This video is sponsored by Noom! Go take your own free 30-second quiz using
the link in the description and get started on your journey with Noom right now! A man walks into a famous fast-food place
in an airport, not because he’s a big fan of this particular type of food, but because
he has little time before boarding his flight and there aren’t too many other food options. His resolve not to eat a lot crumbles no sooner
than he’s dazzled by all the familiar bright colors around him. He was sure he was going to be sensible, but
15-minutes after entering the place he’s consumed 2,000 calories and doesn’t feel
too great about it. What he doesn’t know is exactly what he
has consumed. He’s also blissfully unaware of how his
brain has been manipulated on several occasions. He’s been prey to a business predator that
doesn’t always tell you how exactly it goes about its work. Today, all will be revealed. 8. This is your brain on a Large Oreo Shake
You’ll all probably agree that sugar is nice. What you might not know is that researchers
have pointed to its addictive qualities, something fast-food restaurants are very aware of. A hit of sugar, like many drugs in the world,
releases feel-good chemicals in your brain. When you eat sugar you get a small blast of
opioids and dopamine and you feel ever so slightly high. That’s why sugar is loaded into many fast-food
products. You’re not just eating junk food because
you like it, there’s also an element of you needing it. But it goes further than this. You see, we humans evolved in a time when
food was scarce. We had to hunt for food, which was often hard,
dangerous work. Therefore, we hunted for food items that had
a lot of calories and gave us the most energy. These days, you don’t have to fight off
a pride of hungry lions to get your hands on a piece of beef. In fact, fast-food restaurants are everywhere,
and they are usually cheap. The food items are packed with calories and
so that’s one reason we go to those places. Not only that, the food comes to you fast
and so your brain’s reward system triggers fast. Convenience is also addictive, and that’s
why you see so many fast-food restaurants and why they offer the drive-thru option at
certain places. It’s all about getting a quick fix. Lastly, there’s the Pavlovian thing. You might have heard of Pavlov’s dog, which
relates to experiments undertaken by the Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov. In short, he figured out that when a dog heard
the sound of its dinner bell, the sound itself made the dog salivate. So, why do you think every time you go to
a fast-food restaurant you see and hear all the same things? It’s because your brain associates all the
familiar colors and symbols and sounds with a rewarding experience. You only have to look at a fast-food joint
to start salivating. The reason for that is the place’s consistency. 7. They know how our minds work
Studies have shown that when less energy is put into ordering food we will make worse
choices. Basically, it is less likely you’d go for
a large fries if the server didn’t ask you if you’d like to boost the size of your
meal. In fact, you might not go for the fries at
all if someone didn’t ask you, “Do you want fries with that?” Scientists believe that we feel less guilty
when someone asks us to order a bit more since there is less responsibility on the buyer. They’re not asking you out of curiosity. They’re manipulating you. When we say ‘you’ we mean of course the
company, not the server. It works, too. Some sources say in one year McDonald’s
made an extra $28 million in revenue just from upsizing its products for people. As a consumer, you might go into a place with
the best intentions of not eating too much, but as soon as you are asked if you want more,
you will get more. As the New York Times once wrote, when McDonald’s
asks you if you want fries with that it already knows the answer. It’s not just the spoken word, either. Lately, some fast-food restaurants have invested
in technology that shows customers many other options on a bright screen stationed in front
of where they are standing. If you are visiting a drive-through restaurant,
new technology can now recognize your license plate and quickly understand what you ordered
in the past. That way, the company can know what options
to flash up in front of you. It will know if you are partial to super-sizing
meals or buying a milkshake. As one person told the New York Times, “These
sorts of technologies are making it hard for people to just find some reasonable moderation.” It’s the same with Value meals. The restaurants know very well that you’ll
more often than not go for them even though you went in with the best intentions of getting
one solitary burger. You see, when you look at prices a place in
your brain called the orbitofrontal cortex starts to fire up. Scientists have found that when a person buys
something knowing there was a better deal, brain activity shows some amount of pain. That’s the reason there’s always a good
offer only if you spend more and eat more. In a nutshell, as soon as you walk through
the door there’s a lot of manipulation going on, but as you’ll soon see, maybe that’s
the least of your worries. 6. The portions keep getting bigger
Since the 1950s the USA and a slew of other countries have reported an obesity crisis,
and in some part, you can blame fast-food. You can find lots of restaurants that have
sandwiches that contain just under or just over 1,000 calories. And that’s before you start counting the
calories in the drinks and the fries. Burger King’s “The Rodeo King Sandwich”
weighs in at 1,250 calories. Dairy Queen's six-piece basket of “Honey
Hot Glazed Chicken Strips” contains 1,600 calories. A 12-inch Classic Italian Sub at Quiznos has
1,400 calories in it. That’s a lot of calories to be consuming. Try burning those items off at the gym and
you’ll find yourself having to walk home with the elliptical machine on your back. Back in the day, there was no such thing as
these giant meals. We are living in an era of the mega-burger. The thing is, we are suckers for punishment. If restaurant A offers a bigger burger than
