Your health and 'healthy' fast foods

Paolo Kernahan

As the old saying goes, "Going to McDonald's for a salad is like going to a prostitute for a hug."

Recently, the Minister of Health met with fast-food industry reps. The goal presumably was to stimulate thought about reducing caloric content in some of their offerings and to add healthy options to their menus.

In a small country practically tag-teamed by fast-food franchises – they're everywhere – the minister's entreaties weren't entirely without merit.

This strategy of drafting the food industry into public health has been tried in countries like the US and UK. The results are mixed. While outlets like McDonald's and Arby's in North America report healthy sales of their salad options, the sales of their artery-hardening classics like burgers and fries are even...healthier (?)

Moreover, menu items meant to stand in as healthy alternatives are disguised about as badly as a villain in an old Scooby-Doo cartoon. Salads with wedges of tomato and green crisp lettuce bear all the visual cues of a wholesome comestible.

More often than not, though, those preparations are loaded with processed cheese, bacon shrapnel, fried onion bits, fried chicken, and the motherlode – fatty, sugary salad dressings. You'd be better off just buying the burger.

Chicken is also peddled as a health-conscious substitute for the dastardly burger and fries. But that depends. Flour-battered chicken slathered in a jumped-up special sauce (basically mayonnaise and ketchup) can have higher caloric counts than your average burger.

Additionally, when the hair-netted pusher asks, "Do you want fries with that?" who's going to say no? You don't go to church and turn away the communion.

There's a fairly obvious reason health-food options look the way they do in fast-food joints. A salad in its unadulterated form wouldn't get those hardening hearts pumping. When you drive up to a fast-food restaurant, that's not sweet, sweet lettuce you're smelling. It's glorious grease baby; the cooing pigeons outside with their greasy feet know it.

A grilled, austere chicken breast served sans fries wouldn't get a second look from customers; unless they're an Instagram model, 'roid-powered beefcake, or some variety of fitness floozie.

Food chains aren't daisy chains. They're in business, and ultimately they aren't going to crowd their menus and warehouses with items that won't sell.

It's worth noting that fresh, healthier options present more of a supply-chain logistics challenge because they can't be frozen, and have a fleeting shelf life. So the customers better damn well eat it.

The global food industry has for decades been foisting on the public the unholy bio-hacking triumvirate of fat, salt and sugar. These components release dopamine in the brain, causing us to repeat our consumption patterns. Our physiological response to them mimics the way we respond to drugs and alcohol.

This has triggered a corresponding crisis in non-communicable diseases in several countries, including ours.

What we're faced with is a complex socio-economic dilemma.

While getting soft-drink manufacturers to reduce sugar content by as much as 40 per cent is laudable, that isn't going to move the needle very much on the epidemic of food-related chronic disease.

Modern society has engineered an over-reliance on fast and processed foods. Humans are working longer hours; hours not spent slumped at desks are poured down the drain in grinding traffic. The idea of preparing a home-cooked meal after a day in the pressure cooker is out of the question for many Trinis, regardless of income.

That's why long lines at the drive-thru have become an ubiquitous phenomenon in a culture that used to revere food traditions. Whereas we once celebrated our cuisine, we now celebrate eating.

Additionally, life is hard – it's stressful and demanding. Fast-food franchises are sanctuaries from the lashing winds of reality.

I struggled for a long time to understand the appeal of a place like Starbucks. I get it now. It's eating as entertainment. The franchise takes what was an ordinary, almost perfunctory activity – having a cup of coffee – and turns it into recreation.

By all means, meet with the fast-food franchises. The ministry's efforts, though, would be better invested in long-term education of the public.

Teach people the consequences of unhealthy eating; develop campaigns to show consumers how they can take greater control of what they put into their bodies and how this can dramatically improve their health and quality of life.

Nothing's wrong with a box of dead now and then.

Loading up on fast food on a daily, though, will increase your chances of becoming dead in a box sooner than later.