following fact: One fast food hamburger contains meat from up to 100 different cows!
Yes, all grinded up into that delicious burgers we all love and eat.
These are the facts, ladies and gentleman, so we are wondering just how much of their production process they are keeping a secret and not letting anyone see or learn.
Not to mention the conditions in these meat factories, that are at best appalling.
If you put profit first and the consumer second, this is what you will get, and it is our responsibility force the lawmakers to make the necessary changes.
However, without lobbyists and huge amounts of money we are left and at the mercy of big corporations that are racing each other for profits, disregarding all guidelines when it comes to the health of the consumer.
As stated earlier when talking about ground meat, everyone knows that the worst parts of the animal are saved for the ground meat, so no matter what kind of burger you are eating, it is essentially made of the least tasty parts of the animal.
Burgers are easy to prepare and often delicious, but they tend to be delicious because of the extra trimmings that are put onto them, not because of the meat instead.
You’re better off with a steak, which you know comes from just one cow at a time.
10. Fountain soda machines
Fast food and fountain soda machines go hand in hand when it comes to restaurants and pretty much everywhere else.
There’s nothing better than a refreshing drink after a good meal, right?
Well, you might want to reconsider drinking from those soda machines ever again when you read that more than fifty percent of Fountain soda machines tested positive for fecal matter.
Not so yummy after all… In the past, we had to rely on our eyesight for evidence and reasoning, because we didn’t have science and scientific method.
But now we do.
We know that there are all kinds of germs and chemicals that are not visible by a human eye, and we know that some of them are extremely hazardous to human health.
Question everything and when it comes to things we eat and drink, you should be extra careful because those are the things that will determine your life span and the quality of your life.
We are prepared to let go of some of our health in order to save a few minutes or feel a passing joy, making us ideal targets for other organisms on Earth that are just biding their time.
You never know when you are eating at a fast food restaurant how much these people care about their machines and how well they clean them.
And drinking soda is a terrible idea to begin with, because it’s incredibly unhealthy. But if you don’t want to have to worry about the fecal matter, or at least not think about this fact, then buy a canned or bottled drink where available.
Or just carry around a bottle of water of your own.
11. Hash browns conundrum
Hash browns are healthier than regular burgers or anything else on the menu in the fast food joints, is the mantra that has been repeated throughout the last decade.
Many people bought this “fact”, a product of clever marketing teams at the largest fast food corporations not knowing that things are quite the opposite.
If you consider the portion size, you come to the conclusion that hash browns have more fat and calories than the average burger…
They are again trying to smuggle something unhealthy as healthy due to one fact that eventually becomes so distorted that you have to question its validity.
The problem never was with the hash browns ingredients, they are relatively healthy when eaten in small to medium quantities, but with the manufacturing process.
This is the one single thing that’s been causing problems ever since people banded in groups and food demand increased.
In order to make the quantities necessary to sustain city populations certain trade-offs had to be made.
Same goes for the Hash Browns, the ingredients are not unhealthy it’s the preparation and the way you mix those ingredients together that’s unhealthy and it creates unhealthy food.
Hash browns should be eaten with moderation, just like anything else. And if you really have to have potatoes with all of your meals, then switch it up as much as you can.
Baked potatoes are definitely healthier, because there is no processing involved, it’s a whole potato. Plus they are really easy to prepare, probably even easier than hash browns are.
But if you are not eating hash browns every day and for every meal, there really is not much cause for concern.
12. Strawberry milkshakes conundrum
We have another conundrum on our hands folks, this time involving this sugary atomic bomb that just explodes all over your body.
Not only does it contain excessive amounts of sugar but it also contains over 50 different chemicals.
Let us read that again: more than fifty different chemicals!
With this amount of chemicals, we wouldn’t be surprised if you turned into a pink Hulk after consuming this complex compound called strawberry milkshake…
Even if we somehow forgot about those chemicals, we would be still left with calories and sugar that are bad enough.
Leading to obesity and heart disease, they are so yummy and tasty that we find it very difficult not to indulge ourselves once or twice a month.
