I agree wit tangor. Unfortunately, too many people think a balanced diet is McDs for breakfast, Carls Jr. for lunch, and Burger King for dinner...

We moved to a new office about 2 1/2 years ago that has a vegetarian/Kosher pizza restaurant next door. I've never been enthralled by "vegetarian" food, but what they have is great. Besides some wonderful things they do with salmon and tilapia, everything else is completely meatless and Kosher. The supplier they use works miracles with meatless products- their veggie burgers are the best I've ever tried, the veggie "meat" balls are great, and the "veggeroni" tastes almost exactly like pepperoni (except with a lot less fat, sodium, and calories).

I suddenly realized the other day that I rarely eat red meat these days. And that's in spite of the fact that for the past 5 months I have been going to the gym regularly and have seriously upped my level of exercise.

The real problem is people can't read food labels and wouldn't know what they were looking at in most cases and only look at calories alone and not the big picture.

My hot spots are calories, fat, fiber and sodium (2400mg/day).

For starters, take a simple pickle spear, 5 calories, good diet food for you, right?

Sure if you don't mind the 350mg+ of sodium which is huge for a lousy pickle spear!

Cucumber good, pickle not so much.

Now consider that pickle spear is almost 1/6 your daily sodium.

Run to the pantry and check every can you have, they're all oozing in sodium, so are the bags of frozen stuff.

Add a medium McFry for 270mg sodium, just the single cheeseburger has 750mg sodium.

So here I merely snacked on a pickle spear, medium fry and single cheeseburger and it's pushing 1350mg of sodium, more than half your daily intake for the smallest portions!

Now you wonder where all the hypertension and edema comes from?

If you don't know what edema is, some forms of edema are from your body holding lots of water, usually as the result of way too much sodium, more than your body can process.

Most people eat many times the recommended sodium per day and their legs and ankles puff up real nice like.

Enjoy!

In that incident, the coffee thermostat was broken..

Hot coffee should pretty much be a given okay? Unless you specifically ask for it cold, which some do, it's going to be hot. Personally, I prefer it that way. Hot. If I'm in a huge hurry I've even been known to walk in the shop and get a few ice cubes out of the dispenser. This to cool it down so I can slam it faster.

It shouldn't matter if a thermostat was broken, although apparently it did. The presumption is, and should remain, that you have hot stuff in your hands. Tread carefully. Don't spill it but if you do be prepared to get burned.

My coffee at my own house comes out of the pot too hot to drink. I wait on it. It works well like that. And I'm not trying to be insensitive to the distinctions between "hot" and "really hot." They exist but they exist in the same way 50 foot trees share space with 40 foot trees. Fall out of either one and you're going to be hurt. Common sense dictates, hell it mandates, you should expect the same from both.

pickle spear

I love pickle spears.

I've been known to eat half a jar at one sitting.

Profit kills people. It's all about reducing the cost, manufacturing more per minute, having a control over market.

Whoever has someone else cooking food for her/him is in a bad position.

The smell of grease and burnt fat is off-putting enough from hundreds of metres away.

Getting sick when passing by. But this happens mostly to people that prepare their own meals at home from scratch.

It's an ordinary bio-chemistry kind of thing.

For the last 50 years of how many since we've been described as homo sapiens? Do you know how many years it takes for a living body to adjust to a certain condition? I don't but guess 100s of thousands or millions. You see, there is a big difference between health troubles like cancer and auto-immune disease and those that are contagious. The first are actually not a disease but rather a condition that one's body is in. It is evident that the lifestyle has been the biggest contributor to those like cancer, even Alzheimer and MS that are on the constant rise. Our bodies simply do not recognize stuff that is coming in. The result is that they start to degenerate.
Let's take smoking for example. I remember people in the area where I was raised having their own tobacco. They wold dry it, cut it, and smoke it. I'm pretty sure the worst thing in all that was the paper they used.
It also happened that a member of my family studied the cigarette manufacturing protocol. Man what they all put in! Plus, the industrial tobacco growing is certainly using fertilizers and pesticides. And then you light up all that. What do you think is worse, tobacco itself, or that add-on?

