How the fast food of today differs in quality and safety compared to the exact same products made by the same companies just a few decades ago when we were kids.
I grew up eating a lot of fast food. My Mom didn’t enjoy cooking and so grabbing a quick meal from McDonald’s, KFC, Maryland Fried Chicken (remember that one?), Dog n Suds, A&W, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, or Taco Bell was a regular occurrence for me and my siblings.
On average, I probably ate fast food at least three times a week growing up.
If I ate so much junky processed food growing up and still managed to end up a relatively healthy adult, why on earth don’t I buy my kids fast food even once in a while?
Am I a crazy, over the top, helicopter Mom because my kids have never eaten fast food at McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, KFC (etc, etc)?
You might be asking yourself a similar question.
If you ate a lot of fast food growing up and you’re still here, why shouldn’t you let your kids eat it too?
Isn’t the fact that you’re still standing proof that this stuff isn’t that bad?
Fast Food Has Changed
The answer is that the fast food of today is not the same fast food we ate during our childhoods. Not even close.
The packaging may be the same, the buildings (and the smells) are the same, the scary Ronald McDonald clown is still the same, but the food is not.
It’s waaaaay worse. So much worse, in fact, that it really no longer qualifies as food.
You see, the fast food we ate way back when was actually food.
It was just prepared fast and served up quickly.
The fast food of today is still prepared fast and served up quickly but it is no longer food.
Here are the four major changes I’ve identified.
French Fries
Most people don’t realize that McDonald’s used nutritious beef tallow, a healthy fat, to fry its french fries until the sea change in the restaurant industry some 40 years ago in favor of cheaper, partially hydrogenated (trans)fats.
People caught on to the transfat scam in the late 1990s forcing fast food restaurants to slowly change over to fats that were not partially hydrogenated.
But are these “transfat-free” oils any healthier? No, they are not.
In fact, they may be worse. Fast food french fries today are typically fried in genetically modified soy oil that has been processed via interesterification.
Kids of today are eating frankenfries with their Happy Meals, not the nutrient-loaded beef tallow fries of my fast food eating youth.
Soda
I drank quite a bit of soda growing up.
However, the soda from my youth did not contain the belly fat and inflammation triggering high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) of today.
Sodas from my childhood were made with cane sugar, not great but at least it was real.
Today’s soda is not only made with HFCS, it is genetically modified from GMO corn!
If you are a parent in North America who buys natural soda instead, know that if the label says “sugar”, it contains at least some genetically modified beet sugar.
You must get old-fashioned sodas made with cane sugar and specified as such on the label to be sure you are getting a GMO-free product.
Chicken, Beef and Eggs
The chickens and cattle of today are fattened with genetically modified corn and soy feed.
GMOs didn’t exist when I was a kid and the meat I ate was never from animals consuming it.
What are the long-term effects of humans eating meat from GMO-fed animals? We really don’t know.
We do know is that the isoflavones (plant estrogens, aka phytoestrogens) from the GMO feed get into the meat and eggs of soy-fed animals.
This is called “second-hand soy”.
What do these residual plant hormones do to people who consume them? Good question, but given that a soy-fed chicken develops weeks earlier than a non-soy fed chicken and tends to be much fatter, consumption of these isoflavone-laced foods may potentially contribute to childhood obesity problems and early or abnormal sexual development.
Today, as many as 10 in 100 white girls, 15 in 100 Hispanic girls, and 25 in 100 African American girls are experiencing breast development as early as 7 years old!
In boys, estrogen mimickers can increase the chances for ADHD, urogenital abnormalities, prostate problems, and lower semen quality as adults. It also puts them at risk for low testosterone (low T) for life, which carries a boatload of health risks.
As you can see, the chicken, beef, and eggs from fast food restaurants today is of far worse quality than what I ate as a kid. While not particularly healthy, at least it didn’t have the potential to screw up my hormones for life.
Milk, Cheese and Ice Cream
The cheese, milk, ice cream, and other dairy products served in fast food restaurants today come from confinement cows eating genetically modified corn and soy and treated with the recombinant growth hormone rBGH.
This is a genetically engineered hormone injected into lactating cows so that they produce more milk. It was approved by the FDA in 1993.
According to the American Cancer Society, “milk from rBGH-treated cows has higher levels of IGF-1, a hormone that normally helps some types of cells to grow”.
While more study needs to be done, current research has found that IGF-1 level in humans is positively associated with the risk of breast and prostate cancers. (source)
Thus, cheese, milk, and ice cream at fast food restaurants today are not the same as what we ate as kids.
It certainly didn’t potentially increase the risk of chronic disease because the animals were shot up with genetically engineered hormones and eating GMO feed.
Fast Food is FAR Unhealthier Today than When You Were a Kid
As you can see, the fast food and processed foods of today are far worse than what many of us adults consumed as children.
The downhill slide has occurred slowly, so slowly in fact, that it has escaped the notice of the general public.
If you would like your children to be excluded from this vast experiment being conducted by the industrial food system with millions of unwitting participants, I would suggest finding restaurants in your area that serve fast food made the way it was prior to 1980.
We have a place like this where I live that I am happy to take my children to where we can enjoy a burger and fries the way I ate it as a kid. More and more places like this are popping up all over the country.
It is not necessary to raise your child in a bubble. What is necessary is to teach your child that not all fast food is the same and how to wisely discern the good from the bad.
