Dissecting the Big Mac

#1

When root cause of problems are not clear, there is slim chance at creating a solution that works. I often see fast food chains take the blame for escalation of diabetes and obesity, while the government’s Food Pyramid and other atrocities go free of adequate scrutiny.

To that end, I embarked on a thought experiment surrounding the Big Mac - the world’s most popular fast food item. First, I wanted to dissect it completely, to see exactly what all the components were. This was followed by recreating a homemade meal, to see if it warrants the same negative reaction that the Big Mac seems to receive by dieticians and nutritionists. Lastly, I make a change to the homemade Big Mac reconstructed meal, to make it keto, so as to isolate which components needed the appropriate facelift to comply with low carb and high fat specifications.

So, here is what I started with

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The Big Mac hamburger was removed from its package

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I tried my best to separate its components. The cheese had melted, so it was the most difficult part to separate

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So, I started putting together a homemade plate of food, using same (as much as possible) ingredients. The cheese was the first part - I had to procure it from the grocery store

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I was not too worried about the ingredients. Certainly, I would prefer a cheddar, or other full dairy cheese, but I was not concerned with the list of ingredients, and the carbs was still quite low. The citrate in the list of ingredients also gave me the idea that I should take advantage of its gooey melting ability - I made a mental note of that to use for later

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So, the first thing I started to cook was a beef patty, seasoned with salt and pepper

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Then I noticed the nice fond the patty made, which got me thinking about how to make a gravy

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After removing the patty, I added one slice of the cheese slice, torn into pieces for a quick melt

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I also added a bit of water to make a cheesy gravy

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And this is what I got in the end

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I also had to recreate the “secret sauce”, and when I tasted it, I thought it should be made up of mayo, paprika, yellow mustard, pickle juice, salt

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This was my final plating. On the top, I added a kaiser white bread roll with sesame seeds that I procured at the grocery store. On the right, the patty with cheesy gravy, and two mini pickles. On the left, the “secret sauce” topped with some shredded iceberg lettuce. Basically, this was equivalent to the Big Mac.

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Isn’t it interesting how if a mother or father prepares this meal for their child, it is considered “real homemade food”, and otherwise if they instead buy their child a Big Mac it is “fast food” (i.e. junk)?

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Ok, to take it to the next level, I then had to think about what needs to be done to convert it into healthy keto meal. I removed the bun, and replaced it with a half avocado. I kept the sesame seeds :grinning:

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So, can we really blame MacDonalds (or other fast food chain) for “unhealthy” food? The component I removed from the homemade Big Mac plate was the white bread bun (which is featured as the main component of a “healthy” meal at the bottom of the food pyramid). How can Big Mac be blamed for that?

McDonalds
(James storie) #2

This is great!

(Richard Morris) #3

I love the fact you kept the sesame seeds. :hamburger:

Brilliant

(Mike Glasbrener) #4

The presentation with the avocado looks so much more tasty than that horrid thing in the box. Of source the killer fries and soft drink don’t help much either…

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #5

I think I read somewhere (and can’t find it right now) that the carb load of just the bun component of a Big Mac is around 40g. Everything else is about 6g of carbs.

(Mike Glasbrener) #6

I used to work there for a number of years as a kid. The buns used to have sugar in them. It helped carmelize the bun when it was toasted on big steel plattens. I’m sure my years there did not help my pancreas.

#7

There is a bit sugar in the regular grocery store sliced breads in North America, too. Even the “whole wheat” and “7-grain” and “whole grain” -type breads.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #8

I really don’t mind eating Maccas if I take the bun off the burger (and without fries and pop). Double cheeseburgers I think are about the best bang for you buck. With all the travel that I do globally, McD’s is the one place I can be sure the food is consistently safe to eat no matter where in the world I find it. They have really high food safe handling protocols and are probably about the best around when it comes to enforcing them.

#9

I agree. Every time I chat with electricians, plumbers, etc, who work in the city fixing breakdown problems that happen in the restaurants, all the horror stories they tell me are from restaurants that are as far as you can get from “fast food” type business. This is not to say that all non-fast food restaurants are bad…I just find it interesting how impressed the electricians and plumbers are of the cleaner, more orderly and much less offensive-smelling work spaces they witness at fast food joints.

I come from a family where all food was cooked at home. I NEVER EVER went to McDonalds as a kid, except once (on a school trip visiting a museum - the teachers brought us kids to McDonalds for lunch). And that’s it.

So, you would imagine that I would have grown up with a militant anti-fast food point of view. I don’t. When I see food, regardless where it comes from or who made it, I break it down to its components and analyze it for that.

