I always love those exposés on the worst restaurant meals out there. It always seems like it’s something attempting to be healthy, like a salad, except it gets topped with some sort of 1200 calorie dressing and fried bits, turning it into the equivalent of a loaded baked potato. Or those drinks like pomegranate juice in the sexy little bottles that are supposed to be so healthy, but instead have 16 teaspoons of sugar, more than a Coke.
The newest choice? Long John Silver’s “The Big Catch”, which has some astounding statistics:
[It] has 33 grams of artificial trans fat, the deadliest fat in the food supply. To put that into context, the American Heart Association recommends a daily maximum of about two grams of trans fat, or about as much as one can expect in a day from naturally occurring sources of trans fat, like milk and meat. This Big Catch meal has 16 times as much trans fat as the AHA recommends as a daily maximum. On top of that, the Big Catch has another 19 grams of artery-clogging saturated fat and 3,700 milligrams of blood-pressure-raising sodium.
They took something healthy, like haddock fish and onions, and fried it into a batter-covered heart-stopper.
According to Michael F. Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (not a real scientific organization):
Artificial trans fat should be banished from the food supply because it causes thousands of unnecessary deaths a year. It raises one’s bad cholesterol, lowers one’s good cholesterol, and interferes with the body in other ways. And, unlike saturated fat, companies could easily eliminate artificial trans fat by switching to canola, soybean, and other healthier oils.
Look, while this sounds like a disgusting meal, I still wouldn’t try to stop someone from eating it if they truly wanted it. Their choice. If the public is interested in fried haddock, let them be interested.
The CSPI also found that Long John Silver stiffs you on the amount of fish you get in the meal by half. While that’s pretty dishonest, if you don’t know by now that the food you get looks nothing like the ad, there’s really no help for you.
Remember, this meal is not “bad”, it’s bad for you. It doesn’t contain some evil force. You can overindulge on anything and it would be bad for you. If you’re on a tight schedule and want to get your lunch fix at Long John Silver’s, then that’s your prerogative. But something shouldn’t be banned just because some fake scientific busybodies want it to be.
