Our lives are busy, and McDonald's can be a perfect solution for mealtimes. But, it's
also easy to fall into a daily habit of swinging through the drive-thru for an Egg McMuffin
and a coffee every morning, or a Big Mac on your lunch break. Are there consequences?
This is worth a bit of a disclaimer: It is possible to eat a somewhat healthy meal at
McDonald's. Nutritionists talked to Shape about some of the better options there, and
they said some do exist. For starters, ordering a hamburger without the bun, and getting a
side salad to put it on with a light dressing is a good option, they say. The oatmeal's
pretty good, and some of the salads at McDonald's can be decent, as long as you don't mind balsamic
dressing or just a dash of the good, but high-calorie stuff.
But it's safe to say that if you want to go super healthy at McDonald's, you're also super
limited. And as an everyday option, well, we all know that's not going to happen, right?
Even if you start with the best of intentions, it's just a matter of time before you splurge
on a Big Mac, fries, and Coke, and it's all downhill from there.
So, we're not going to be talking about what might happen if you stick to the handful of
healthy things out there. We're talking about the real world...and what happens when fry
containers and burger wrappers start to build up in the back seat of your car. And strangely,
"healthy" and "unhealthy" might not be too far apart when it comes to the impact McDonald's
may have on your body.
As unlikely as it sounds, there are people who have taken on eating at McDonald's every
day as a sort of challenge, and proven that it's possible to lose weight.
In 2014, the Huffington Post reported that high school biology teacher John Cisna turned
himself into a guinea pig for his students. They designed a menu where he would eat McDonald's
for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 90 days. At first, the menu was pretty healthy, but
by the end, he was including things like Double Cheeseburgers. He stipulated that the students
had to design his menu based on federal nutritional guidelines, and he added exercise to his schedule.
By the end of 3 months, he'd lost 37 pounds. But here's the thing: that all comes with
a massive caveat.
Business Insider says that McDonald's is still a horrible plan for getting healthy. As they
put it: "Health is about more than weight."
While the pounds might come off, there are other things going on in a body that's getting
nothing but McDonald's. That body isn't getting nearly the amount of other things it needs,
things like fresh fruits and vegetables that help control blood pressure and prevent heart
attacks and strokes. Skipping those can even make a person more prone to degenerative conditions
like cataracts and vision loss.
It's also likely that along with the weight loss will come vitamin deficiencies, and that's
going to impact things like bone health and your immune system. Wrap that up with the
double whammy of a diet high in saturated fats and sodium, and even if you end up losing
weight, you're still likely to suffer from some of the other not-so-positive effects.
The more we learn about the little ecosystem of bacteria in our digestive tracts, the more
we realize how important it is. According to Healthline, a balanced gut microbiome is
crucial for things like managing weight and preventing conditions like irritable bowel
syndrome. Your gut microbiome also impacts blood sugar levels, and helps the body absorb
crucial vitamins and nutrients.
So, when a father-and-son research team found that eating McDonald's every day for just
10 days destroyed the gut microbiome, it was a big deal.
Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London recruited his son,
Tom, a University of Aberystwyth genetics student, for an experiment. Tom would spend
10 days eating either McDonald's Chicken Nuggets or a Big Mac, along with fries and a Coke.
They also say that after just three days, he started to feel... off. And, his skin started
turning a little grayish.
By the eighth day, Tom wrote for The Telegraph, friends were getting concerned. He stuck it
out, though, and along the way, he collected regular stool samples for testing in several
labs. At the end of the 10 days, he found he had destroyed his gut bacteria. While he'd
originally had 3,500 different species of microbes in his system, the McDonald's diet
killed 1,400 of them. And that could cause a domino effect that impacts all those other
parts of your body.
When Tom Spector spent 10 days eating nothing but McDonald's, for science, he wrote for
The Telegraph that things got tough around the third day and really, really hard by about
day six. After eating, he would feel so sick that he'd have to sit down. And the tiredness
and lethargy, the sort of feeling we associate with a post-Thanksgiving snoozefest, continued
throughout the day, but at the same time, he couldn't sleep well.
Angus Stewart of Edith Cowan University says that there's definitely something food-related
going on here. He says that research indicates that it's foods with "an imbalance of nutrients"
that will make us feel most sleepy after eating them, particularly, foods that are high in
carbohydrates and fats, but low in other things. Pretty much describes McDonald's, doesn't
it?
Stewart says that when we eat a meal high in carbs, that signals our bodies to release
an extra dose of insulin. In turn, that allows an amino acid called tryptophan, the same
thing you've heard mentioned in conjunction with that Thanksgiving turkey, to enter the
brain. Tryptophan goes on to be converted into serotonin, and that's what makes us feel
sleepy. So, that fry-and-bun-heavy McDonald's meal is going to make you just as chronically
sleepy as turkey day...without all the good stuff.
