Skeptic Project

I think McDonald's hamburgers are a good source of nutrition and I'm a medical student.

Again, because this might get lost from the end of the previous page, please provide evidence that Dunning is correct in each of his claims about how nutritious a McDonalds cheeseburger is. Use the McDonalds pdf nutrition guide if you want, but it won't help. Dunning made that out out of nothing but his own stunning ignorance of nutrition. The only thing that would save this is if he said he was being sarcastic or something.

His argument is that a McDonalds burger is not necessarily unhealthy. He explains how a burger has protein, carbs, and fat along with various vitamins and minerals.

That, by definition is nutritious (it has nutrients; if you want to use another definition, then say so). Balance is debatable, but depending on the burger, it can be a balanced meal.

He isn't saying it's healthy. He's saying it's not as unhealthy as you think. How is he wrong?

I would never eat at McDonalds, and I don't think most of their food is ok to eat.

McDonalds is fuckin' awesome.

All I am saying is that McDonalds is unhealthy, the same way a Mars bar is unhealthy. Apparently thats wwwaaayy out there extreme for some people! Some seem to think that just because a burger that contains very high salt and saturated fat levels to the point where eating two of them maxes out your recommends safety levels is actually not unhealthy, because it contains protein.

1. It's a straw man to lump all McDonalds products into one category and say they're all unhealthy. It's also a bad analogy to say its products are like a candy bar. Sure.. the milkshakes and whatever dessert they have may be like the Mars bar. However, you can't be serious in comparing a burger to a candy bar.

2. This is similar to #1, but you're making it sound like every burger option has extremely high salt and saturated fat. Certain burgers, especially when customized, have less.

1. It's a straw man to lump all McDonalds products into one category and say they're all unhealthy. It's also a bad analogy to say its products are like a candy bar. Sure.. the milkshakes and whatever dessert they have may be like the Mars bar. However, you can't be serious in comparing a burger to a candy bar.

2. This is similar to #1, but you're making it sound like every burger option has extremely high salt and saturated fat. Certain burgers, especially when customized, have less.

This is getting silly, really, it is. I am not lumping all McDonalds products together, Dunning and Matt are talking about stuff like Big Macs and cheeseburgers. Sure McDonalds also sell sliced apple in a bag and salads but we aren't talking about them.

And the milkshakes aren't unhealthy either since they also contain nutrients by the same logic. Why don't you want to use the same logic on other stuff? If you do you realise how crazy it is thats why. A Mars bar contains nutrients therefore must not be unhealthy, right? Why is that wrong, but saying the same thing about a salt and fat filled cheeseburger different? Could it be that nutrition and health is a little more complicated than that?

Once again, what foods are so void of nutrients you will accept that they are not healthy?

Just how bad do McDonalds have to be for you to agree their food is generally unhealthy?

These two questions specifically I think get to the heart of the matter so please don't ignore them.

And the milkshakes aren't unhealthy either since they also contain nutrients by the same logic.

You are having a hard time with this. Nutritious != healthy.

Once again, what foods are so void of nutrients you will accept that they are not healthy?

Just how bad do McDonalds have to be for you to agree their food is generally unhealthy?

These two questions specifically I think get to the heart of the matter so please don't ignore them.

1. I consider healthy foods to be those that maximize nutrient capacity. A salad full of vegetables, fruits, and meat is far more healthy than anything served at McDonalds.

2. We're not talking about what I consider to be unhealthy. We're talking about what Dunning felt about McDonalds and whether he was correct / incorrect.

Tell ya what Ed, if you are so convinced that Dunning has a "ridiculously stupid understanding of nutrition" why not email him and tell him so? He does correction shows, so if you're so adamant about believing this shit then shut the hell up and and email Dunning.

Or, you might make it into one of the listener feedback episodes where the interwebs gets to laugh at you for being an asshat, which is more likely then you making it into a corrections show.

I'm not gonna say it. So you might as well just quit posting about it.

Even Dunning said that it had very high salt content and that eating two Big Macs would push you over the recommended safe limited of saturated fat levels.

Let's stick with McDonalds' nutritional chart. It says 31% daily value for sodium. Since we're discussing cheeseburgers, we can ignore saturated fat levels for Big Macs.

So what if it has some vitamins in it? I asked you some very simple questions for some reason you keep refusing to aswer:

1. Once again, what foods are so void of nutrients you will accept that they are not healthy?

2. Just how bad do McDonalds have to be for you to agree their food is generally unhealthy?

1. This isn't a simple question to answer. I consider healthy foods to be those that maximize nutrient value. Less healthy foods are those that have less nutrients. And so on. I suppose the cutoff line is when a food actually has a negative effect on my body. I consider grains to be a negative because they cause me to gain weight. Therefore, a McDonalds' cheeseburger is unhealthy for me. However, ANY product from ANY location that contains grains would be unhealthy for me. For the normal person, I don't see how anything in the McDonalds' cheeseburger negatively affects the person. None of the ingredients are harmful, and none of the ingredients go over the daily value. Cheeseburgers at McDonalds would become unhealthy if they went over that daily value, so I imagine eating more than 2 or 3 of them would be unhealthy. Regarding the Mars bar, I consider it unhealthy because it contains a host of sugars without providing much nutrient content. I could get the same or less amount of sugar from a fruit that packs more nutrient punch. So, I consider the Mars bar to be less healthy than other options.

2. I think I answered this one above. If the product goes over the daily value in a certain category or otherwise negatively affects me, then it is unhealthy. The average person is not negatively affected by one cheeseburger.

I'lll also point out that the same person he acts like he is quoting about the cheeseburger has also said that vitamin supplements are pointless and a waste of money, yet someone earlier tried to argue that Fruit Loops was obviously nutritious as well because they added synthetic vitamins.