restaurant B and they cost the same, we generally go for the value option. Remember it’s painful to not feel we have
gotten a good deal. The drinks are much bigger, too. In the 50s, a soda was just 7 ounces. These days a small soda is 16 ounces and a
large, 32 ounces. Some restaurants have been known to offer
64-ounce drinks, which might contain 800 calories. Add to that a large fries, with around 460
calories in many places, as well as a burger, and you’ve got yourself a meal containing
almost as many calories than an average person should consume in an entire day. There’s also the fact that restaurants have
over time re-named their drinks. For some places, what used to be large is
now medium. What used to be medium is now small. Customers think they are getting a great bargain,
but you have to remember that food costs are less than operating costs for the restaurants. Giving you more doesn’t hurt them so much. They just want you to keep coming back. 5. Tattooed food
When you order something that’s supposedly been flame-grilled, it likely hasn’t gone
through this process. It will still have the black grill marks on
it, but those have been added to the meat during processing. The marks are actually branded on by the supplier. As for the smokey taste, that comes from the
processing period, too. It’s called adding “solution” to the
patties, with some patties being made up of around 20 percent solution. This solution might consist of a bunch of
preservatives, salt, animal fats, and flavorings. According to the experts, it works, people
love seeing those grill marks even though they should know they are not real. It’s good for the companies since paying
for branded grill marks is a lot cheaper than installing grills in restaurants. Instead, the meat is blasted with hot air
when it’s first cooked, and then it might have a date with a machine that makes the
grill mark, such as the “CM-40 II Charmarker”. Now for something a little more frightening. 4. What’s in a chicken nugget? McDonald’s has taken a lot of flak over
the years for its famous chicken McNuggets and their lack of chicken, but if you go to
the company’s website now you’ll read that they contain “100 percent white meat
chicken.” Still, you can find a study published by The
American Journal of Medicine in 2013 that talked about many chicken nuggets that were
tested by scientists. The study didn’t mention which restaurants’
nuggets were featured, but said after testing it found at most places the nugget consisted
of around 50 percent meat. So, what was in the rest of the nuggets, you
might wonder with some degree of consternation? The scientists wrote they found, “ground-up
bone, blood vessels, nerve, and connective tissue.” Even worse, scientists at the University of
Mississippi Medical Center said what can often be found is a similar mash-up as what you
might find in dog food. This is the sludge-type meat you’ve all
likely seen, sometimes called “meat slurry” or “liquefied meat.” There is something called “mechanically
separated meat.” This is basically a process in which all the
meat left on the animal carcass is blasted off and then put through a sieve. The entire animal is not ground down and turned
into mush, but all the edible tissue comes off. You might still find this kind of meat in
things such as hot dogs and chicken nuggets, or even some patties, but if what you’re
eating contains mechanically separated meat by law the packaging should state as such. This kind of process doesn’t involve any
beef since people were concerned about mad cow disease. When it comes to pork, only 20 percent of
your hotdog if bought in the US can contain the sludge. With chicken, it seems the product could contain
100 percent of mechanically separated meat. As for it being a public health risk, most
experts say if the product has been made in a safe environment then it should be as safe
as any other meat. It’s also usually treated with something
called ammonium hydroxide. This is to get rid of dangerous bacteria. Still, the European Food Safety Authority
said, “High-pressure production processes increase the risk of microbial growth.” 3. Would you like a finger with that? You might not be surprised to hear that sometimes
strange and even dangerous things are found in the products at fast-food restaurants. It was said in 2019, Mcdonald’s sold 2.36
billion burgers worldwide. That worked out at around 75 burgers a second. Burger King sells a similar number of burgers,
so if you add up all sales from fast-food restaurants, well, the numbers are mind boggling. That’s one reason why sometimes things go
wrong, and when they do, you can be sure you’ll hear about it. In 2011, it was reported that a man in the
US was suing Burger King after eating a Triple Stacker burger and finding a needle from a
syringe had pierced his tongue. During his 6-day stay in the hospital, another
needle was retrieved from the man’s small intestine. In 2010, the media reported that a man had
settled out of court after he bit into a Burger King burger and discovered it contained a
condom. According to the guy’s lawyer, he “sustained
pain and suffering, vomiting, nightmares, mental and emotional distress.” Sure he did. In 2008, a guy in the UK had just opened his
sweet chili chicken sandwich from Subway only to find a four-inch knife baked into it. His wife said later, “Something small like
a hair you could understand - accidents happen - but not a knife.” The same year, at a Subway restaurant in New
York City, a man said he found a 7-inch blade in his sandwich. He apparently only got as far as biting into
the handle. Other things found in fast-food meals have
been band-aids, feathers, lungs, a human tooth, chicken heads, a mouse, bullets, painkillers,
household nails, human skin, and even a finger. Quite a few bits of fingers have been found
in fact, notably one at Arby’s. A woman once tried to claim compensation from
Wendy’s on another occasion, after saying she’d found a finger. The truth was, she’d placed it there herself. She’d been given it by her husband who’d