I wonder how many lives of good people McDonalds has saved because it is affordable?

I wish governments of corresponding countries did it. But they're too busy with letting their (private) financiers make money.

If the food didn't taste good - people wouldn't eat there.

How anyone who does not cook would know what is a good taste?

This is called "meat". Humans have been consuming it for a long time...

If you think about cow that has eaten food made from other dead animals or GM crop, you're terribly wrong.

Here is a short one that gives a bit of picture where it starts and how it rolls to your plate:
[globalresearch.ca...]

From the above, there is a link to an interesting short reading that is scary:
[regulations.gov...]

Interesting post about refined sugar ()first time I see this blog:
[runninggalinsights.blogspot.com...]

Just recently I came across interesting article in Well Being Journal I'm subscribed to: Puffed cereals are made by using high pressure and high temperature which changes the proteins in grains.
Isn't it terrible seeing people buying cereals and thinking about healthy food while they actually eat something their body does not really recognize. Do a search on puffed cereals or something like that.

My point is that as soon as you alter your fresh food you change it in the way that is against your body.
Am I proposing an idea of eating fresh meat? Not really, but things about food have changed the most in the last 50 or so years, more than ever.
Nothing is tested well enough and some stuff cannot be even if wanted as it takes number of years to figure things out.

Recently I was curious about something called Auxigro:
[en.wikipedia.org...]
One would expect bit more than two rows, ha?

Well, the thing that got me about this was that this thing is actually MSG, which was approved to be used on organic crops as well.
The way how I came across it was actually an old post on some forum where a lady commented how she would get sick when eating organic carrot. She was sensitive to MSG and then put 2 and 2 together and found that it was used on the carrot she was buying.
I got worried about my organic experience and then found that the thing has been pulled of the market apparently because bees stopped coming onto the fields where it was used. I'm not sure about authenticity of this but I'll make a point that the more you screw with the nature the more screwed you'll be.

Back to the main topic, because of making things easier, like driving through and picking your dinner, you put yourself into hazard.

I believe we need something like this:
[cittaslow.org...]
And this: [slowfood.com...]
Slow and quiet living.

The problem is that "Slow" is not on the agenda of those that are using brain detergents on us.

Run to the pantry and check every can you have, they're all oozing in sodium, so are the bags of frozen stuff.

Everything edible has sodium. The secret is not getting rid of sodium (your body needs it, too) but PORTION SIZE and EXERCISE. Balance that 2400/daily sodium within at least four food groups and be healthy. Meanwhile, pour off all the fluids in your canned veggies, resupply with fresh water to bring to temperature, and most of that "salt" is gone.

Folks failing to take responsibility for their own health irritates me. Attempting to blame a third party for their personal failure also irritates me.

@smallcompany... the incidence of cancer (as can be found in fossilized bone) is no greater than current. As far as everything else, perhaps it's not that these are on the rise, but that our diagnostic skills have increased.

Tangor I like the way you write. I've told you that before, if you'll recall.

I need to wake up though. Long night last night. I'm sipping a hot cup of coffee and I have the expectation that if I spill it, it's probably going to burn me.

Imagine that.

Back in a minute....

Wow, talk about the masses believing food myths.

High Sodium in your diet does not cause high blood pressure or increase your risk of heart attack.

Clinical medical studies prove this. In fact, the British Medical Journal in 1996 reported that previous claims about high sodium diets involved research fraud.

In fact, a 2008 study published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine reveals that people with the low salt diets are more apt to die from cardiovascular events.

Even after the researchers adjusted their statistics to account for the effect of cardiac risk factors like smoking and diabetes, the 25 percent of the population who ate the least salt were 80 percent more likely to die of cardiac disease than the 25 percent who ate the most salt.