According to the American Heart Association, you should aim for limiting the sodium in
your daily diet to no more than 1,500 milligrams. Go over that, and you're at risk for all sorts
of things like heart failure, high blood pressure, stroke, kidney disease, and stomach cancer.
And going to McDonald's every day is going to send your sodium through the roof.
Let's talk about some of the most popular items on the menu, and how much sodium we're
talking about eating on a daily basis. A Big Mac, for example, has 1,320 milligrams of
sodium, and if you grab just a medium fry with that, that's another 260 milligrams.
You're over your limit! Think you'll do better ordering a salad? Their Bacon Ranch Salad
with Buttermilk Crispy Chicken actually has more sodium: 1,480 milligrams. How about breakfast?
A Sausage McMuffin with Egg comes with a hefty 830 milligrams.
The sodium content in some of McDonald's menu items is such a big deal that SFGate notes
that worries about high sodium are right up there with the hefty helpings of fat and calories...
so if you opt for lunch at McDonald's every day, you're putting more than your waistline
in jeopardy.
Does this sound familiar? You grab a Big Mac for lunch, and by early afternoon, you're
hungry again. It just doesn't make sense. You just ate, but here you are, wanting to
reach for the snack drawer. It actually makes a lot of sense, and according to Science Alert,
it all has to do with what happens in your body after you eat a burger like the Big Mac.
For most people, the post-McDonald's hunger pangs kick in about 40 minutes after you finish
your meal.
"Ooo. They have tapioca pudding. There are just so many choices."
What's going on? All the high fructose corn syrup in the burger, particularly, in the
buns, causes a massive insulin spike. That lowers the amount of glucose in the bloodstream,
and essentially, that all means that your blood sugar levels are going haywire. In an
attempt to compensate for that, you start craving something that's going to help your
blood sugar even out, which is why things like that chocolate bar you've been saving
for a special occasion start to look really, really good. You're basically craving more
junk food to try to help your body do some damage control. That can't be good, can it?
If you struggle with acne, you're not alone: Healthline says that around 10 percent of
the world's population has the same struggle. When they took a look at the links between
diet and acne, they found there was quite a bit of research out there that showed there
was a major link between what you eat and how your skin looks. And there are quite a
few options on the McDonald's menu that will turn your face into Breakout City.
Studies have found there's a link between refined carbohydrates, like the ones in soda
and anything made with white flour, and acne. If you regularly eat foods with added sugars,
you're at about a 30 percent higher risk of developing acne.
And fast food was in a category all of its own. Studies on teens and young adults linked
fast food consumption with anywhere from a 17 to 43 percent increased risk of developing
acne, while a regular burger habit was linked with a 24 percent increased likelihood of
acne in adult men. While they stress it's not exactly clear what's going on here, it
does seem that there's a very real connection between your McDonald's habit and what you
see popping up across your face.
"Now, now, now, what is this fuss all about….?"
Ever finish off an Extra Value Meal and then pause to think about how many regrets you
had? It's no secret that McDonald's can leave you feeling bloated, crampy, and uncomfortable,
and that's because there's something going on with your digestive tract.
According to Healthline, fatty, greasy foods are the ones that take the longest for the
body to process. That means the food you're eating sits in your stomach for a longer-than-normal
amount of time, and if you've ever doubted just how greasy McDonald's is, take a look
at the state of those burger wrappers. Plus, if you're already prone to things like cramps
and diarrhea, eating regularly greasy meals can make those symptoms much, much worse.
Now, here's something truly horrifying, courtesy of Science Alert. They say that there's so
much grease and fat in a Big Mac that it can take more than three days to completely digest
and pass out of your stomach. For comparison, the Mayo Clinic says that on average, food
should take around six to eight hours to pass through your stomach and into your small intestine.
So, one of the things that's happening to your body is that it's laboring, for days,
to process that Big Mac. So eating it every day is really going to start to take a toll.
Way back in 2003, the news media was reporting on a Princeton University study that researchers
said proved fast food was, quote, "as addictive as heroin." That's a bold claim, so what's
going on here? Are we getting addicted to a daily McDonald's habit?
Yes, says Psychology Today, and at the heart of the matter is sugar. They took a look at
McDonald's menu, and after noting that everything from the ketchup to the burger buns has sugar
in it, they shared how it keeps people craving more...with the help of some rats. Sugar was
found to trigger the pleasure centers of the brain, and after spending some time in sugar-fueled
happiness, they ate more and more sugar. When it was taken away, the rats went into withdrawal,
and researchers say that our brains can get dependent on sugar in the same way.
And there's another thing that McDonald's does to our brains, it makes us happy in a
nostalgic sort of way. Ever get Chicken McNuggets because you remember them from when you were
a kid? Brain scans done by the Baylor College of Medicine have shown that when we're presented
with something we're fond of, the region of the brain that forms memories, the hippocampus,
lights up with glee. McDonald's, and years of fond memories, is actually stimulating
your brain in a way that keeps you coming back for more...whether you know it or not.
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