Did You Have ANY Idea this Happens at Fast Food Restaurants You Eat At?

Oh my gosh!  This is really disgusting but it is important to post and spread the word.  Even though I am very health conscious about ingredients and what I put on my skin and very alternative in health care, I hate to admit that years ago I developed an addiction for fast food drive-ins.  I do believe that they are putting something in the food to make people addicted.  It is fast and easy and when you are super busy it can become a habit very easily.  For some time, I feel like a slightly overweight person dying of "malnutrition".   If this doesn't cure my fast food addiction, I guess nothing will!  The key for me is planning meals so I know exactly what to buy at the grocery store and have a plan of what I am going to eat each day.  Because of our busy lifes, we never know from day to day what we are going to eat, then no food in the house, busy all the time and suddenly having low blood sugar and needing food fast.   

By Dr. Mercola

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at fast food restaurants? Fast-food insiders (i.e. former employees) reveal a slew of nasty secrets that may make you think twice about ever eating in one of these restaurants again …

Black Oil, Blood and “Melted” Chicken

The featured article has quite a few doozies, such as a former worker from Burger King who describes the restaurant’s oil rotation policy:¹

"Here is how the oil rotation went. You had four vats of oil that you cooked fries in. And boy did you cook fries. Tons of them. After about 2 days worth, the oil got too dark for fries. So we switched it over to the ones for chicken. Since it was darker, it was ok.
Then that goes on for a week. After a week of massive frying. The oil is black as motor oil. At that point, it's switched to the Fish Filet vat. That's the only thing you cook in that vat."

Another former worker, this one from McDonald’s, recalled what happened when a bag of chicken nuggets was left out on the counter for too long:

"They melted. Into a pool of liquid. I never understood why. But they were completely indiscernible as being the nuggets I once knew."

Other unsavory confessions revealed by these fast-food whistleblowers include:

• Large chunks of mold in ice-cream machines and ice dispensers (which are rarely cleaned)
• A worker continuing to handle food with an open, bleeding wound on her hand
• “Recycling” overcooked burgers into chili, or stripping chicken patties of their breading and passing it off as chicken salad

Startling discoveries like these are all too common when it comes to fast-food … it was several years back when 12-year-old middle schooler Jasmine Roberts won the science fair at her school when she discovered that the ice used in the drinks of fast food restaurants had more bacteria than the toilet water. And in 2010, nearly half of soda fountains at fast food restaurants tested were found to contain coliform (bacteria that grows in feces) while 11 percent also contained E. coli!²

And Then There’s the Food …

Even under the best circumstances, fast-food restaurants fail when it comes to your health.

Eating the food at nearly every fast food chain (except maybe Chipotle and a few other restaurants committed to sustainable, organic suppliers) means you are likely consuming feedlot animal meat – flesh that comes from animals raised in crowded unsanitary conditions, fed massive doses of antibiotics and unnatural "frankenfeed" full of GM crops and some other truly disturbing ingredients.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the decidedly unhealthy practices that go on at a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation). The problem begins at the massive CAFOs where the beef, chicken or pigs are fed genetically modified corn and soybeans and excessive grains in general (which are not the natural diet of these animals), along with the following almost unbelievable feed ingredients:

• Plastics -- for the many animals whose digestive systems need roughage to pass food through them, the CAFOs now use plastic pellets.
• Meat from members of the same species -- CAFOs turn farm animals into cannibals. Scientific research has linked this practice to the spread of both mad cow disease and avian bird flu.
• Manure and animal feces-- this can include cattle manure, swine waste, and poultry waste. It also includes wood, sand, rocks, dirt, sawdust and other non-food substances.
• Roxarsone -- more commonly known as arsenic, which until last year was put into chicken and pig feed to control intestinal parasites that might cause them to eat less and grow slower. Chicken litter (containing the arsenic that passes through the birds) is also collected from chicken CAFOs and fed to feedlot cattle, for some apparent reason that defies common sense.
• Animal byproducts -- categorized as "animal protein products," this includes rendered feathers, hair, skin, hooves, blood, internal organs, intestines, beaks and bones, dead horses, euthanized cats and dogs, and road kill.

