NUTRITION FEATURE
The Skinny on Fastfood
Your food court favorites reviewed and rated
By Jude Defensor
You know too much of it is bad for you but you do it anyway. You go back, again and again. It's a reward, a comfort, and a guilty pleasure. Fast, filling, and fattening... we're sure not talking about fine dining. Between convenience and nutrition, the handy and cheap quickie usually wins. But you can make the better choice. Just for you, Men's Health spreads out and supersizes, surveying Philippine fast food's 10 most wanted. Like a punch to the gut, we'll serve them to you straight.
The usual and ubiquitous suspects of burgers, fried chicken and fries still won't be mistaken for wholesome diet fare anytime soon. By and large, fast food meals are high in calories, fat, and sodium, and generally deficient in important vitamins and minerals. But with the rise in awareness regarding fitness and proper nutrition, many chains have started adding healthier menu options, answering to the demand spurred on by Men's Health readers like you.
We have a long way to go on lean menus, though. In December 2005 President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo proclaimed 2005-2015 as "the decade of healthy lifestyle." The result? A coalition of government and non-government agencies, professional and medical organizations, and affiliated academic groups with the Department of Health, (DOH) known as the Philippine Coalition for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (PCPCNCD). The PCPCNCD has conducted meetings and dialogues with major fast food chains to encourage the inclusion of healthy alternatives to their traditional menu. Of its long list of partners, only Wenphil Corporation (Wendy's) has agreed to sign a memorandum of agreement as reported by Philippine Star online in April 25, 2005.
But there's tangible headway. Six months after sealing that agreement, Wendy's has added sugar-free iced tea and low-fat mayonnaise in their dishes. This year they are zeroing in on the promotion of salad menus as main dishes, and more significantly, the provision of nutrition information to you, the average consumer.
DOH research notes that five out of 10 Filipinos who eat out go to a fast food outlet. But in our experience, finding out the nutrition facts from these outlets is still not a straightforward process for Juan dela Cruz. Of the 10 fast food restaurants surveyed, none had nutritional information available on site. Neither the counter crew nor the branch managers were informed about or willing to share, nutrition facts about their food. Calling local corporate headquarters provoked similar guarded responses. In one case, I was shuffled from one department to another, only to be told in the end that the information could not be made readily available. In another, the nutrition data was said to be confidential.
We had better luck going online. For example, McDonald's Philippines actually has a link for nutritional information on their website (www.mcdo.com.ph). However, this link sends you to a page on their McDonald's USA website with nutritional info for their American menu. We were also able to find nutritional facts for all the other US-based chains over the Internet through their official sites or unaffiliated sites that systematically compile nutrition data provided by these American chains. However, depending on quality control and enforcement of standards, there are likely differences among available menu items, portion sizes, and the type and quality of ingredients used from what is served locally and what you can find abroad, and also from branch-to-branch or day-to-day.
In our chart, nutritional info for McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Wendy's was sourced from The Fast Food Nutrition Fact Explorer (www.fatcalories.com) database. The site, which tracks the nutritional data of the world's most popular fast food restaurant chains, includes information compiled from the official website of each restaurant.
For Shakey's and Kenny Rogers, we referred to Dietfacts (www.dietfacts.com). The site, initiated by Kelly Stuart, stemmed from her daily frustration as a diabetic's daughter. Not knowing the nutritional content of her father's favored restaurants and how they fit into his newly prescribed diet, she gathered data from food labels and nutrition guides. In April 2002, Kelly created the website so more people would benefit from the information she had collected. Dietfacts obtains information directly from product labels and nutritional guides provided by the companies of the respective products and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) data.
For Jollibee, Chowking, and Greenwich, we asked nutritionist Ma. Paz L. Sales, RN-D to do approximated nutritional analyses.
Selected items were bought from each chain, and ingredients were carefully removed and separated then individually weighed. Dr. Sales explains that the amounts would've been more accurate if each ingredient had been weighed before the actual preparation and cooking. "But given this limitation, the values were computed and rounded off to obtain for us consumers an approximate nutrient value of the products," she says. Her analysis focused more on calories and the percentage of fat calories. No elaboration was made on the other nutrients.
It's a tedious trip—figuring out what you and I eat. While the results we've charted shouldn't be strictly relied on as a definitive reference for nutritional data, use them as a guide to what you order. Because we know you'll likely make that unavoidable fast food stop. Most of us do.
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Men's Health Philippines - September 2006 Issue
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If you must supersize, share.
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