The Langhap Sarap Test

Burgers might be juicilicious, but are they nutrilicious?

By Michelle Ciriacruz

Chomping into that juicilicious burger might be pure bliss. The blend of crispy crust and tender meat is a treat most of us look forward to...

    An attitude passed on to our children.

    During mealtimes, they swarm over to burger joints or wherever burgers are sold. Children as young as four raise their voices in entreaty as family outings take place in the fast-food establishment that just came out with that television commercial everyone is now familiar with.

    Of course, how could parents resist the pleadings of their children? Their kids demand a treat, which they are very willing to oblige anyway.

    Even when outings are not possible, burgers are a reliable consolation to bring home along with the bad news. Soon enough, for the busy parent, burgers, or any fast food for that matter, become a convenient way out of the time-consuming process of preparing meals.

    Fast food is, of course, fast. And cheap, and is now offered practically from almost every busy street corner. Its rich taste, aroma, and texture appeal to our taste. We develop a craving for it. Children, heirs to our tastes, also develop a craving for it. When they start their schooling, given their first taste of personal freedom over food purchases, they quickly realize, just as their elders did, that fast food, as no other food does, sits better on the tongue, fills the belly pleasingly, and seems so compatible with their active lifestyle.

    Thus was the burger mentality born and thus it lives on.

Rude Awakening

    Hamburgers are evocative of today's dependency, or as some contentious groups might describe it, subjugation to mass-produced processed foods. As fast-food chains exploded in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, so did the idea of the hamburger, fries, soda or milk shake establish itself as the epitome of the all-American meal.

    Spreading around the globe, McDonald's, the most popular of all the burger chains, has about 30,000 outlets worldwide and serves around 46 million people everyday. Together with the other burger giants Wendy's, Burger King, and the Filipino-owned Jollibee, it accommodates the cravings of Filipinos for tasteful, filling but fat and sodium-indulgent meals.

    Curiously, many are now pointing out, the rise of the fast-food industry seems to parallel the rising incidence of obesity in countries where the industry thrives. Since obesity is a risk factor to so many lifestyle diseases, primarily coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, and diabetes, the gleeful acceptance of so many years are now being interspersed, here and there, with accusations regarding the culpability of the fast-food mentality for this trend.

    In the West, fast-food companies are embroiled in legal wars with parents and health experts who are charging that "deceptive marketing practices encourage obesity." In August this year, Newsweek featured the contentions of those who demand more nutritive fare for their schoolchildren.

    Linking consumption of soda and high-glycemic foods to overeating and obesity, they are outraged at how leading fast-food and junk-food companies focus on children to get their products sold. Granted that individual self-control should have played the brake in this debacle, the personal responsibility argument rings hollow in light of children's involvement as passive victims to this brand of consumerism, says the report. It cites children's lack of sophistication to understand the priority that should be given to nutritionally beneficial foods over, say, fruit-flavored soft drinks.

    Indeed, through the years, this industry has paraded a bevy of kids, from infants to adolescents, to promote their products on television, radio, and print. Who can forget the television commercial of a baby smiling at the sight of the McDonald's logo and then crying as his rocking chair swivels down to where his view is blocked?

    The Newsweek report also suggests the correlation of the growing incidence of previously adult-type diseases like atherosclerosis and Type II diabetes among pediatric patients with the prevalence of fast-food and vending machine snacks at school cafeterias. Based on the growth charts released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2000, 25 percent of American children aged two to 20 are already obese, or at risk of becoming overweight or obese. With an obesity epidemic on their hands, healthy food-conscious groups feel justified in wanting to control kids' access to foods with inappropriate nutritive value.

    In any case, personal responsibility might not have been much of a help if the fast-food and junk-food industries had been upfront with the health effects of eating their sugary, high-fat, sodium-high products, charged one group of plaintiffs in a recently filed class-action suit against McDonald's, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Wendy's.

Wholesome Fat?

