Man with 36,000 Big Macs under his belt is charged with probably being unhealthy.
But he's not! No matter what your news article is about, slide in a jab at fast food — an untrue one, at that. Because it's popular to do so.
It seems the media can never resist a chance to attack fast food — even when their claim is false, and even when it has nothing to do with the current story. Readers will love you if you attack fast food, and loathe you if you point out it’s not that bad.
You can certainly say that fast food tastes terrible, or is often sloppily thrown together, or make any judgment call you want; everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But what you really shouldn’t do is repeat a falsehood, especially when you know it’s false and are repeating it for attention — just as The Guardian did here.
The story is about a new burger McDonald’s has introduced, which I’d never heard of: the Big Arch. For a fun story, they sought out the opinion of the world’s most experienced Big Mac eater — a guy in Wisconsin named Donald Gorske, 72, who has eaten nearly 36,000 of them, documenting them all, and holding the Guinness world record. He was not a fan of the Big Arch.
Gorske appears to be a man not only of a stylish hairdo, but also of a healthy body weight (at least from his photo): so why did The Guardian feel the need to insert this red herring into their article?
Gorske says he has managed to maintain his cholesterol, blood glucose and body weight at normal levels — despite ubiquitous expert warnings that regularly eating fast food packed with calories, sodium, sugar and fat could contribute to obesity and other health problems.
This smear has no relevance to the story at all. It’s in there merely to attack fast food, simply because that’s a jab that the scientifically illiterate general public loves. They want their organic kale, grown farm to table, and are deeply offended by any food product that comes from a megacorporation. Because reasons.
So The Guardian gave the people what they want: A deeply misleading implication that a Big Mac is “packed with calories, sodium, sugar and fat [and] could contribute to obesity and other health problems.” It is not.
In 2011 I did a Skeptoid episode called “Three Big Macs a Day” which turned out to be both popular (among the science minded) and controversial (among the ideologues). Because it turns out that Big Macs, even three of them a day, comprise a diet substantially healthier than the average diet, and by a huge margin.
Lots of people believe the Big Mac (or any food from McDonald’s, or from most any fast food place) is somehow magically unhealthy. Popular claims include:
The beef is full of “filler” (earthworms, sawdust, pink slime, even human flesh) — False. It is 100% USDA-certified beef.
The ketchup, etc., are loaded with extra sugar — False. While the ketchup is their own recipe, it is certified as high-quality by the USDA.
The bread in the buns is loaded with extra sugar — False. They’re made by the same high-volume contract bakeries that supply nearly all restaurants. The recipes for all are very similar, but McDonald’s recipe is actually slightly different for each burger to match each product’s flavor profile.
And so on. It’s just regular food like you get anywhere.
My episode found the following conclusions about a three Big Mac daily diet:
It totals only 1,610 calories — 390 less than the recommended total for an adult (2,000), and less than half of what the average American eats (3,864).
It is low carb. This diet delivers only 45% of the recommended daily limit.
It delivers a lot less sugar than most people eat. Three Big Macs contain only 26 grams of total sugars. There is no set recommended maximum for total sugars in the US, although the UK recommends no more than 90 grams. The average American eats about 94 grams of total sugars; 4x what you get from three Big Macs.
It delivers only 79% of the recommended cholesterol max. Good for your heart health too — or at least, probably a lot better than what you’re already eating.
More protein than you need. Three Big Macs give you 75 grams, adults are advised to get at least 50 grams.
Three Big Macs do exceed recommended maxes on three bad things, but are still well under what most people are eating now:
Sodium. Three Big Macs: 2.8 grams. Recommended: 2.3 grams. Average adult male: 4.2 grams!!!
Total fats. It's recommended to keep total fats to no more than 25-35% of all your calories; but 48% of the calories in Big Macs come from fats (in the beef), so our three Big Macs would give us more fat than the average person eats on an average day.
Saturated fats. It's recommended to keep it to less than 10% of your total daily calories; but 17% of the calories in a Big Mac are from saturated fats, quite a bit more than the 11% of their calories that the average person gets in this way.
So six beef patties deliver more percentage of fat than you want, even if the total is less; and that’s not great, but remember you’re still also well under on cholesterol and calories. If you still prefer to stay under on fats as well, eat two Big Macs instead of three, like Donald Gorske does. You’ll just need to make up the rest of the nutrients you’ll be missing out on with something else.
The basic reason for all this good news is that Big Macs are pretty small, as hamburgers go. Almost any hamburger in any sit-down restaurant is probably twice the weight of a Big Mac. I looked at a hamburger on a menu yesterday that said it was 1,900 calories. A Big Mac is 540 calories; just over a quarter of what this restaurant hamburger was serving. Who would have guessed that this fancy gourmet eatery is serving up food far less healthy than a Big Mac? That McDonald’s will kill us all has been drilled into our heads for decades by propaganda like raw food activist Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 faux-documentary Super Size Me. Spurlock knew what the public was hungry for (no pun intended).
I am not advocating that you should eat McDonald’s or anything else. I really don’t care what you eat. I do care, however, when people make up or pass along lies to scare people about perfectly normal things.
Folks, science — including food science — if your friend, not your enemy.
I have to end every episode on food science with a recommendation for my friend Craig’s book: Relax and Enjoy Your Food. It makes the controversial point that food items are neither magical superfoods that make you healthier than healthy, nor are they instant poison pills that kill everyone who eats them.
Good “food for thought”! 🤣
Two a daty...thats 18,000 days or 49 years. For real?