Melissa Bailey Photo
In a behind-the-scenes tour at a local McDonald’s, Tiffany Rouse loaded a tray with a double cheeseburger and four McNuggets — then got an eye-opening lesson on what’s inside her food. Melissa Bailey reports.
Melinda Tuhus Photo
Meanwhile, at a North Haven Olive Garden, U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro applauded a new menu labeling law that will make nutritional info more visible at places like McDonald’s. Melinda Tuhus reports.
Tiffany (pictured), who’s 15, was one of 30 students at the Metropolitan Business Academy who got an inside look at the new McDonald’s restaurant on Kimberly Avenue in the Hill. The students are learning about franchises as part of a freshman introduction to business class. After backstage tour and a lesson in nutrition, several said they’d reconsider ordering the same lunch again.
The lesson took place at the same time as U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro held a separate event touting a lesser-known provision of the new federal health reform bill — a law that would make franchises like McDonald’s post nutritional info on its menus and menu boards. Click here to read about that.
The students’ tour was led by the dynamic Gail Grant, the local marketer for eight Connecticut McDonald’s stores. Grant, who speaks nine languages, kept students’ attention with a birthday song, a steady flow of call-and-response orders, and participation from random McDonald’s patrons. She shared how McDonald’s began, and imparted job advice — “Look at your body language! You’re gonna be on the job market soon” — before leading students through a “sandwich-making workshop.”
After paying for their meals, students who ordered sandwiches were invited to go behind the counter for a first-hand look at how their food was put together.
A couple of students declined: “I don’t eat meat,” one explained.
Anthony Blanco reaches for condiments in the McDonald’s kitchen.
Others headed back into the fast-moving kitchen, where workers called out orders over the sound of beeping machines and sizzling french fry grease. The students were allowed to take part in one step of the assembly — loading condiments onto toasted buns. They donned one plastic glove and reached into buckets of pickles, onions, lettuce and cheese.
Tiffany picked a McDouble cheeseburger and four chicken McNuggets. Others chose Angus bacon burgers, fish or chicken sandwiches. After assembling their sandwiches, they got fries, a soft drink or ice cream. They sat down to devour an early lunch around 11 a.m.
“Now you know what you’re eating,”
After they finished their meals and cleared their tables, the time came to learn about the food.
Grant (pictured) led the students in a nutrition workshop. She had the students turn over a paper insert that came with their trays. The back side showed a large chart with a detailed nutrition breakdown. The chart shows the amount of calories, fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, fiber, sugars and protein in all the meals.
The mantra of Grant’s workshop: “Read, then eat.” She said they did it backwards on Tuesday because of time constraints.
Grant said she learned her mantra the hard way. She has been working at McDonald’s for 15 years ago. She didn’t always eat healthily.
At the beginning, she said, “I ate some of the items that had too much salt. I didn’t feel good.” She ate some of the items that had too much fat. “I didn’t feel good.” She said by reading the labels, she learned to eat foods that were better for her body. She lost 70 pounds.
“Over time, I learned what to eat at McDonalds,” and still maintain a 70-pound weight loss, she said.
The lesson: “You can still eat at McDonalds, but you have to eat smart.”
Foods with a lot of fat and salt are not good for people with high blood pressure or diabetes, she told the crowd.
The federal government recommends most people limit salt intake to 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day — and only 1,500 milligrams for people in populations that are more sensitive to salt, like African Americans and people with high blood pressure, kidney disease, or diabetes.
Which foods on the chicken/fish menu have the lowest sodium? the teacher asked. Working in teams, students scrambled to look up the answer.
The answer: four Chicken McNuggets have 400 mg of sodium. Which had the most? Five pieces of Chicken Selects came in at 1,640 mg of sodium.
How about calories? The federal government recommends only 2,000 calories per day.
The Angus Bacon and Cheese — a bacon cheeseburger built on 1/3 pound of beef — has 2,070 calories, more than enough to last a day.
“Now you know what you’re eating,” Grant concluded.
When students got a question right, she offered them a choice of two coupons: a free cookie or free fries.
“Think about what’s in them,” she advised as one student wavered between the decision.
This is Grant’s fifth year touring New Haven public school students around McDonald’s, according to Stephanie Paris-Cooper, a magnet resource teacher at the Metropolitan Business Academy. Students earned a place on the field trip by placing in a poster competition about franchises. As part of a new “Transportation Contribution Grant” program, McDonald’s paid $75 toward the bus to bring the students to the restaurant.
As their time together neared an end, Grant imparted a lesson: “Start reading labels! Read, then eat!”
“Read, then eat!” the students repeated.
Grant asked students what they would change about their lunch order, given the nutrition facts.
“Less fries,” called out one young man.
“One hamburger instead of two,” said another student. She told the class she had just thrown up in the bathroom from eating too much.
Tiffany Rouse said next time, she would order the burger or the McNuggets, not both. She said she would leave with a lesson.
“All that good food, it may taste good, but it’s not that good for you,” she said. “You’ve got to watch what you eat.”
Mytisha Spencer (pictured) ordered a double cheeseburger, Chicken McNuggets, a small fries and a McFlurry for lunch.
She said she learned that there’s “a lot of sugar, salt and a lot of stuff that’s not good for you” in the food.
What would she order next time, if she came back again?
“A salad,” she said.
Our taxes subsidize large farms. In order to maximize profit by lowering overhead, these large scale farms mass produce goods. The large farms require enormous amounts of land that are usually far from the places they serve, thus requiring transportation subsidies as well, often in the form of highway funding and its accessories.
The goods go to large box stores that have been provided with incentives-tax breaks-by municipalities that come from out taxes. The stores need surface parking that is often 1.5+ times larger than the footprint of the building, thus wasting gigantic amounts of space. These stores require driving, whiche further adds to the cost to individuals. The prices are kept low thanks to all those subsidies mentioned above.
Unfortunately, the crap that comes from large scale farms, over one's lifetime, usually leads to chronic health problems. For people with insurance, premiums can skyrocket due to the increased cost in providing an unhealthy person with healthcare. For people without insurance, most of whom shop and eat at discount groceries and fast food restaurants, their poor health is passed on to tax payers through cost in hospital bills.
At local and national policy level, we need to advocate for our government to either stop the subsidies entirely and allow traditional networks of agriculture and commerce to rebuild, or we need to change the subsidies to go towards more smaller, locally-based farms. Getting rid of the subsidies would make farming harder than it currently is and, more importantly, it would make the risk so great that most people just wouldn't do it. I think the best solution is to rework the subsidies to go to the right places. We would likely pay slightly more than what we're used to, but our medical bills would go down, our transportation bills would go down (or go away completely), and our communities would work much better. Local goods can be deployed efficiently through a network of small, locally owned store fronts that are within walking distance of most people's houses and have owners that contribute to the tax base. If it much cheaper, in the grand scheme of things, to establish local networks, not to mention it creates a much better social environment.