The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio has decided to kick out McDonald’s from its hospital. The doctors decided that McDonald’s food was not in the best interest of their patients or their staff. This was a gutsy thing to do. But the Cleveland Hospital is already the 7th hospital in the US to do that. There are over 5,600 hospitals with cafeterias and fast food outlets as well as many other emergency care and healthcare facilities with their own food outlets. Even, if only a certain percentage of them are no longer visible in their facilities, this must be considered progress.
Why did the Cleveland Clinic decide to throw out McDonald’s?
This is a reasonable question. The answer is also very straightforward: it is because McDonald’s food quality was unacceptable from a food quality point of view. The doctors did not think it was compatible with good health.
- McDonald’s serves genetically modified organisms (GMO) in their food. There is controversy regarding GMO and it may take a lot longer before we really know whether or not GMO is safe to eat.
- There is dimethylpolysiloxane in fish fillet as an anti-foaming agent. Why in the world do we need an antifoaming agent in our food?
- Eggs consist of a strange non-egg combinations.
- McRib is not a rib sandwich at all, it is rather a concoction of garbage meat containing 70 chemicals and food supplements.
- Even the rib parts are not real, but the meal consists of animal parts that have been brought together to create a rib-like structure.
When you take all of these facts together, it is no wonder that the Cleveland Clinic Hospital doctors decided to show McDonald’s the door.
Contrast this with good quality food
It is tiring to roam around and find mediocre food in so many outlets. It pays to look over a healthy food list and perhaps start buying it and cooking your own food. The more people will do that, the less business should be left for the poor quality fast food places.
Unfortunately this does not happen easily. People want questionable “convenience”, they don’t want to plan their food needs ahead and bring a lunch along. They like to eat their lunch at a fast food take-out place. They also do not think about the lack of quality in food. As long as it tastes OK, they feel the quality should be OK. But this is exactly where cheap food merchants take advantage of us: they can make artificial foods that taste – let’s say- like ribs, but that in actuality do not contain ribs at all, just cheap leftover meats that you would normally not eat.
We need the “Un-Burger”
We have been overfed burgers. Burgers are made with wheat. Wheat is no longer what it was 70 to 100 years ago. Dr. William Davis, the author of the book “Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health” explained at the 2012 Anti-Aging Conference in Las Vegas that I attended how the BASF, a major chemical company from Germany was able to chemically modify the genes of wheat in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The farmers liked that the new wheat (called Clearfield wheat) grew with stronger roots, shorter final stems and much larger grains so the yield per acre was higher. This type of wheat was patented under the name of Clearfield wheat and sold all around the world. What was not publicized at the time was that the gliadin content increased manifold from the composition of wheat strains used for thousands of years before. Gliadin gets rid of the glue like substance between the gut cells and causes leaky gut syndrome, something that was mentioned at many other lectures throughout the conference. This leads to exposure of immune cells to foreign proteins from the gut, which causes the immune system to hyper react with autoimmune antibodies.
This is not what we want as burgers: but burgers are baked with the wheat that has been chemically force-hybridized into Clearfield wheat.
The alternative is the “Un-Burger”: a pure meat patty minus the bun, a chicken salad or a turkey salad. You take organic salad and top it with either organic chicken breast or organic turkey breast. In other words there is no messing around with artificial anything. Give consumers honest products that are edible and that taste good! Your salad dressing can for instance be balsamic vinegar with olive oil. This is straight forward, no nonsense; that’s what we need. Lemon juice and olive oil works as well, and so do dressings based on yoghurt, lemon and herbs.
Healthy food wherever we go
We need to learn from the Cleveland experience. You may want to go through your fridge and look what is inside. Are you aware whether there is MSG in your food?
Monosodium glutamate is not a harmless flavor enhancer. It belongs into the group of excitotoxins. The substance can destroy brain cells. It also has the potential to give you a nasty headache, especially if larger quantities are used. When we look for food, we do not want to get a headache or risk losing our memory. I threw out all MSG containing foods in 2001.
MSG comes under many disguised names: autolysed yeast, gelatin, monosodium glutamate, textured protein, yeast food, sodium caseinate and others. Read labels and exclude products with MSG in it. It is a good investment into your future without Alzheimer’s disease.
Next you want to make sure that sugar is excluded from your diet; with this I mean extra sugar as well as sugar from processed foods. If you read food labels you probably are aware of how much sugar manufacturers include in processed foods. It tastes pleasing, it is cheap and it makes people come back to buy more. But you as the consumer have a right to get rid of this as it causes your insulin level to increase and on the long term this paves the way to diseases such as diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases, Alzheimer’s disease or others. As a result I do not buy anything with added sugar.
If I like to sweeten my coffee or yogurt, I can do it by adding a tiny bit of stevia, a natural plant sweetener. No calories, not insulin response, no worry about diabetes or Alzheimer’s, and no tooth decay either.
The more you can cook at home, the easier it is to take your lunch salad along in a BPA free container. It is better for you, better for your health, and by actively avoiding junk outlets, restaurants will get the message and offer healthier food choices. It is a process of years to change consumer habits. You as well as your children are the beneficiaries.
Here is an example how to order food in a restaurant, if you want to make healthy choices:
Eating out at a restaurant
The first thing the waiter will do is asking you what drinks you want to order. My answer is sparkling (or non-sparkling) mineral water. This establishes that I do not want to order alcoholic drinks. They are empty calories; they are also overpriced. But if you really want to have a glass of red or white wine, pick a good one and only one glass. Studies have shown that the resveratrol in it will prevent heart attacks, but too much of it undermines your liver and the healthy condition of your pancreas.
Next the waiter will come with bread and butter. It is best to skip these offerings. As a matter of fact I usually tell the waiter when I order the mineral water that I do not want any bread. Waiters nowadays understand: non-carbs! (The truth is that you do indeed eat carbs. Vegetables and fruit are carbs!) It goes like a red line through the rest of the order. It starts when I order my meal: a bowl of salad as a starter is great, and next I order meat or fish with a side of vegetables. The waiter understands, and often restaurants will offer to substitute the pasta or potatoes with extra vegetables. After the meal the waiter will temptingly produce the dessert menu: any dessert today? The answer is a simple “no”. After a filling meal nobody needs a dessert that is off the calorie Richter scale!
Usually this is the blueprint for me at a restaurant. With this approach you will not gain weight, but you will leave satisfied. Unfortunately these days in most restaurants we do not have any choices yet with regard to organic food.
Fast Food Kicked Out Of Hospital
Conclusion
We wade through a world of poisoned foods. Vegetable and fruit crops are often sprayed with pesticides unless you buy organic; but even with organic foods there are certain, more benign chemicals they have to use to keep the pests away. We need to avoid (at least I choose to do so) GMO foods until we know in decades to come whether they are really safe. Stay away from the modern wheat, unless you welcome gliadin in your diet that will cause leaky gut syndrome or worse disease. One good start is to avoid fast food outlets, which I have done since 2001. I also buy mostly organic food and ask my wife to cook it for us. When we travel, we take as much organic food along as we possibly can. On the road we can look for organic restaurants. They are far and few in between, but many health food stores have salad bars and hot food counters that serve organic foods. If we have a hotel room with a fridge, we can buy organic produce, organic cold cuts, boiled eggs, or cooked seafood, and it is easy to throw together a great tasting, colorful salad.
Healthy food consumption has become a routine. But many have not even begun to stop eating at fast food outlets! Don’t wait for New Year’s resolutions. Make a change for healthier food now! You’ll reap the benefits for life.