As I look back on my childhood, I’ve begun to realize that so many memories revolve around food. Some are good, like the turkey on Thanksgiving, my grandmother’s homemade Italian cookies and my mom’s apple-cheese pizza (still one of my faves). Others…are not so good. My dad’s failed attempts to successfully concoct a box of Mac and cheese and sitting at the dinner table for hours on end, crying because I refused to drink my standard glass of milk.
When I look back now though, one thing strikes me as particularly interesting- my parents casualness when it came to fast food. I’ll put the blame on my dad, as he refuted any healthy foods AT ALL and considered chips, dip and cheese in front of the TV a well-balanced meal. Baseball game victories were generally met with the reward of Papa Gino’s. A baseball game defeat resulted in a Happy Meal (because, you know, it would make us happy). Too much homework to do and no time to cook? My dad would run out and order a bucket of what he referred to as “Kentucky Fried Pigeons”.
And I may have laughed as a kid, but now, it isn’t so funny. True, the realities of the fast food phenomenon were not as clear back in the early 90’s, but come on. My dad could crack jokes about us eating shitty birds, KNOWING it was unhealthy, but still had no qualms about feeding it to us. But if he knew back then, what we know now about the horrors of the meat industry, would he still have made that decision to let me consume it?
So was it really pigeons in that bucket of crispiness? Come to think of it, do people REALLY know what any quick-fix food has in it? And just how do you make a McNugget? Here’s the rundown on what’s in some of the fastest (and most disgusting) food in the world.
Chicken McNuggets Ingredients (we’ll outline the worst, but click here for a full list of them)
- Sodium phosphates- Used to keep nugget intact, but is generally found to be a LAXATIVE
- Sodium aluminum- Also found in eye drops and pesticides
- TBHQ- A derivative of petroleum and also a form of butane
- Dimethylpolysiloxane- A form of SILICONE!
- McDonald’s chicken is generally only 40% actual chicken (which is full of antibiotics and steroids on its own…).
Kentucky Fried Chicken Ingredients (get the full explanation here and here)
- KFC is actually more or less, a genetically modified organism rather than an actual chicken
- Carcinogens- Are found in even the “healthy” grilled chicken products
- MSG- The famous neurotoxin that kills brain cells
- Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oil- Causes omega-6 imbalances that our bodies cannot break down- also known as extremely high trans fat and causes heart disease and cancer
Taco Bell (get the full list here)
- Just 36% of their “beef” is actually beef- the rest is mainly powders, starches and soy products
- Soybean oil- An anti-dusting agent
- Maltodextrin- Straight up glucose (sugar)
- Potassium phosphate- A chemical that commonly causes diarrhea, vomiting and dizziness
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