Just When You Think Something’s Healthy…
I’ve been meaning to write about this for months, but kept forgetting about it. But after I ate a McDonalds Asian Salad (not to be confused with the Oriental Chicken Salad) near the Buffalo Airport on my trip back from NYC, I made a note to do a little research into my new favourite fast-food lunch. Talk about depressing! Sometimes I really think ignorance is bliss and that I should stop dissecting the food that I love.
The salad is really tasty and I love the Newman’s Low-Fat Sesame Dressing that comes with it. The salad contains orange-glazed chicken, edamame (soybeans), snow peas, red bell peppers, toasted almonds, mandarin oranges and up to 16 types of fresh greens. It’s served with “All-Natural” Newman’s Own Low-Fat Sesame Ginger salad dressing. Yum! The reason I put “All-Natural” in quotes is that I don’t understand how something that’s packed with high-fructose corn syrup can be labelled “All-Natural.” For more on HFCS, check out this link:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FDGS24VKMH1.DTL
Anyway, I went to the McDonalds website and it appears that the Asian Salad is no longer available in Canada. On the US website, I used their nutrition calculator to find the nutritional numbers and ingredient list for the salad and the dressing cuz, let’s face it, no one’s eating the salad without dressing. Zoinks! What a shocker! How does 1570 mg of sodium sound? There’s 710 mg sodium just in the “healthy” chicken breast and 680 mg sodium in the dressing. I’m pretty sure they don’t use the same chicken in Canada, thank goodness, because the US chicken is browned in “liquid margarine” which, for some reason, they list as having zero calories and zero fat. Here’s what’s in the US grilled chicken: boneless, skinless chicken breast filets with rib meat, colored with paprika and caramel color added. Contains: Up to 20% of a solution of water, seasoning [salt, sugar, modified corn starch, maltodextrin, spices, dextrose, autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed (corn gluten, soy, wheat gluten) proteins, garlic powder, paprika, chicken fat, chicken broth, natural flavors (animal and vegetable source), caramel color, polysorbate 80, xanthan gum, onion powder, extractives of paprika], modified food starch, sodium phosphates. Grilled with liquid margarine. Contains wheat and soybean ingredients.
And if that doesn’t sound yummy enough, how ’bout the lengthy list of ingredients in the orange glaze: Water, sugar, soy sauce [water, wheat, soybeans, salt, sodium benzoate (preservative)], orange juice concentrate, hoisin sauce (sugar, water, sweet potato, salt, modified corn starch, soybeans, spices, sesame seeds, caramel color. wheat flour, garlic, chili pepper, acetic acid, FD&C red #40), modified food starch, distilled vinegar, ginger puree, salt, citric acid, soybean oil, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate as preservatives, spices, xanthan gum, propylene glycol alginate, acesulfame potassium, ascorbic acid. Contains wheat and soybean ingredients.
Feeling hungry for some liquid margarine? Liquid soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, vegetable monoglycerides and soy lecithin (emulsifiers), sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservatives), artificial flavor, vitamin A palmitate, colored with beta carotene (source of vitamin A). Contains soybean ingredients.
Talk about depressing. Well, at least the calorie count was good at 380 calories for a filling, satisfying meal. Plus, there’s 6 g of fibre and 32 grams of protein… both good. I was a little surprised at the 13 g fat but 6 g comes from the almonds and it’s good fat, so I’m not worried about that. There’s only 1 g saturated fat and zero trans fats, though any time I see the word “hydrogenated” and then see zero trans fats on the nutrition label, I’m skeptical. By the way, not to burst your fast-food salad bubble, but the Canadian McDonald’s nutrition finder lists one package of the Newman’s Low-fat Sesame Thai Dressing (the closest I could find to the US Low-Fat Sesame Ginger Dressing) as having 1130 mg sodium per pouch. Ouch! Hmm… I wonder if Paul Newman has high blood pressure…
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