Most Fast Food is a Mixture of Chemicals, Sugar, Flavoring and Salt …

From there, fast food is often nothing more than a slew of chemicals, sugar, high fructose corn syrup and salt … for instance, only about half of a Chicken McNugget is actual chicken. The rest is a mix of corn-derived fillers and additives (most likely genetically modified), along with a slew of synthetic chemicals, including:

• Dimethyl polysiloxane, a type of silicone with anti-foaming properties used in cosmetics and a variety of other goods like Silly Putty
• Tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), a petroleum-based product with antioxidant properties

Even the seemingly healthy menu items are loaded with surprising additives like preservatives and inordinate amounts of sugar (in a salad, no less!). A burger or a chicken sandwich from a fast-food restaurant is not equal, nutritionally, to the equivalent you would make at home … nearly always the fast-food version will contain a staggering variety of additives, flavoring, coloring, and other chemicals that give it that “fast-food” flavor … For instance, even the hamburger buns used at McDonald’s, which you may think would be relatively “safe,” allegedly contain:³

• Calcium sulfate (aka Plaster of Paris) and calcium carbonate (limestone; antacid medication)
• High fructose corn syrup
• Ammonium chloride (Causes irritation to the gastrointestinal tract. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea)
• Calcium propionate (Preservative) and Sodium propionate (Mold inhibitor)
• Artificial flavors

Studies have shown that eating fast food just twice a week DOUBLES your risk of developing insulin resistance and can make you gain 10 pounds, compared to eating it just once a week, for example.⁴ Insulin resistance, as I've discussed on many occasions, is one of THE primary driving factors behind most of the diseases many currently struggle with, from diabetes to cancer and heart disease...

Three Tips for Breaking Free of the Fast-Food Trap

There is just no way around it -- if you want your family to be healthy, someone in your household, or someone you pay, must invest some time in the kitchen preparing your food from scratch, using fresh, whole ingredients. Avoiding processed, fast food requires a change in mindset, which is not always an easy task. It CAN be done, however. Rather than looking at fast foods as a convenience that tastes good or saves money, try thinking of it as:

• Extra calories that will harm your body
• A toxic concoction of synthetic chemicals and artificial flavors that will lead to disease
• A waste of your money
• Likely to lead to increased health care bills for you and your family
• Not something to give to children, whose bodies are still developing and in great need of nutrients

Your goal should be to strive for 90 percent non-processed, whole food. Not only will you enjoy the health benefits—especially if you buy mostly organic—but you'll also get the satisfaction of knowing exactly what you're putting into your body, and that in and of itself can be a great feeling. The following three tips can make it easier to eat well without resorting to fast food:

• Identify someone to prepare meals. Someone has to invest time in the kitchen to prepare your meals, or else you will succumb to costly and unhealthy fast food and convenience foods.
• Become resourceful: This is an area where your grandmother can be a wealth of information, as how to use up every morsel of food and stretch out a good meal was common knowledge to generations past. Seek to get back to the basics of cooking -- using the bones from a roast chicken to make stock for a pot of soup, extending a Sunday roast to use for weekday dinners, learning how to make hearty stews from inexpensive cuts of meat, using up leftovers and so on.
• Plan your meals: If you fail to plan you are planning to fail. This is essential, as you will need to be prepared for mealtimes in advance to be successful. Ideally this will involve scouting out your local farmer's markets for in-season produce that is priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly. But, you can also use this same premise with supermarket sales or, even better, produce from your own vegetable garden.

You can generally plan a week of meals at a time, make sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand, and then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that dinner is easy to prepare if you're short on time in the evening.

References:

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• ¹ Shine from Yahoo! July 9, 2012
• ² International Journal of Food Microbiology January 31, 2010, Volume 137, Issue 1, Pages 61–66
• ³ McDonald’s Ingredient Listing
• ⁴ Lancet. 2005 Jan 1-7;365(9453):36-42.

