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Originally Posted by Slapshot  The McDonald's site does allow you to break down each sandwich ingredient by ingredient. There APPEAR to be no trans fats in the sauces, cheese or bun. It's all in the patty. What's interesting, however, is that the trans fat total doesn't equal the subtotals above (i.e. the patty will say 1.0 and there will be no other ingredients with trans fats in them, but the total will be 1.5 - there's a .5 of trans fats somewhere. Perhaps that's a rounding issue, and there may be, say .3 transfat in the cheese, and they don't have to disclose it with the ingredient, but when it comes to the totals, it shows up. So, I guess you might be right that there might be <.5 transfat in the bun/cheese. That being said, most folks on Atkins should/would definitely skip the bun and probably that processed cheese anyway.)
I absolutely agree that "chicken" isn't really "chicken" at these places. But, knowing what I know about trans fats, I'll skip them when I can in favor of chicken that might have more, but albeit less harmful, ingredients in them. Alas, that's obviously just my preference/personal opinion though! |
There's more to transfats than what's jsut listed. The buns do show partionally hydrogenated oils in them, which are trans fats. They must just be below the limit that they don't have to list them.
I was intrigued by this since it's 100% ground beef and googled it. Turns out that trans fats occurr naturally in many meats naturally.... If mcdonalds were adding the dangerous hydrogenated oils to their beef i'm sure they would have to list it (and they seem to be good at listing everything).
So it appears if you're eating meats and dairy, you're probably getting the transfats, just not he manmade bad ones.
If you want to avoid the dangerous transfats you should be lookin for 'hydrogenated' oils on labels as well as the nutrional info.
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Trans Fats: The Health Burden (PRB 05-21E)Naturally occurring trans fats can be found in some animal products such as dairy products and beef fat, since the trans isomer is produced by bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract of cattle and other ruminants. These naturally occurring trans fats may account for as much as 21% of the food sources for American adults, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.
The majority of trans fat in our diet is industrially produced. It is consumed primarily as shortening and margarine, or in foods that are baked or fried using these substances, such as cakes, cookies, bread, potato chips and commercial french fries. Trans fats are produced industrially when hydrogen is added to unsaturated oil (usually vegetable), a process known as hydrogenation. Full hydrogenation would produce exclusively saturated fatty acids that are too waxy and solid to use in food production. Even beef tallow and butter contain some unsaturated fatty acids. Consequently, the process used by the industry does not eliminate all of the double bonds and is called partial hydrogenation. Partially hydrogenated oils give foods a longer shelf life and more stable flavour. Food manufacturers use partial hydrogenation not only to harden oils into shortening and margarine, but also to eliminate some of the fatty acids that tend to oxidize and cause fat to become rancid.
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Trans Fats: The Health Burden (PRB 05-21E)