That’s all good, as long as you can stop yourself from eating milkshakes every week or every day, but some of us just don’t have the willpower to do so.
Don’t be surprised if in the near future we start seeing milkshakes labeled as any other soft drinks as hazardous to your health.
The solution hear is obvious – make your own milk shakes. It’s really easy to do, all you need is a blender and the right ingredients.
Get some milk and some strawberries, and make the shakes yourself.
People often complain about never having time to cook, but when it comes to milkshakes and things that can be made with a simple blender in two minutes, there really is no excuse for buying an unhealthy alternative when the good alternative is so easy to create.
13. Cows are really important
As you read in one of the previous pages, cow meat is THE MEAT when it comes to fast food industry and when there’s industry, there’s profit and where there’s profit there are ethical questions and malpractices that are used to increase them.
One of them is more gruesome then you think, endangering both the cows and humans: Cows in the United States are given a genetically engineered hormone called BGH in order to increase their milk production.
BGH is highly carcinogenic.
Bovine somatotropin or BGH, is a peptide hormone produced by cows’ pituitary gland.
Like other hormones, it is produced in small quantities and is used in regulating metabolic processes. Notice the phrase “small quantities” as it determines the amount of the BGH that’s safe for the cow, but when you’re forced with dropping profit margins that phrase slowly loses meaning.
Cows don’t have lawyers, unions or anyone to help them, so the food industry jumped at the opportunity to increase milk production with the help of one single chemical.
This revolution happened in the seventies and it’s still to this day being used in most parts of the world.
If you want to do something as an individual, then try to boycott the big companies and buy free range meat.
The conditions on such farms are much better and the animals are healthier, which means that their meat will be healthier to eat.
And if you no longer want to be part of the problem, simply become a vegetarian or vegan. It has been proven that this lifestyle can be a healthy one and that you do not need to eat meat in order to survive.
14. Alzheimer’s disease is directly linked to fast food
Karolinska Institutet conducted a study back in 2008, where mice were fed the ingredients found in fast food and the results were shocking.
The brains of the mice were showing preliminary stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Mice that were fed a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol for nine months developed a preliminary stage of the morbid irregularities that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.
This is not the only institute or an individual who have found the link between Alzheimer’s disease and fast food.
Suzanne M. de la Monte, MD, MPH, a physician-scientist at Rhode Island Hospital and professor of neuropathology, neurosurgery and neurology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University is one of the rare and brave doctors who are trying to warn the public about the dangers of fast food.
We will leave you with this fact and this advice: if you want to eat fast food, at least eat it in moderation and with careful selection.
Anyone who has a television or the Internet knows that fast food is not healthy. However, that doesn’t stop people from continuing to eat it.
Something convenience outweighs health for many people, and that is why there is an obesity epidemic worldwide. It seems as though fast food is here to stay.
Perhaps technology will find a way to make food fast and healthy at the same time, but until then, it really is best to stay away from it whenever you can.
15. Sodium dangers
Sodium is a soft, silver-white, highly reactive metal and is a member of the alkali metals.
So, what’s it doing in our food you might wonder and why it’s dangerous?
The safe upper limit for sodium consumption is between 1,500 milligrams and 2,300 milligrams per day, now try to guess the quantity of sodium in fast food products.
A Burger King double whopper contains over 1500 milligrams of sodium, enough for your entire daily intake.
Why is it dangerous?
High sodium levels make our kidneys go into overdrive, making them work much harder than they are used to and pushing the entire body to pick up the slack.
High blood pressure is directly caused by sodium and this is the reason why your heart might fail 10 or even 20 years before its time.
All these things are common knowledge and your doctor knows them, the problem is the timing.
You only learn and care about them when you are much older and the damage has already been done.
Avoiding sodium is actually pretty easy if you choose to. Everything you buy now has the ingredients listen on it, and you can check to see how much sodium each food product contains.
Compare similar products when shopping and buy the ones that contain less sodium. Thankfully, every company that makes food is required by law to list the ingredients and let you know exactly what is contained within that product.
It is up to you to have a look and make the right decisions when buying.