References
Soy-ling of America: Second Hand Soy from Animal Feeds
I buy many whole food items from an online food coop who reuses various donated boxes to pack items in. One of the boxes I got this month was a French fry box from a distributer who produces McDonald’s “famous” French fries: there was close to 20 ingredients listed on the box, and potatoes were about the only “food” item!! (Yes, I know this is not “new news”, but to actually see it on the box they came in was still shocking to me!!) I showed it to a family member who is skeptical at best of the way we eat, and he has since sworn off fast food-if there are that many ingredients in French fries, what is in everything else? Sometimes I guess it takes actually seeing what is in your food to make you think twice about what you are consuming.
I have 3 children, the oldest is 4 and have never had any type of fast food and under my care, never will!
I once overheard a kid who looked to be about ten years old say to a friend, “My grades got better when I gave up McDonalds!”
This is a great description of the difference in fast food, then and now. In addition to the phony,GMO riddled food, fast food is full of chemicals. Chemicals that not only enhance flavor, but make you crave the product.
I have a friend who swears that it was harder to give up fast food chicken than to stop smoking. I believe him.
Great Post!
Eh, everyone always thinks I’m a raging radical for refusing fast food. Sad really that industrial food has become such the norm. Theres far more issues with fast food crap then simply weight gain, which is really only the tip of the ice berg.
I couldn’t agree more, the other problem is financial. The junk food industry creates so many health issues for people and in my country the taxpayers foot the bill. I think the Australian government should be compensated by these big junk food companies.
I know it’s all driven by the almighty dollar, but why are these people doing this to us 🙁
I ask myself that, and it always comes down to money and power. Cheap ingredients = more money. No one stops them because the powerful people don’t care. I believe there are evil people on this earth who want to see people dumbed down and incapacitated with chronic health and weak from hormone issues so they can control us. Heck, kill the bees so they can control our food and dole out whatever they want to us. Shove a big mac in our hands to weaken the body, sit us in front of a violent video game to weaken the mind. The devil is loose on the earth. That’s what I think.
I can agree with your first two sentences. Maybe even the third. Beyond that you are getting into conspiracy theories that will drive you and everyone around you crazy. They used to lock people up for thinking everyone was out to get them! And yes, I do understand that there are a few truly evil people in this world, but not most people. I am going to take care of my family, share my knowledge with everyone I can (Sarah has created an amazing forum for that), and vote with my food choices. In addition to that I will pray for the innocent, the busy, the misinformed, the greedy, and the disinterested. But I cannot and will not make my life miserable looking over my shoulder all the time for the boogeyman – whatever label you give him.
No one will stop them until the CUSTOMERS care–and say so with their wallets. We are gradually winning the HFCS battle, for example. Soda consumption is WAY down. The Johnsonville brats sold at Costco no longer have MSG (the grocery store ones I have seen lately still do. That Costco has better than average standards for ingredients at least some of the time is something I have noticed on several products). It’s a battle that can only be won slowly, via education.
Just a little ‘heads up’… the link to the ‘good’ soda is Virgil’s. Natural… yes. Healthy… no. At 42 carbs and no other real valuable nutrient this is a blood sugar nightmare!
Excellent post! I will share on fb, as it is a concise and accessible explanation of why this type of food is so, so dangerous to our health. Thanks, as always!
I used to love Mickey D’s as a kid and we went there quite often. (Luckily my family also valued home cooking and so many things were made from scratch- I knew how to cook pretty well from a young age.) Luckily my now 3 yo has only once been to a fast food place. When we moved cross country, I planned a stop for a McDonald’s with a playground for breakfast. She had oatmeal and some smoothie (not great but not as terrible) while my husband and I *MAY* have been bad and gotten sausage biscuits and pancakes lol! Ironically I found local pasture raised pork sausage at the Whole Foods here that is flavored just like my old fast food fav! Chipotle and other burrito joints have been pretty good for getting decent food as have half price happy hour appetizers at full service restaurants. Now that we’re no longer in a huge city, we actually don’t go out as much and since the climate is so farmer friendly, we’re eating way more real food than ever! I used to be happy just to find organic meat or dairy now I have farms within a half an hour I can drive to and get raw milk, pasture raised eggs and meat- all almost a easily as going to a grocery store! Learn to cook and stock some easy go to meals on hand at home and fast food quickly becomes more of a hassle than just staying home and throwing something together.
Well, we do not go to McDonalds often, very rarely. And I’m not proud of the times I have gone with my children. That aside, the times that I have had fries from there in the last while taste very weird if you eat them without ketchup! I tried that a while ago, because I wanted to avoid the added sugar from the ketchup. You cannot eat their fries without, as you will be left with the off tasting cheap oil in your mouth. Disgusting! I bet most people wouldn’t even notice as the ketchup disguises the off flavours. Brutal. Never mind how gross you feel after eating a meal like that. Not worth the convenience. I just wantd to share that about the fries, the taste just tells you it’s wrong for your body.
Yes, the fries at McDonald’s used to be so good when I was a kid when they were cooked in beef tallow. Because they cook them in rancid artery clogging vegetable oils now, they have to add loads of MSG in there to get the beef flavor that was naturally and nutritiously present when potatoes are cooked in tallow!
I haven’t tasted McDonald’s fries in over 10 years so couldn’t even tell you how they compare now but I will take your word for it! 🙂
I agree with you on the oil issue, when I go to Maccas for a coffee all I can smell is the oil, revolting! Great coffee in Mccafe but.
What do you think about Hansens soda and Whole Foods soda that say they are made with cane sugar? Are these like the old fashion ones you are talking about?
I don’t shop at Whole Foods so can’t speak to that one. Hansens soda is confusing as some of their sodas say cane sugar and others just say sugar (meaning its GMO). I have confirmed that via email exchange with the company.