{"id":3959,"date":"2010-09-07T02:54:34","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T00:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=3959"},"modified":"2015-12-07T11:50:45","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T16:50:45","slug":"snowing-hell-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/snowing-hell-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Must Be Snowing in Hell Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

… Because\u00a0I’m actually posting a link to an article defending<\/em> McDonald’s against frequently-occurring charges that its food is so loaded up with preservatives, it won’t spoil<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The truth is\u00a0pretty prosaic: while\u00a0the “food”\u00a0certainly contains\u00a0some preservatives (like many other processed food products),\u00a0they’re\u00a0pretty tame\u00a0(like citric acid and calcium propionate). The\u00a0actual secret of\u00a0the\u00a0foods’ longevity\u00a0is what we in the food science world call “water activity.” Simply put, there needs to be a certain percentage of free water available for bacteria and molds to grow.\u00a0 Low water activity = no growth of spoilage organisms.\u00a0 As Riddih Shah explains at Salon.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

McDonald’s French fries, for example, which have repeatedly proven their hardiness to spoilage, contain citric acid as a preservative. But a bigger factor might be the fat content of the fries. About 50 percent of the total 250 calories contained in a small order of fries come from fat. “Anything that is high in fat will be low in moisture,” says Barry Swanson, a professor at the Washington State University department of food science. And low moisture means less room for mold to grow. They’re crisper and thinner than regular fries, which means that they\u2019re exposed to greater heat per surface area, killing pathogens and reducing water content. McDonald’s fries are also coated in a nice, thick layer of salt, something we’ve been using as a natural preservative for the last 2,500 years<\/p>\n

…Ultimately, says O\u2019Keefe, the McDonald\u2019s haters have gotten their science wrong. “The ingredients are similar to anything you\u2019d see in processed fast food,” he says. For better or for worse, McDonald\u2019s is no more a chemical laboratory of secret compounds designed to embalm us from the inside than any other processed food maker. A Happy Meal manages to stay unspoiled because it is fatty, salty and practically empty of nutrients — which, really, are all good reasons to avoid it anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McD’s food should be avoided because it’s energy-dense and relatively nutrient-poor. Needless to state, the preservatives are the least of its problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… Because\u00a0I’m actually posting a link to an article defending McDonald’s against frequently-occurring charges that its food is so loaded up with preservatives, it won’t spoil. The truth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,28],"tags":[631,1079,1316],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3959"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10276,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959\/revisions\/10276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}