    Eating habits of adults are largely influenced by the diet they had as children. Fast-food companies are aware of it and plan their marketing strategies accordingly. With the volume of criticisms made against them intensifying, they have lately adopted a more nutrition-friendly image for their products. This revision is largely being felt in the US and in Europe, where most of the criticisms are coming from. Of the leading burger chains here, McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King provide nutrient and ingredient listing for products in their web sites. Jollibee, the only non-US-based-major fastfood company, does not.

    In a recent concession to the quantity of scientific evidence showing the value of polyunsaturated fats, McDonald's reduced transfatty acids by 48 percent, saturated fats by 16 percent, and dramatically increased polyunsaturated fats by 167 percent in its fried menu items (burgers are not included) with the introduction of an improved cooking oil. Note, however, that the total fat content or calories in fries, Chicken McNuggets, Filet-O-Fish, Hash Browns or crispy chicken sandwich remain unchanged (210 to 610).

    This might be a modest initiative but there is no word yet on when local McDonald's outlets will use this "improved cooking oil."

    Then there is McDonald's declaration that its Happy Meals "contain one-third of a child's daily caloric requirements and, according to USDA (US Dietary Association) labeling guidelines, are an "excellent" or "good" source of more than 15 vitamins and minerals. To a casual reader, it seems to imply such a meal is indeed appropriate for a child's regular diet.

    But is it?

Child Friendly?

    We have our own share of obese children. "Although we do have a large percentage of malnourished children, we do have an increasing incidence of pediatric obesity," confirms Ma. Imelda Cardino of the Nutritionist-Dietitians Association of the Philippines.

    The Food and Nutrition Research Institute survey in 1998 revealed that 7.3 percent of Filipino children were overweight. Another study conducted by Dr. Rodolfo Florentino, scientific director of the International Life Research Institute for Southeast Asia, among schoolchildren aged eight to 10 in Manila also illustrated this trend. It showed overweight prevalence of 25 percent among private schoolchildren and six percent among those enrolled in public schools.

    Considering that percent daily values for these fast foods are based on an adult's 2,000 or 2,500 calorie diet, and given the generally lower--however variable--recommended calorie intake of very young children, won't the values for fats and sodium (ingredients that may be too abundant in burger meals) be too high for their daily needs?

    Generally speaking, Ms. Cardino points out, fast foods are high in fat and sodium and low in fiber, and the amount of vegetables, if there are any, is negligible. "On the average, the content of the burger would be something like 500 mg of sodium--that's a lot--equivalent to approximately one-fourth teaspoon of fine-grained salt." For kids aged one to six, this sodium content is definitely high, she adds.

    She explains that, true, the hamburger including the bun is rich in carbohydrates, proteins, and fats--our body's energy sources. But, "from a dietitian's point of view, you have to satisfy not only your requirements for macronutrients but for the micronutrients as well, which means vitamins and minerals."

    Ten measures of fat, of which two to three measures are saturated fat, in a regular burger may be normal for an adult, but for a preschool aged child, with smaller requirements--again--Ms. Cardino clarifies, will be considered high by a dietitian. While dividing the burger into half might solve the richness of saturated fat, it will also serve to halve the other nutrients like proteins, carbohydrates, and what micronutrients there are. "Hindi nga ako sumobra, sa iba, kumulang naman ako," she exclaims.

    In an earlier interview of MEDICAL OBSERVER with Dr. Florentino (October 2001), he said hamburgers could be a source of protein, however, it cannot supply all the other nutrients that the body needs. And while fries can supply carbohydrates, their high-fat content should be paid attention to.

    "For you to be able to function properly, you have to satisfy your requirements for the micronutrients...That will not be satisfied by your burger," Ms. Cardino acknowledges.

    She agrees that burger meals can not really be described as balanced, but, personally, she says it is not harmful for a child's health as long as consumption is not too frequent--perhaps just once a month, as a sort of treat. However, with families who make it a point to eat out at fast-food outlets every weekend, parents might be setting up their kids to a lifetime of obesity-related diseases.

