For some, fast food is a treat; for some, it’s a bugbear. For Perry Watkins, a sales director and inventor from Windgrave, England, “Fast Food” is a fire-spewing, chicken-and-fruit-tray-toting dinner table that holds the world’s furniture land speed record.
Watkins achieved this feat, which he expects Guinness to certify, when he took the table for a spin last year. “It was actually worse than I thought it would be. It felt like 200 mph,” Watkins told The Telegraph. Compared to Fast Food, the old record holder—a souped-up sofa—is a mere couch potato, crawling at a mere 92 mph.
Costing roughly $7,800 and one year of Watkins’ life, the record-breaking table looks at first glance looks like an elaborate dinner set-up, complete with candles, lace tablecloth, fruit, and champagne. But on closer inspection, you see that the dishware is bolted to the table, the chicken is fake, and the gravy is made of fiberglass.
A decision made Tuesday by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors may make little kids (and probably some adults) cry. With an un-vetoable vote of 8 to 3, the board banned restaurant chains like McDonald’s and Burger King from giving out toys with “unhealthy” happy meals within San Francisco’s city limits.
The decision is preliminary and will be followed up by a second debate and vote on Tuesday, November 9.
Under the proposed rule, meals deemed healthy can still be packed with action figures. To meet the city’s “healthy” standard a kid’s meal must contain fewer than 640 milligrams of sodium and 600 calories, and under 35 percent of those calories can come from fat. It also has to include a serving of fruit or vegetable with each meal and meet a number of other requirements (pdf).
The majority of McDonald’s Happy Meal options don’t meet these standards, including ALL of the cheeseburger options and any meal with fries. McDonald’s spokesperson told The New York Times they don’t agree with the Supervisors’ stance:
McDonald’s called the bill misguided. “It’s not what our customers want,” said Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for the company, in a statement. “Nor is it something they asked for.”
A McDonald’s in the Dutch city of Rotterdam has decided to crack down on burglaries with a high-tech security system previously used in the city’s jewelry stores. To catch anyone who makes off with the cash from the till (or a bag of Big Macs), the store’s managers installed a device that stealthily sprays synthetic DNA on the thief.
The system involves a small, strategically placed orange box that shoots out synthetic DNA when an employee pulls an unusual trigger: Removing a €10 bill from a special bill clip behind the counter not only activates the device, it also alerts the police that a robbery is in progress. The synthetic DNA spray is visible under ultraviolet light and contains markers that are unique to that location’s device, allowing police to match a suspect with the locale.
The security-conscious McDonald’s advertises the presence of its system with a sign on the door reading, “You Steal, You’re Marked.” The New York Times explains that the effect of the device is, well, subtle:
Just in time for the release of Denny’s new Fried Cheese Melt, a study in The American Journal of Cardiology questions if cholesterol-reducing drugs called statins might pair well with fast food. A side of McStatins with that Big Mac, the study suggests, could decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Using data from previous studies, researchers in the UK compared the decreased risk of cardiovascular disease from taking statins to the increased risk caused by sucking down a cheeseburger and milkshake. From their abstract:
“The risk reduction associated with the daily consumption of most statins, with the exception of pravastatin, is more powerful than the risk increase caused by the daily extra fat intake associated with a 7-oz hamburger (Quarter Pounder®) with cheese and a small milkshake.”
It’s a common nutritional fail–you pledge to make a nice, fresh home-cooked meal, but get impatient and opt for fast food instead. Now, new research suggests that ‘we are how we eat’ and that the mere thought of fast food can result in general impatience.
Researchers from the University of Toronto conducted a series of experiments in which they showed volunteers logos from several fast-food chains or asked them to recall the last time they’d visited, writes Scientific American.
And they found that folks who had thought about fast food would then read faster, even though no one told them to hurry. And they also expressed a preference for time-saving products, like shampoo plus conditioner. And they tended to opt for immediate rewards, like getting a small cash payment right away rather than waiting a week for a larger sum.
Looking at the results, the researchers conclude that a fast-food lifestyle may not only impacts people’s waistlines, but may also have a far-reaching and often unconscious impact on their behavior.
Surprise, surprise…. Fast food restaurants might be lying to your face.
According to the Los Angeles Times health blog, Booster Shots:
Researchers from Tufts University took commercially prepared foods — both prepackaged and from restaurants — and analyzed them in a bomb calorimeter. The measured energy values of 10 frozen meals purchased from supermarkets averaged 8% more than originally stated, and foods from 29 restaurants (both fast-food and sit-down venues) were on average 18% more than reported.
The most egregious offender? Denny’s, whose dry toast is advertised to contain 92 calories but actually packs a diet-busting 283 calories! If they can’t even get the numbers on toast right, just imagine the true caloric content of one of their Grand Slamwiches.
So if your New Year’s resolution includes getting back in shape, help yourself out by resolving to stop eating fast food and frozen meals all together.
Former FDA head David Kessler’s much-lauded book The End of Overeating discusses in detail the use of technology by the food industry to provide the maximum caloric/fat bang for the consumer’s buck. And nowhere is this more beautifully illustrated than in the following video, an unusually candid inside look at the making of pork rinds. Which are hardly an example of healthy food (and we’re using the word “food” liberally). Fried pig skin squares, anyone?
In case the shock value from Super Size Me is starting to wear off, here’s an excerpt from the abstract of a paper in the Annals of Diagnostic Pathology. It was published last year, but the point is no less revolting today:
The purpose of this study is to assess the content of 8 fast food hamburger brands using histologic methods. Eight different brands of hamburgers were evaluated for water content by weight and microscopically for recognizable tissue types…Water content by weight ranged from 37.7% to 62.4% (mean, 49%)…The cost per gram of hamburger ranged from $0.02 to $0.16 (median, $0.03) and did not correlate with meat content. Electron microscopy showed relatively preserved skeletal muscle…Fast food hamburgers are comprised of little meat (median, 12.1%). Approximately half of their weight is made up of water. Unexpected tissue types found in some hamburgers included bone, cartilage, and plant material; no brain tissue was present. Sarcocystis parasites were discovered in 2 hamburgers.
Discoblog is DISCOVER's compendium of quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. It's written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. Email tips and suggestions to vgreenwood [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.
A McDonald’s in the Dutch city of Rotterdam has decided to crack down on burglaries with a high-tech security system previously used in the city’s jewelry stores. To catch anyone who makes off with the cash from the till (or a bag of Big Macs), the store’s managers installed a device that 
It’s a common nutritional fail–you pledge to make a nice, fresh home-cooked meal, but get impatient and opt for fast food instead. Now, 
Surprise, surprise…. Fast food restaurants might be lying to your face.
In case the shock value from 
