I am always wont for a deal and when I see a deal that is too good to pass up I rarely do so. However this deal with McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches which has been going on all summer is even too much for my cavernous appetite. As you can see from the attached image, the McDonald’s “2 for $3″ McGriddle deal has a pretty huge calorie consumption for not all that much money.
I have never been a real big breakfast guy; since I’ve been off the road I have been trying to eliminate my consumption of fast foods anyway. So the fact that these McGriddles have a whopping 1120 calories in them makes me want to shy from them even more. There was a report in Time Magazine in January which refutes conventional wisdom that having a big breakfast will make you want to eat less at lunch and dinner.
“Although prior research has associated weight loss with higher caloric intake at breakfast, that link seems to hold up only if the total number of calories remains constant. In other words, you’re more likely to drop pounds if you have your biggest meal in the morning than if you simply add a big morning meal to your regular diet.” The end-all to this study seems to be that people who eat a bigger breakfast tend to eat more generally (lunch, dinner, snacks). So just by eating more at breakfast doesn’t make your appetite go away later on in the day.
The long held to 2000 calorie per day diet is very difficult to maintain; especially so for the McGriddle eater. Even if you don’t have any lunch after having 2 sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddles,, you still only have 880 calories to work with the rest of the day.
Taking that even further your 2000 calorie per day diet is supposed to include grains, vegetables, fruits, meats and beans, milk and only very sparing use of oils. More advice from the 2000 calorie per day diet is to limit sugar intake, eat whole grains, avoid trans-fats, and limit saturated fats, among other suggestions.
Digging down another level I decided to see what the nutrition information was for the McGriddle from these same statistics. Well for one (1) sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddle you are talking about 49% of your daily total fat (32 g), 57% of your daily sodium intake (1360 mg), 60% of your saturated fat intake (12 g) and a whopping 88% of your daily cholesterol (265mg). So with numbers like these on one sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddle you have got to tread very lightly on the rest of your day.
I am always wont for a deal. But the deal with the dietitian devil that McDonald’s still has going for these McGriddles seems to be chipping away at the average person’s attempts for good health and long life.
Sources:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/18/eating-a-big-breakfast-doesnt-cut-daily-calories/
http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/2000-calorie-diet.php
http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-mcdonalds-sausage-egg-cheese-mcgriddles-i84420