Vitamin supplements are a waste of money unless you have a vitamin deficiency. Fortified Fruit Loops are nutritious because they contain many nutrients. However, I can get more nutrients from other products, so there's no point in me eating Fruit Loops. The sugar is also too high for me.

Oh really Aaron is that how you think of nutrition?

I asked you back this up with sources. The bun is processed white bread, its not good for you. A tiny sprinkle of onion and a slice of pickle does not count as a portion of vegetable. The cheese is processed and may not even contain real cheese, (though tbh McDonalds probably has to use he kind that has real cheese in it. Burger cheese slices have to be careful how they market themselves, many types of burger cheese contain no cheese at all and have to say it is cheese like or something.)

You asked me to show that the cheeseburger meets all four food groups, which I did.

You will find absolutely no legitimate source anywhere that agrees with you or him about this, I dare you to try and find one.

Actually, you just made a claim: I can find no legit sources that agree with him or me. Now, it's your turn to prove that. Burden of proof.

why do you want to defend him for no reason when he's so obviously wrong here?

It's more about me seeing flaws in your argument and feeling the need to point them out. At the same time, Dunning has made a decent point. A McDonalds cheeseburger is not bad for you (doesn't go over daily values in any area); therefore, it is not particularly unhealthy.

I already answered them.

No Aaron, you didn't. Are you trolling me? I am not in the mood. Read my post again.

You kept talking about foods that were unhealthy or healthy TO YOU, but that is not my question. I don't care if you can't eat grains or you're lactose intolerant or you have a nut allergy. We're talking about generally what is unhealthy or healthy for humans to consume.

If you disagree with my characterisation of McDonalds as unhealthy you better give me an example of something you consider to be unhealthy. I don't need a massive paragraph just list some damn foods.

Moving the goal posts

Now you want me to prove that the cheeseburger meets the level of one portion for all four groups. Earlier, all you wanted was for me to prove that the cheeseburger could be categorized into all 4. I never said each category would fulfill one portion. Dunning may have thought that, so take it up with him.

My god you can't follow an argument.

I asked you where the vegetables were in his well balanced meal that was rich in about every nutrient that he claimed even filled all 4 food groups! If you replace the fact that he is talking about a bloody cheese burger with some other food you'd assume he must be talking about something pretty healthy.

The kind of logic an obese person that eats nothing but fast foods uses to justify eating them is that the packet says it has vitamins and iron in it, or that the burger has a slice of tomato or pickle or iceberg lettuce on it and the fries are potato. Or their pizza has slices of pepper or something. That's the kind of shockingly faulty understanding that dangerous to those kinds of people. Thats the kind of mentality thats getting people killed because they wont stop eating shit like that.

So when I ask you to show me how the cheese burger really fits the 4 food groups, I mean how it ACTUALLY fits, in REALITY. And how exactly it is ACTUALLY a well balanced meal, IN REAL LIFE. Don't give the the rational of someone ignorant of nutrition that wants to have a reason to keep eating his fast food.

Proof McDonalds is not healthy:

Don't eat soylent green, it's made out of anus.

I said for pages that Dunnings logic about a pickle and a few tiny bits of onion counting as a portion of veg, that the white bun counted as grain, etc is the same logic that potato is a vegetable therefore fries is a vegetable.

First of all, many would say potatoes aren't even a vegetable. They would classify it as a grain or at the most a very starchy vegetable.

McDonald's medium french fries are 117g, close to the 122 gram baked potato WHFoods gives nutritional data for. The medium french fries have 15% daily value of vitamin C, while the baked potato has 26%. Unfortunately, since McDonalds only lists % for iron, calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, I can't compare the other nutrients. However, there is still 60% of the vitamin C amount in the french fries.

So, would the french fries still be considered a potato? I don't know, but it has the majority of it original form's vitamin C and possibly other nutrients.

The problem in all of this is that we never properly defined terms; and it isn't as easy as I thought. "Unhealthy", "healthy", "nutritious", and "balanced", have a different meaning amongst posters in this thread.

I wouldn't consider french fries to be unhealthy so long as the daily recommended values are low. However, I'd never eat them because there are healthier choices.

Food goes along a continuum from most healthy to least healthy; then it crosses over to least unhealthy to most unhealthy. At the top of the list would be something like spinnach because it's packed with nutrients; whole grains would probably be at the bottom of the healthy side because they don't contain as many nutrients yet aren't harmful to us; the least unhealthy would be something that minimally exceeds daily values or has a minimal amount of a toxic substance... perhaps raw milk is a good example since it's typically consumable but has some risk; at the most unhealthy, you have foods with the highest amount of daily value, such as an Angus Bacon & Cheese at Mcdonalds (its sodium DV is 86%).

I suppose an unhealthy choice at McDonalds would be those that exceed the recommended daily values for a single meal. Assuming people eat 3 meals a day, any product that has an ingredient exceeding 33% of the daily recommended value would be unhealthy.

The worst grievance Dunning committed was that he singled out a product that isn't filling for many people and used it to defend McDonalds. He's defending the cheeseburger, claiming it isn't that unhealthy. Based on how I defined it above, it would actually be on the lower end of healthy, which Dunning claimed the entire time. Many people, of course, end up eating multiple cheeseburgers or choose something more grandiose on the list. In that way, they are eating unhealthy. Of course, Dunning also mentioned the high sodium content in the Big Mac, so it's not like he's entirely a McDonalds shill. :P

So, there are ways to eat somewhat healthy, less unhealthy, and more unhealthy at McDonalds. I wouldn't say anything they have is extremely healthy.

I think Dunning would agree with me.