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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000

I have a theory that corporate food companies slowly remove anything of value in their food. In the next 100 years, McDonalds and KFC will be serving us nothing but fructose-infused sawdust with varying levels of oils and wax to hold it all together.

It's like that old story about the airline MBAs who remove an olive from their onboard drinks every year to save $40,000 - eventually there are no olives left in the drinks!

Pepper is expensive, they probably saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating that ingredient.

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I have a theory, backed by evidence, that supports the exact opposite. Things like McDonalds and others adding expanding the healthy options in their menus, listing calories/ingredients more visibly, switching from frozen to fresh ground beef in their burgers.

Isn't science (postulating and then proving/disproving theories) fun?!

(Oh, and as an aside: one dude's story about how he personally thinks that a sense memory from 30 years ago is not the same as a more recent sense memory is definitely something to investigate. Real hot lead right there.)

None of the "health" benefits you listed have any objective benefit to health. How does listing a big mac meal at 1200 calories suddenly make it more healthy? Eating non-frozen beef does't magically reduce the risk of colorectal cancer, it's still red meat. And a handful of iceberg lettuce covered in fatty, sugary dressing (I think McDonald's calls this a salad?) doesn't magically make me lose weight.

It sounds like you're getting wrapped up in the marketing of corporate food and confusing it for valid science (I'm not saying my comment or the parent comment is valid science, just that what we're doing distinctly isn't science, so don't throw your stones in a glass house).

Providing calorie counts lets people make a more informed decision about how much food they are consuming. It has a small but measurable impact on calories consumed.

McDonalds salads come with the dressing on the side in a separate container so you can determine how healthy or unhealthy the salad is...

McDonalds has also embraced converting their supply chain to higher-quality sources of chicken and beef, though due to the scale involved the conversion is measured in years and not weeks or months.

McDonalds is never going to be healthy. But they are making an effort to be healthier.

Right, so I think we should make a distinction between "healthy choices" and "eating healthy food".

I'll agree with you that McDonald's is providing healthy choices. But just because the choices are there, doesn't mean the food is healthier - iceberg lettuce and hamburger buns are still empty calories.

High quality chicken/beef does not mean it's more healthier. Quality does not correlate to health. That'd be like saying a high quality cigarette is better for your health than a low quality one.

Which is why eating in fast food joints is playing russian roulette with your diet. You literally have no idea of what goes into the food. What they call "gravy", a mixture of multi-syllable chemicals, is far removed from what you can make in your own kitchen using simple, understood, ingredients. Pepper is a good example. As you said, it's expensive so the found some pepper-ish substitute at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the taste.

> Which is why eating in fast food joints is playing russian roulette with your diet. You literally have no idea of what goes into the food.

Aren't they mandated to print truthful nutrition information?

TicTacs are advertised as having 0g of sugar. Do you want to know what TicTacs are made out of? Sugar. It's pure sugar formed into a small tablet shape.

Yes, they are mandated to print nutrition information. So they print exactly what they are asked to print. No more. No less. If the mandate says "foods with less than 999mg of sugar may print as 0g sugar" then they will follow that to the letter.

Fast Google search gives done additional details:

> Tic Tac® mints do contain sugar as listed in the ingredient statement. However, since the amount of sugar per serving (1 mint) is less than 0.5 grams, FDA labeling requirements permit the Nutrition Facts to state that there are 0 grams of sugar per serving.

So? It seems that they're honestly reporting exactly what's required from them and exactly what you need to balance your diet.

I got the details wrong, but my point was that nutritional information isn't always "truthful".

Yes, they're true to the labeling requirement, but they are not true to reality - there IS sugar in there. Get a person with diabetes to eat a bucketful and then try to tell me there is 0g of sugar in them.

Why would you eat a bucketful of Tic Tacs? A person with diabetes would have no problem eating a single Tic Tac, which is exactly what these markings are for.

This is total mince.

Here's a tool, right on the McDonald's website, that has a full breakdown of the ingredients in everything they sell: https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/good-to-know/nutrition-ca...

Here's an ingredient list for KFC: https://www.kfc.ca/en/assets/pdf/IngredientListingApril2017....

Argue about the quality of the food if you want, but there's no point in making shit up.

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