A New Road Map for the Fast Food Nation
March 10, 2007 — -- The statistics are familiar, the warnings redundant. Fast food is bad for you. Trans fat is less an ingredient than a death sentence handed down by overgrown teenagers in paper hats. If you want to live -- and live well -- cut the cheese fries out of your diet. No quarter for the "quarter pounder!"
In New York City, the mayor pushed for and the health board passed a ban on trans fatty acids in restaurants. Out West, there's a movement to enact similar legislation against acrylamides, the known carcinogen that occurs when potatoes and other starchy foods are fried at a certain temperature.
The backlash against fast food in America has grown into an industry almost as profitable as the chains themselves. Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary "Super Size Me" made more than $10 million at the box office. By the time DVD sales are added in, you have almost as much as McDonald's takes in each day worldwide.
But while documentary filmmakers vomit symbolically in the parking lot of your local McDonald's, there are others -- doctors and writers included -- who seek a more pragmatic, practical approach to managing a diet under the strains of home and work.
Steven G. Aldana, a professor in the College of Health and Human Performance at Brigham Young University, is among them, and his newest book, the "Stop and Go: Fast Food Nutrition Guide" offers a straightforward and familiar guide to enjoying a responsible evening at the neighborhood burger joint.
"What we did," Aldana explains, "is take 3,500 fast foods in the U.S., basically every fast food that we had information on. We gave it to a national nutrition panel and we said, 'why don't you go ahead and rate these based on the nutrition content, and color code these red, yellow, and green. Just like the colors of a stop light.'"
The criteria were simple. If a food has more than one gram of trans fat, saturated fat, or an above average combination of sodium and calories, it gets the red light. Anything that accounts for more than half of your daily requirements in a given category gets Aldana's so-called "red badge of horror," as well.
Related Stories
ABC News Live