Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

Trans fats are more or less banned in the United States.

The burger patties at McDonald's are real actual 100% beef.

It's not particularly good food, especially if it is served slower than in their test kitchen, but come on.

  Trans fats are more or less banned in the United States

Not at all. They remain common in packaged food, especially in the form of artificially hydrogenated oils.

Even butter has some naturally occurring transfat.

There's (almost?) no one using partially hydrogenated oils anymore so the story with packaged goods is about the same as butter, in products using fully hydrogenated oils there's a small amount that would be difficult to remove.

The granola bars I eat switched to unprocessed vegetable oil and upgraded their packaging (better oxygen barrier). A lot of products did that.

The burger is not just beef. Everythig in there is processed, artificially sweetened, and rich in preservatives. McDonald's is not healthy, don't be ridiculous.

Isn't the bun made with corn syrup or something like that?

Why would they use an artificial sweetener when part of the reason the sugar is there is to help keep the bread moist?

I do agree that fast food isn't especially healthy, but the biggest issue is that people select meals that are much too large (especially if they get a sugar drink). The menus usually do have options that provide a reasonable number of calories (and cost less), so it is a choice.

There is a logical reason why I suspect artificial sweeteners are being put in many products now with as little fanfare as possible. Sucralose is made from sugar, but like other artificial sweeteners is far sweeter[1] than sugar, by around 3 orders of magnitude. I'm not sure about prices on an industrial scale, but moderately large quantities of sucralose without fillers seem to be about $50/lb, and sugar seems to be about $0.44/lb in 50 lb quantities. Thus, sucralose is around 110 times more expensive, but 300-1000 times more potent. The economic logic of treating sugar with chlorine and putting it in everything seems inescapable, as long as the public doesn't become sensitized.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose

Edit: I don't know whether or not McDonald's in particular is using sucralose. I'm suggesting that it's a general trend, probably helped by the general public's distaste for things like aspartame, calories, HFCS, and so on.

There's literal pennies of sugar in the typical product. They aren't pushing sucralose to get the extra bit of margin, they are responding to the large number of people that want lower calorie sweets.

I don't think the latter factor, which I mentioned, obviates the issue of cost. The cost of any ingredient is going to be "literally pennies" but that isn't an argument that it doesn't matter to the manufacturer nor that they don't try to optimize it.

the burger isn't especially unhealthy either. The burger patty itself is just beef. They don't add sugar or anything else to it. It's delivered frozen to the store so there are no preservatives. The buns are delivered a couple of times a week from the bakery so there are no preservatives in them either. A burger at McDonalds is really no worse than the burger you'd make at home, assuming you would buy typical grocery store ground beef and hamburger buns. The cheese is pretty much the same sliced American cheese you would get at the supermarket. The ketchup is from Heinz, or Hunts.

The deep fried stuff I would avoid. The french fries, fish, chicken, it's all cooked in vegetable oil. Years ago they used beef lard, until they were pressured into switching. Now we know that cooking in vegetable oil is pretty much worse in every way but they haven't changed back.

I'm sure it has a lot of cooties, too.

Most people who look down on McDonalds would have no problem ordering a beer with their burger at a bar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com