Source: May 15, 2008, Journal of General Internal Medicine

Dr Hillel Cohen, lead author of the study and associate professor at Einstein, said: "Our findings do again raise questions about the usefulness or even safety of universal recommendations for lower salt diets for all individuals, regardless of their blood pressure status or other health characteristics."

High sodium chloride has been part of the human diet for thousands of years as it was used to prevent food spoilage in meat and fish.

So enjoy your pickle.

Don't let the fancy scientific names throw you off. These are food items, found in food "forever" and have been consumed by humans for nearly as equal a length of time.

Tangor, again without going over the top, this is not true of all of these things listed. Some of them in common use today have been discovered only in the last generation or two.

If you dig a little deeper and look at the problems that have been associated with some of them the picture looks quite different. Here's one I found quite quickly.

Calcium Propionate
Calcium propionate and the other propionates (280-283) occur naturally in many foods and dairy products like Swiss cheese. In small amounts they are not harmful but, as with other additives, the effects are dose related. Very few people will be affected by two slices of preserved bread but effects are cumulative, so can build up slowly over days or weeks, varying with the dose. This makes identification of the cause of symptoms extremely difficult. Like all additives, this preservative was not tested before approval for its effects on children's behaviour and learning ability.

How does it affect people?
Reactions can be anything from the usual range of food intolerance symptoms: migraine and headaches; gastro-intestinal symptoms including stomach aches, irritable bowel, diarrhoea, urinary urgency, bedwetting; eczema and other itchy skin rashes; nasal congestion (stuffy or runny nose); depression, unexplained tiredness, impairment of memory and concentration, speech delay; tachycardia (fast heart beat); growing pains, loud voice (no volume control); irritability, restlessness, inattention, difficulty settling to sleep, night waking and night terrors.

Scary stuff!

Now I am certainly not saying that McDonald's are the only users of this sort of stuff but no one can deny that they are one of the drivers of this particular market.

Folks failing to take responsibility for their own health irritates me. Attempting to blame a third party for their personal failure also irritates me.

But actually it was never my intention to get into this sort of argument about the contents of McDonald's food. My original point was that I found it surprising that people from affluent areas (smarter people?) should apparently be such heavy users.

High Sodium in your diet does not cause high blood pressure or increase your risk of heart attack

Don't make me look this stuff up okay? I'm not writing a research paper. I'm having a casual conversation with fellow webmasters, all of whom are incredibly intelligent and can hold their own anywhere. I think there's ample documentation that sodium intake can have adverse consequences on your health.

Stats can tell you anything you want to hear. You may not even be reading them correctly. It happens with the best of us.

If I intake 400% of my recommended allowance of anything, then go out and run five miles, or get on my bike and pedal around the block 10 or 11 times... I'm probably going to be all right. I used to do that.

That's not my lifestyle now though, not on any consistent basis anway. I wish I could say it was. I sit here at my desk usually because I have a business to run. I have fires to put out and this job does not go away. I make time to go fishing and I make time for my girl but other than that I'm pretty well locked into this Dell hardware.

If I went out and ran every day, or even if I just went outside and took a walk around the block, these concerns would not be an issue.

But I don't blame anyone for my inability to make more accurate choices regarding my health. It's all on me baby.

I'm a grown man and I will make my own choices. If they're not the correct ones, and often they aren't, I live with the consequences.

It's how we do things where I'm from...

But actually it was never my intention to get into this sort of argument about the contents of McDonald's food. My original point was that I found it surprising that people from affluent areas (smarter people?) should apparently be such heavy users.

