h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

perhaps home economics class should be improved. I think the other problem is some kids are brought up on convienience food so never learn to cook, when they grow up they cant teach thier children to cook. Therefore they dont appriciate how easy it is to eat healthy or what is actually in some of the TV dinners they eat.

There is a common misconception that people should know how that junk food is bad for them, this is true, but most people dont realise quite how bad it is for them. I feel the the government has the responsibility to drum this into peoples heads (c.f. anti-smoking ads).

General food education would be a good idea, but it ain't gonna be through home economics lessons (at least, not the dire Food Tech. we had to do.) I despised them and I love cooking. They don't award marks for taste, appearance (not that that matters) or nutrition, but they do deduct them for 'tidiness' (not synonymous with hygiene) and you could never choose what to make yourself. The recipe was generally a choice between pizza, stew or cheesecake, and never touched upon nutrition or food chemistry. Hence, useless.
I daresay many schools did it better, though.

Thats exactly what my home ec lessons were like. They should be changed so that people know what to buy and have a few simple tasty,healthy recipies.

More nutritional stuff, this is the link to the nutritional info for MCD's.
http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/foodfacts/asp/FF_interactive.asp
For BK you have to go to their home page and navigate through 'the facts' to nutritional info which you download and read through acrobat
http://www.burgerking.co.uk/

The BK site also has a big fanfare for the Chicken Whopper Lite but the nutrional info for it is missing.

As somebody that is now quite well educated about food, I would previously have considered having a chicken ceasar deli wrap as a healthier option to a burger - but now I have seen the facts and scarily enough there is less fat and calories in everything else apart from the XL Double whopper with cheese. That shows that while educating people goes a long way, you do need the actual information to hand to make any kind of meaningful decision.

The BK manager on saturday told me that BK no longer publish that information in a form that is available to customers in the shop, so how is your average punter going to know what they are eating?

Incidentally I also went to the KFC website but that didn't have nutritional information.

It did have the following statement to make:
"There’s a whole lot of healthy
goodness in my chicken too.
Drag your mouse over the pictures
to read more about the meals offered. Go large (large fries and large carbonated drink) for only 30p extra."

Hands up everyone that thinks fried chicken with large fries and a large coke is actually healthy!

This comment is akin to MCD's chips being a source of vitamin C...

...or Coke being healthy because it's got water in it?

Damn right water is the major ingredient of coke how can it possibly be bad for you?

I got into a bit of a spat with a student who primarily ate McDonalds because it was 'well cheap'. I pointed out that it's far more expensive than buying some oven chips, buns, salad, burgers and a big bottle of coke (and then nicking some sauce from your local fast food joint) and his argument was: "No. MaccyDs is well cheap." Idiot.

Is it truth or Urban legend that they have to put the pickle on their burger otherwise it's so sweet it has to be classified as a confectionary not a food?

Also this is true, I was there, I opened the drawer.
I worked in a remote outback school in Australia. A friend bought Maccas back for us as a treat when he went on a course. Most of us nuked them and ate them straight away. One guy put his in his desk drawer, then got a call that he got his transfer and forgot about it. We all went on holidays for six weeks over summer. A friend and I had to clean out his desk so someone else could have it and we found the burger. Just the same as the day he put it in the drawer. After six weeks nothing has changed. We dropped it in the bin and I haven't eatten Maccas since.

Considering that confectionary *is* food then I suspect that is Urban Legend. (otherwise known as B*ll*cks)


Joke that came up on the Jokes thread the other day.

MacDonalds have just brought out a new meal that consists of a Lettuce leaf, a glass of water and a bag to be sick in.

They're calling it the Ally McMeal.


Anyone who thinks MacDonalds is cheap is beyond the realms of foolishness.

No idea where the myth that McD's is cheap comes from. It plainly isn't for fast food.

Cheap at half the price as my dad would say

No the pickle thing is a myth (especially as they are sweet picles), you can also order a burger without one.

Mmmm, pickles. Am I the only person in the world who likes them? Here's an interesting fact: Traditional Japanese food has lots of pickles in it (pickled vegetables, for example) but much less fat. So the Japanese have far higher rates of stomach cancer (caused by having a too acidic stomach), but far lower heart related deseases. Since Japan has been becoming more westernised in its consumeristic tastes (since WW2), heart desease has been on the rise, stomach cancer on the decrease...and, here's the interesting bit, average heights of Japanese people has also risen.

Hmm, actually, not that interesting!

No I like the pickles too

Have to admit i'm in the pickle lovers club.

Saying that, about the Japanese and average high increasing after WWII, this has also happend in the US and Europe to a lesser extent. It is more likely to be because poverty and poor housing and malnutrition decreased (although we cant rule out the hormones put in our meat!). Heart disease is on the increase as we live longer and are getting obese, although I think the japanese heart disease/cancer thing sounds right.

AFAIK eating meat it what makes us taller and it's nothing to do with hormones as the effect was seen in our height long before the inception of such things.

Mmmm, pickles.

There's a Jewish Deli in LA called "Canter's" and when you order anything they come along and plonk a plate full of pickles (cut longways, not like in a burger) to munch on while you're waiting. My wife is the pickle-eating champion, they make me sick after too many.

What a great OT drift

Ste

"AFAIK eating meat it what makes us taller"

I'm not sure that's right - and not just because I'm a veggie. I'm bang on the average for UK height, but all my children are tall. They've all been vegetarian from birth. I think it's more likely to be a result of general improvements in nutritional science and education.

This is just off the top of my head, so it may be totally wrong, but:

Meat is high in protein- maybe it's a protein rich deit that increases high, so being veggie wouldn't mkae you short, as long as you got enough protein.