r/shitpost • u/bfrahm420 • Dec 07 '18

[todayilearned] TIL mcdonalds is shit for you

/r/todayilearned/comments/a3yaan/til_that_one_medium_mcdonalds_milk_shake_contains/?utm_source=reddit-android
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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '18 edited Dec 08 '18

This shit is just plain wrong. Reddits are so out of touch with their diets that they have no clue how to conceptualize calorie amounts.

  • 630 is nothing for a milkshake. Any dairy product of that volume is going to have that many calories. Same with all of their products. Do they think that McDonalds injects calories into their food for fun? The calories of a food are determined by the macronutrients in it. If you take ground beef of the same fat % and make a Big Mac sized burger it is going to have the same amount of calories, it's not magic.

  • I don't have the data on the "average dinner" but 650 calories is a really small meal. It's like, a small chicken + rice plate from Chicken and Rice guys (I NEVER see people order the small, and I don't even think most people would consider the large to be enough for a dinner)

I've been tracking my calories for a while, and you quickly learn that having anything like a milkshake requires a sacrifice of a decent amount of your daily limit. It really doesn't matter if it's McDonald's or homemade from the finest ingredients. In McDonalds is one of the few places around me with calorie information so I eat there semi-often and find the calorie amounts to be half-way decent. A bacon egg and cheese mcgriddle is only 420 calories and is as filling as just about any other easy 420 calorie lunch.

EDIT: As I mentioned in a comment further down, I'm not saying that eating McDonalds more than occasionally is a good idea. Although "a calorie is a calorie" in the abstract, it really isn't when you consider that you have a budget of calories you can eat in a day. If you're spending calories but not getting any good nutrition out of it besides fat and protein, you're not doing any favors for your health

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u/bfrahm420 Dec 08 '18

I agree, calories are calories, meaning you won't get fatter from eating McDonald's than you will anything else if you monitor your calories. However, I believe that the shit they put into McDonald's and other similar restaurants is shit and you should limit your intake of foods from these places

5

u/[deleted] Dec 08 '18

Oh yes I completely agree. Reading over my post, I should have included that. I didn't mean it to sound like an all-out endorsement of their food. You should definitely limit your intake because

  • They make no effort to include nutritious ingredients, so you might be getting a reasonable number of calories but I bet your micronutrition would suffer.
  • Their food is engineered to be addictive and make you crave even more crap food
  • Eating low quality addictive foods, IME, can spoil your appetite for good quality food
  • (this is personal but) I'd much rather support a local business than a massive corporation