    Of course, high-fat intake combined with a sedentary lifestyle is really what's chiefly plaguing our obese children. But, stresses Ms. Cardino, parents set the ground rules for their kids' present and future eating habits.

    Because parents have to work, the easiest way out of the time-consuming meal preparations for their kids is to go out and grab the nearest fast food. Their food choices would almost always be, points out Ms. Cardino, meat products: "Puro ulam, walang kanin at gulay."

    And because these products are high in fat, consuming them would result in a delayed feeling of hunger, as fat is digested more slowly. Fat also makes the food more palatable, enhancing ingredient flavors to produce distinctive tastes. Besides enhancing taste, it plays a vital role in the texture and appearance of food. Moreover, it is denser in energy content. One gram of fat has nine calories as opposed to the same unit of protein or carbohydrate, which only has four calories.

Back-up Error

    In Newsweek, Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of The Hungry Gene: The Science of Fat and the Future of Thin, reports that there is evidence that "constant exposure to fat and sugar can cause humans to crave them as they do an addictive drug." High levels of these substances could be messing up with brain chemistry that helps us tell that enough is enough.

    These findings seem to substantiate the argument that burgers or any fat-rich product should not be consumed on a daily basis, as this practice could predispose a person to obesity, especially when combined with lack of exercise.

    Ms. Cardino also explains that an obese person might find it difficult to lose weight in a flash because the body has been "programmed" already to maintain that usual weight. According to the set-point theory, even if one were to reduce drastically food intake to the point of starvation and increase physical activity, the body works such that it still maintains the weight it has been used to.

    "The appropriate thing to do is to decrease food volume and increase physical activity continuously to reprogram," she advises.

    Meanwhile, being a child is not a guarantee of an easier time. She explains that youth is not necessarily an advantage when it comes to the problem of obesity. "Even at that point, it (overcoming that programming) will depend on how far the person has deviated from the "recommended," adding that there are children who are already very obese. "Controlling food intake of children is also not that easy."

    Human bodies just seem naturally inclined to store fat, theorize some experts, probably a throwback to prehistoric times when we were still nomad-hunters who periodically went through prolonged times without food, and would thus need an efficient energy reserve system.

    The golden rule in maintaining ideal weight--the amount of calories you put in should not exceed the amount of calories you burn up--would be a tough act to follow if one were to make burger meals a mainstay in our diet.

   Age, sex, rate of growth, body build, and physical activity make computing for a child's total caloric requirement complicated, but, typically, young children need 1,600 calories a day while older children need about 2,000 calories. A sample meal at McDonald's will come up with the following caloric values (based on McDonald's nutrition facts index): hamburger 280 calories, small french fries 210 calories, Coca-cola classic (small) 150 calories--totaling 630 calories. Add a McFlurry with 630 calories, and a child consumes in one sitting 1270 calories, 380 of these from fats.

Cows with no Taste

    It is not just the nutrient content of burger meals that is being questioned. Some are also concerned on the add-ons that give these products their distinct tastes. Author of the book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser, points out that because meat from burgers is so highly processed, much of the flavor is destroyed, so taste has to be manufactured.

    Ms. Cardino says that, very likely, some additives are used to increase shelf life of burger patties. But as to the addition of chemicals that create flavor, she reveals, burger companies are mum.

    Another concern--one burger alone contains meat from dozens or hundreds of cows. With the recent mad cow scare and heightened awareness on the spread of contaminated meat, this practice also came under fire from parents, health authorities, and plain concerned people.

Contra-nurture Fat

    It's part of being a parent to indulge his or her child. But if the family is fond of eating out, health experts recommend treating children to food that is much less salty and lower in saturated fat. This means, treat them to a burger only once in a while.

    Parents may be sacrificing some of their kids' smiles now, but with a future free from diseases associated with unhealthy eating practices at stake, it's worth it.