Four principles accelerate fat loss

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 by: Andrew Kim

(NaturalNews) It is true that one must maintain a state of negative energy balance for a period of time in order to lose body fat. Though, there is a bit more to the story. Burning fat and losing fat are always occurring simultaneously to some degree. The underlying premise of fat loss is to create an internal environment that favors fat burning in favor of fat storing. Simply put, if the net flow of fat is into the fat cells, weight gain results. If the net flow of fat is into the muscles (to be burned), weight loss results. Fat loss requires four steps.

The mainstream stepwise, clinical treatment of overweight/obesity begins with lifestyle changes, moves onto drugs, and ends with bariatric surgery. Most patients invariably fail the lifestyle phase and ultimately move onto the drugs and surgery. The lifestyle approach is uninspired at best and does not apply the principles of fat tissue metabolism in order to accelerate fat loss and increase muscle gain.

According to the CDC, over 65% of adults and 13-14% of children are overweight or obese in the U.S. These conditions have become major health concerns, as approximately 300,000 deaths are associated with obesity every year. In fact, as one`s body mass index (BMI) increases, so does one`s risk of disease and death from all causes.

Obesity is a disorder characterized by an accumulation of excess body fat to an extent that impairs health. To be more specific, a person is classified as clinically obese once his BMI reaches 30.

It is important to understand that many hormones and enzymes - the activity of which are ultimately determined by genes interacting with the environment - fundamentally control fat regulation. Therefore, it behooves the fat loss seeker - to the extent that is possible - to control the secretion of these hormones and activity of these enzymes to maximize fat mobilization and burning.

Fat loss requires four steps:

1. Lipolysis: Triglyceride (storage form of fat) breakdown and release.

2. Partitioning of fatty acids into the muscles in favor of fat.

3. Fatty acid oxidation (fat burning). The technical term is beta-oxidation.

4. Increased basal metabolic rate (BMR).

Lipolysis (step 1) is accomplished by an intracellular enzyme called hormone sensitive lipase (HSL), which is available abundantly within fat cells. The hormones that stimulate HSL are secreted in response to fasting, under-eating, intense exercise, and stress.

The fat partitioning step (step 2) is controlled by the enzyme lipoprotein lipase (LPL). LPL - as its name suggests - acts on circulating lipoprotein particles whose role is to transport fats in the bloodstream. LPL liberates fatty acids from the lipoprotein particles so that they can be herded into the cell on which the LPL resides. LPL distribution is determined by the balance between insulin and glucagon (which is determined primarily by blood sugar levels) as well as by sex hormones.

Beta-oxidation (step 3) is regulated by all of the hormones mentioned above. The most prominent one is glucagon. Glucagon - secreted in response to high protein foods and low blood sugar - increases the shuttling of fats into the mitochondria so that they may be burned for energy.

The thyroid gland is the primary regulator of BMR and accomplishes step 4 by secreting hormones that increase the metabolic rate of every cell in the body. An underactive thyroid gland almost always leads to weight gain.

So, how does the fat loss seeker consolidate all of these factors involved in fat tissue regulation and create a plan that maximizes fat burning? That will be the topic of the article "How to Accelerate Fat Loss."

Sources:

1.The Practical Guide: Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. October 2000, NIH Pub No 00-4084.

2. Calle EE, Thun MJ, Petrelli JM, et al. Body-mass index and mortality in a prospective cohort of US adults. N Engl J Med 1999;341:1097-1105.

3. National Institutes of Health and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Clinical guidelines on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity in adults - the evidence report. Obes Res 1998;6(suppl 2):1S-209S.

4. World Health Organization. Obesity: preventing and managing the global epidemic. Report of a WHO Consultation on Obesity. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1998.

5. Hall, John E., and Arthur C. Guyton. Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders/Elsevier, 2011.

6. Berg, Jeremy Mark, John L. Tymoczko, and Lubert Stryer. Biochemistry . 5th ed. New York: W.H. Freeman, 2002.