I see a huge problem with misinformation and mud slinging going on. People can go to the grocery store and load up their grocery carts with boxed and packaged foods. It seems like the “normal” thing to do. Otherwise, if the same person goes to a fast food joint, and buys burgers for the family, it gets earmarked as poor eating habits.

Fast food and eating in restaurants is not a “new” tradition. The Ancient Romans would eat most of their meals in restaurants, as tenements in the city did not all have kitchens. It’s not difficult to imagine that - as electricity, sewers and potable water systems have provided us with the amenities needed for our modern kitchens in our homes. So, eating a quick bite at a restaurant was so common and everyday.

Here is Pompeii’s McDonald’s:

When I travel around the world these days, I see many societies today eat outside of the home on a regular basis, too.

So…this is why I stress that blaming fast food restaurants for diabetes and obesity does not get anywhere near the root cause of the problem.

If government-endorsed nutrition associations continue promoting “low fat” and “healthy whole grains” and “saturated fat is bad for you” and “eat as many fruits as you want” propaganda, our society has no chance at finding the right food supply chain dynamics to sustain a healthy society free of diabetes and obesity.

(Mike Glasbrener) #10

Mickie Ds as we called it does have very good standard wrt contamination and consistancy across all their stores. they’re quite anal about this. Also, their management gets excellent training. That said, I can not eat there any more. Probabably in part because the place is a mine feild. When I travel I look for Whole Foods. I can get what I want from the hot foods and salad bar. I can also get cheese, deli meats and carbonated water. Absent that a restaurant that has a menu I can deal with. It used to be a Cobb or Caesar salad. Now with Keto those are even hard to keep net carbs down. There’s a restaurant that I used to eat at and get a Cobb. Since converting to Keto I ate there once. I got a Cobb and could only eat half at lunch. The the other half as part of dinner. My weight took two days to recover from it. I fear there’s hidden sugar in it.

#11

Yeah…if chefs are schooled to “avoid fats”, then they have no choice but to use another food ingredient to make salad dressing. Fruits are “healthy” according to nutritionists…and what usually separates a fruit from a vegetable?===>sugar, of course. So, with that line of thought, adding sugar to a salad (vegetable-filled) dish should be harmless.

It’s an atrocious and vicious cycle of cognitive dissonance caused by faulty nutritionist “rules”.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #12

It certainly can be and it can be a nightmare to navigate. Probably because high carb/sugar foods tend to be higher profit margin items so they’re dotted all over the menu and make for large components of many menu items. But if you know the real obvious carb sources you can eliminate the bulk of them easily and even if the meal is still higher than you’d like to have when eating keto, so long as you treat it as an occasional food thing and not for every meal, you’re still coming out in front.

#13

Ah - ha! Another powerful statement that should also be pondered.

(1) A few things to think about: how is it that a highly processed food (takes lots of energy, manual labour, transport, etc) could be much cheaper? What in our society is “funding” the inputs of the manufacturing process to realize a cheap output?

(2) What would happen to a fast food chain it they replace the carbohydrate-loaded bun with an avocado? The “avocado-big-mac” would have more than 80% fat. How many nutritionists would endorse that?

By the way - I bought the kaiser white bread bun for 65 cents at the grocery store. I also bought the avocado for $1. I used half of it in the “keto-big-mac” plate. Money-wise - it was a equal.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #14

Oh goodness! I was at a large chain restaurant here in Edmonton a few weeks ago and they offered me their new “healthy” lunch salad that had lots of greens (yay), but also had brown sugar maple glazed walnuts, sugar syrup marinated dried cranberries, chunks of oranges and strawberries and was drizzled in a strawberry “sweet” vinegarette! Yah, no. Thanks.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #15

Look at fountain pop…they say it costs the restaurant around a penny per cup (probably exaggerating a there a bit, but still…). It’s not worth their time to pour the stuff, so they let you do it. It cost you a dollar or two. It’s practically liquid gold.

#16

Yep…sounds like a nutritionist-endorsed nightmare: loads of fruit (strawberries, oranges), replacing fat-laden salad dressing with fruit puree (strawberry coulis), and dried fruits (cranberries). And of course, they used “healthy” source of sugar (maple syrup) for the walnuts, and not that dangerous white sugar made from sugar cane syrup.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #17

Equal to your pocket. I’d be willing to wager that the store made a lot more profit on the Kaiser bun and sold probably 50:1 of them over the avocado.

#18

No difference in concept with the soft drinks people buy at the grocery store. Massive profit margins there, too.

#19

I used avocado as an example replacement. There are other foods that could take the place of avocado. And still manage a healthy profit. In fact, I get “free” fat from the butcher - they throw it in the garbage, so I get them to give it to me for free.

(A ham loving ham! - VA6KD) #20

That aisle give me the shivers these days just walking past it…and the breaky cereal aisle too.