bought it from a co-worker who’d had an accident at work. 2. Healthy might not be healthier
Ok, so you’re the type of person that only eats all the healthy stuff when you go to
a fast-food restaurant. You know, items like a Taco salad. Well, when you look at all the things those
salads contain, they aren’t a healthy option at all. The average fast-food taco salad may contain
900 calories and 55 grams of fat. That’s as much as the average burger and
fries. Then there are items such as McDonald’s
“Fruit & Maple Oatmeal.” This kind of thing was created to attract
more health-conscious people to the restaurant. It’s not actually that healthy, though,
just because it contains a lot of sugar. You’ll get some health benefits from such
a meal, but it’s also like eating a full candy bar. The word “bland” is usually not in a fast-food
chain’s vocabulary. Maybe you like to go for the salad option,
but the problem with fast-food salads is they so often come with those tasty creamy sauces,
bits of bacon, fried chicken, or tacos. That’s the conclusion that was come to by
“The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine” when they went in search of fast-food
salads. McDonald’s “Crispy Bacon Ranch Salad”
for instance, had more fat and calories than a Big Mac. Cheesecake Factory’s BBQ Ranch Chicken Salad
contains 1,250 calories. The same goes for some smoothies. They can contain a lot of sugar, sometimes
having as much as 900 calories. The truth is, fast-food restaurants are just
likely not the best places to go if you want to eat healthily and are counting calories. As for pizza, that most wonderful invention
bestowed on humankind, doesn’t it sometimes come with olives, onions, and other veggies
that we can feel proud of eating? Well, you should know that Americanized fast-food
pizza is different from your traditional Italian pizza, especially if it was actually made
in Italy. American fast-food pizzas usually contain
much more bread, way more fat, way more salt, lower quality ingredients and are generally
just much more calorific. Remember, this is all about you coming back
for more and feeling you’ve got a good deal. We looked at how many calories were in one
slice of a fast-food restaurant’s 14-inch large pizza. It all depends on the style of the pizza,
and of course what the toppings are. One slice could be as low as 180 calories
if it’s just cheese and tomato pizza, but if you’re thinking about eating all eight
or ten slices that’s still a lot of calories. One slice of Pizza Hut's Supreme pizza contains
400 calories and 740 mg of sodium. How many of those could you eat? The American Heart Association says you should
try and consume less than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day. We are guessing some of our viewers could
easily finish a full, large Pizza Hut pie. Some other pizzas we found contain over 600
calories a slice and over 1,400 milligrams of sodium. Burger joints might find themselves being
criticized the most, but in terms of sheer calories, eating full pizzas is arguably the
biggest enemy at the gates to your belly. Then again, swing by Wendy's and grab yourself
a “Pretzel Bacon Pub Triple Cheeseburger” (1,520 calories, 1,910 mg sodium), and then
head over to Sonic for an “Oreo Peanut Butter Shake” (1,720 calories, 1,040 mg sodium),
and get yourself the Cajun fries from Popeyes (804 calories 1,761 mg sodium), and you won’t
be faring much better than the pepperoni pizza addicts of this world. 1. Crowded burgers
Some of you might think that when you eat a slab of meat from a burger restaurant, you’re
eating one cow. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Your patty could contain bits of meat from
over 100 cows. This doesn’t mean it’s any less ethical
or more dangerous than eating a piece of steak, but some people have said that we are so detached
from what we eat that we don’t even think about the hundreds of animals living on packed
farms that go into one patty. Fast-food firms seem to have cleaned up their
acts somewhat when it comes to how cattle are treated, but let’s be honest here, industrialized
farms can’t be the best places in the world. As for the slaughter, that sounds just awful. Reports state that sometimes the transportation
part is cruel, with one worker saying he saw partly conscious animals being cut up after
a terrible ride in the truck. It’s hardly a secret that cattle and poultry
on some of those massive industrial farms sometimes have an existence from an animal
nightmare, but fast-food restaurants would rather show you cartoonish images of animals
than chickens suffocating in their own poo. We can’t speak for all farms in all countries
of course, but we can’t deny the horrors of factory farming. Those farms are generally kept as far away
from the consumer’s eyes as is possible. For good reason, too, because they might turn
you off the food. But we’ve saved the best secret about food
for last… I’ve been trying out Noom for the last couple
of weeks, and I’m learning a whole new way to think about food and eat healthier. After taking their free quiz, Noom provided
me with a customized plan with everything broken down into a series of easy to understand
mini courses. Fans of the Infographics Show will love these,
since they aren’t just about what to eat, but why certain foods are better than others
and the psychology behind why we eat the way we do. Their meal logging tool is the best I’ve
ever tried, with a simple color coding system that makes it easy to see the calorie density
of foods you’ve consumed, and how many in each group you should try to have the rest
of the day. So it won’t feel like you ruined your day
just because you hit a fast food drive through for lunch. Go take your own free 30-second quiz using
the link in the description and get started on your journey with Noom right now! Now you need to watch this, “What If You
Only Drank Coke (Soda) and Nothing Else?” Or, for something to make you laugh, “I
Only Ate Fast Food For 30 Days And This Is What Happened - Funny Challenge.”
