Why are burgers considered 'junk food'?

The odd one will not kill anyone. Like you, I always make them. Making your own allows you to play too - made some last week with hazelnut Dukkha rub added to the mix and served with
beetroot and raw cabbage instead of the more usual salad in the bun.

By that logic a MaccyD should be quite healthy then

 

I've never understood this. Many ingredients which are in so called junk food are also in healthy food just made differently.

Take pizzas for example. Pizza is considered junk food but a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich is supposedly healthy. What's the difference?

Burgers are bad but a grilled steak baguette isn't? Technically same thing just prepared differently.

Surely it's to do with the quality and fat content of the ingredients you use.

 

I guess so. Pizza apparently is very high in calories so they must hide fat in there somewhere. That's probably why it's so delicious. A cheese and tomato sandwich would have less fat and the fat content is more obvious. Also, I don't know that I would consider a white bread C&T sandwich particularly healthy.

A home-made pizza made with wholesome ingredients ( a bit of wholemeal flour, not too much cheese, plenty of proper fresh veg, a drizzle of extra virgin) would be a different proposition from a mass-produced pizza with white flour laden with additives, high fat processed cheese, minimal vegetable matter which would not have been fresh, high salt tomato sauce to increase the flavour and hidden oil in the sauce and crust.

 

We get Tesco's cheapo cheese and tomato pizzas, which I use as a base for actual pizzas.

I typically eat just over a quarter of one of them for my main meal. That's about 240 kcal according to the nutritional info on the box.

If you consider that one slice of medium sliced white bread with butter or marg on it can easily exceed 100kcals, and you'd use two of them in a sarny, and that's before you include the filling, so the sarny is easily going to match the pizza in terms of calories.

Ok, so I'm a bit naughty. I'll had a bit of ham or chorizo to the pizza, which obviously ups the kcals, and some nice healthy (very high sugar but healthy because its fruit) pineapple and some herbs, maybe some mushrooms, and maybe some sliced tomatoes, but overall, the pizza leaves me feeling content for much longer than the sarny would.

 

And throughout all this government babble about what's good for you and what isnt has any one of these health experts bothered to stop to consider that the real reason that kids of today are unhealthy and overweight isn't because of greasy school dinners or too much sugar or fat etc. but because kids today spend too much time sat on computers, games consoles and watching tv instead of running about outside getting fresh air and exercise.

Lets face it, I went to school in the 70's/80's where it was everything fried with chips and big stodgy puds with full fat custard and we were far healthier back then than half of the kids you see today because we balanced our diet with plenty of fresh air and exercise. Something which people today seem to lack.

 

In the uk, if using growth promoters in the feed you have to stop using it 28days before it goes to slaughter (not sure if it's the case now) but in the US they don't stop using it, so it's stairght to slaughter (but i'm not sure if it's the case now)

 

I've always found the FDA in the US a bit of an enigma.
On the one hand they are ultra strict on companies producing medicines (which is a good thing) then on the other hand, almost any old rubbish is allowed in food.

From what I can gather, there seems to be no hard and fast rule here as regards growth promoters.
It's pretty much left to each supplier, and if they mention nothing then the chances are good that they were introduced at some point.
There is however one supermarket chain that specifically states that they were not used at all.
Yes one pays a premium but as far as I'm concerned, eat less meat and when you do buy it, buy the better one.

 

The simple answer is junk food either contains ingredients which are considered unhealthy e.g high in salt or fat or whose cooking involves a lot of fat sugar or salt.

That is why mc Donald's burgers or highly calorific dominoes pizzas are an occasional treat and home prepared burgers or pizzas are acceptable.

 

Small-scale British farmers are not filling their animals full of unnecessary drugs.

Drugs would only be needed if animals were being factory farmed and kept in large numbers in confined areas to control disease (as in battery chicken farming).

Where farmers are keeping their animals out on pasture for as much of the year as is feasible (they are often indoors in the winter for feeding and protection - everyone OK with warm, full cows?) and feeding them on home-grown natural fodder as is the case with the majority of British farmers then no use of drugs is necessary - and they are not cheap, so why would a farmer use them if he/she could produce good meat without them?

Of course, if a cow was sick, drugs would be used then, but presumably we're all OK with having healthy cows? If it's a sick sheep, they're generally left to live/die as nature chooses because they aren't worth the vet's bill - so no antibiotics in them.

Tip - eat Welsh beef/lamb. Go to Wales and see all the animals wandering about in beautiful green meadows, nibbling wholesome grass. Farmers are not spraying the spring grass with growth promoters, nor dousing the hay and silage with them. It would eat massively into their hard-won profits, for a start. So you are pretty safe eating the meat.

 

It's lack of exercise combined with a diet far too high in calorie-dense foods that causes obesity. Excess salt/fat /sugar will probably cause health problems long-term but it might take decades for it to happen. Overweight is a health hazard in its own right.

Everyone eats far more calorie-dense (and usually nutrient-poor) foods than they did in my childhood. Meals come in bigger portions and high-calorie snacks are available and encouraged at every turn. I was brought up on meat and rich gravy, sure enough, but that came with plain boiled veg. I ate puddings but not in excess and once the meal was over, that was it until the next one. We all walked a lot more instead of using cars so the calorie input/output was more likely to balance out.

Today it doesn't. If people are more sedentary then they need to cut their calorie intake to match that, instead, calorie intake has gone up by a significant percentage. The result is a fatter population. I think excess fat/sugar are mainly to blame because they increase the calorie content of foods but add little nutritional value and most people are not prepared to put in the physical effort to burn off what they now eat (who is to blame for that?) So if something's got to be cut out it should be "empty" calories.

 

This is why I wont eat bacon unless its Danish.

You can't trust the various British claims, because all that means is that the animals were processed in Britain. Danish bacon can, as I understand, only be called Danish bacon if the pigs were raised in Denmark. Its one of those protected description thingies, like Cornish pasties and such.

The reason this is important is because much of Europe's (including Britain's) pork products come from the Netherlands, where they have got factory farming down to a fine (and barbaric) art. Unless they've changed the laws since I last heard, pigs there are raised in multistorey buildings, in darkness, attached to all manner of pipes. They aren't so much reared as grown in a process that is pretty much the animal equivalent of hydroponics.

 

Pig-farming is a bit different because pigs can tolerate being shed-grown. However, there are numerous examples of British pigs living very happily in field environments with their dinky pig Nissen huts, I see them everywhere. I can't believed the meat thus reared is particularly dangerous eaten in sensible quantities, of course. Just ask for British pork.

 

But that's my point. It can be called British if the pig was raised elsewhere but brought here alive to be slaughtered.

 

I make my own burgers and while not as "healthy" as a salad, they are not "fast food" fodder either. I do add 'extra's' to "stretch" the meat content e.g. some breadcrumbs and an egg to bind it all together and I may even throw in a chopped chilli/apple depending on the meat base (beef/pork). No added salt though.

Oops! I see the debate has move on