Perhaps not, but got there REAL QUICK. And all kinds of hysterical commentary regarding food safety/health, as well as social engineered correctness. As for what's "in it" these "ingredients" have not been "recently discovered"...they have been there all along, found in normal food sources time immemorial. What HAS changed is that some have been discovered to have real benefit in food preservation, which is important in that as the number of humans increase, the reliable food supply must as well... and that requires the preservation of seasonal harvests to be used outside of those harvest times/areas and distributed around the world. Nothing scary about it, but it is very scary that some folks can't keep their hand from stuffing their mouth overmuch with too much. Salt won't kill you, for example, but too much of ANYTHING can... and that includes sex, drugs and rock n' roll. :)

People eat at McD's because of convenience and price... and the food doesn't taste like a cow patty baked in the hot sun, though it is not haute cuisine. Posh has nothing to do with it. Money, and time as money, does.

Folks failing to take responsibility for their own health irritates me

And I could NOT agree more.

Thank you. Let's just go ahead and put this thing where it should be.

Total agreement here......

I found it surprising that people from affluent areas (smarter people?) should apparently be such heavy users.

Affluence equates to intelligence now? What did I miss? When did that happen?

Money gives you access to more resources. It doesn't guarantee you'll use them though. It just provides availability. What you do then is on you.

I know Nam vets living on the street right now that are smarter than I am. By degree. And I'm no slouch. Make no mistake about that.

I always try to find the good in most situations and there it is, at least the chickens were happy.

No need to go look up who's quote that is above -- it's mine. I'm talking to myself right now.

The rascals deceived me. I just realized it is deceptive marketing "slight of hand". The ingredients say "Free Range Egg Yoke". Of course the picture that immediately came to mind was a chicken strutting merrily around the farm so I let down my guard. Now I just realized that it's the yolk that's in the ingredients, the less than ideal part of the egg, with all the cholesterol. The good stuff, the whites, is probably sitting on the shelf in a health food store in a carton. Buggers.

BeeDeeDubbleU -- where are you taking your grandchildren next week? I want to get a head start and look them up.

Affluence equates to intelligence now? What did I miss? When did that happen?

I totally agree with you. It smacks on snobbery and elitism to equivocate money with intelligence. I think we can agree this can be disproved rather quickly.

High Sodium in your diet does not cause high blood pressure or increase your risk of heart attack.

Clinical medical studies prove this. In fact, the British Medical Journal in 1996 reported that previous claims about high sodium diets involved research fraud.

Funny, doctors have been claiming too much sodium is a problem since I can remember as a kid when the docs were yelling at my grandmother to cut back on the salt and even my doc, a Standford PhD has mumbled at me about too much salt, so has my dermatologist.

Which brings me to a story about a buddy of mine, this just happened a few months ago, he was trying to diet and gaining weight like 1lb. per day. Turns out his body wasn't processing sodium right and he was taking on water like a camel. They tossed him in the hospital over the weekend and gave him some drugs and he started losing about a liter of water per hour.

A week later when I next saw him he had lost, ready for this? 50lbs!

Funny thing was all those years of being overweight, he just thought he was fat, and it turned out he was water logged instead.

Good old sodium! does a body good! :)

Needless to say he's on a real restrictive sodium diet.

p.s. one research involved in fraud doesn't invalidate reality

Funny thing was all those years of being overweight, he just thought he was fat, and it turned out he was water logged instead.

Sounds like a potassium deficient, not a sodium overload. Most water retention cases are potassium based. Salt can't do it all by itself. Other dietary deficiencies are generally included to cause water retention, then, too, there are kidney function deficits which might be genetic. It ain't "salt" that causes the problem... even responsibly drinking sea water won't kill you:

In Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl reported drinking seawater mixed with fresh in a 40/60% ratio. A few years later another adventurer named William Willis claimed to have drunk two cups of seawater and one cup of fresh per day for 70 days without ill effect when he lost part of his water supply.

Results may be different if the water is ingested anally rather than orally, since the likelihood of sodium being absorbed into the bloodstream differs between the small and large intestines, while water can be absorbed into the bloodstream from either intestine.

Don't recommend the latter method, but that will avoid any sodium absorption with subsequent reliance on the kidney to maintain the bloodstream salinity.

Perhaps this is more info than any of the McD slammers want to know, but there it is (US Army Medic way back when... and most of that medical knowledge has not changed).

I have no idea about "posh places" as most urban areas around the world have "posh places" next to ordinary places inhabited by those no more intelligent than the general run of critter called human and none of which are forced by law or even peer pressure to visit MacDonalds, but I do hope all of "they" have enough sense to manage their diet(s) in a healthy manner, and do the same for their offspring, too.

McD, or any other "fast food", will not make you obese. Sitting on your a$$ while stuffing well beyond ordinary nutritional requirements for age, weight and height factored by activity certainly will. Off the arse, kiddies. Walk thirty (30) minutes a day, or ride a bike, or have sex. This will keep you healthy... won't do much for wealthy, but it might be wise.

Affluence equates to intelligence now? What did I miss? When did that happen?

You are misquoting me. I actually said "My original point was that I found it surprising that people from affluent areas (smarter people?)" and note the use of the question mark.

You used the word "intelligence". When did smart equate to intelligence? When did that happen?

As a generalisation affluent areas tend to be populated by people who are smart enough to be able to afford to live there. There are plenty of intelligent people who eat too many McDonald's but smart people don't. (IMO of course.)

tell me where you eat beedeedubbleu, and i will avoid it. im probably too dumb to get in anyway. probably because i eat too many mcdonalds.

I think you just like to argue BDW. I'm certainly not against that either. This has been, at times, a somewhat entertaining subject but I'm starting to wonder why I'm still in this topic, or have participated this long.

It is what it is brother. It's not what somebody else makes of it. It's what you do with it.

We can agree to disagree. I have no problem with that. Believe it or not, I like the fact that you put other opinions out there, especially opinions contrary to my own. I don't get mad if I'm proven wrong. I get educated and it's a lifelong process, this education thing. In the last few days I've learned things about McDonalds that I didn't know before. Not much but a bit. I still don't plan to go there to eat, the occasional bag of fries notwithstanding. Or the milkshake. And I actually do like their coffee. The thing with me has always been that they're fast. In the arena of fast food they're even faster than most and I used to be on the go alot so it was a good fit. Their marketing campaigns had not convinced me, nor will they ever. Their availability and their accessibility did though. Stay away from their peak times and you can be in and out of the drive through in minutes.

I think you just like to argue BDW.

Yes, I do actually :) but like most people I don't like being misquoted. ;)

but like most people I don't like being misquoted.

I didn't misquote you. I interpreted your own words and perhaps I did that wrongly. If so I apologize.

Let's get technically correct here though. Misquoting is putting words in someone's mouth. I didn't do that.

I found it surprising that people from affluent areas (smarter people?) should apparently be such heavy users.

And I put an interpretation on that. I also find it surprising that people from affluent areas, given their probable income status and ability to access more information sources than less than affluent people, would make choices like eating at McDonalds.

The proximity of the terms "affluent areas" and "smarter people" in the same sentence threw me off okay?

Money doesn't make you smart. Being "affluent" can result from a throw of the dice. I'm hoping you'll agree on this.

WARNING:

The ability to read minds is recommended before responding in this thread. :)

Misquoting is putting words in someone's mouth.

That would not be my definition but whatever ...

Money doesn't make you smart.

No but being smart can make you money. ;)

Sounds like we're about done here. Do I hear a motion to close the thread?

I did not misquote you BDW. To misquote means to attribute words to someone they didn't say. They said it. They did it. To quote is to give an exact representation of an authors words. To misquote means to change those words, yet still attribute to the same author. I didn't do that, nor would I have. Ever. I was simply trying, and apparently failing, to understand what in the world you were saying.

Do I hear a motion to close the thread?

Seconded.

Pretty interesting thread. It is such a charged topic, there is no way we are all going to come into agreement about it.

However, It did something pretty impressive - got me to think more about what I eat on a daily basis. I am sure that is true for a lot of the people in the thread. That's a win-win. Thanks for starting it BeeDeeDubbleU.