I’m on holiday and was driving for nearly nine hours today. After a good breakfast and no lunch, we got desperate for dinner in Inverness, Scotland. The rain was torrential and we were going to be quite late arriving at the B&B unless we grabbed something quick. We opted for Mickey Dees.

I rarely eat this crap, and when I do, it’s meat only. No buns, no French fries. Just the burger patties. That’s what we did tonight too. I had some hamburgers and one Big Mac. What was the result? I bit of an upset stomach after an hour. It was actually some moderate cramping. My better half felt similarly poor.
What were the culprits then if not the buns? Let’s assume that it was 100% British and Irish beef that I ate, and McDonald’s learnt their lesson from a few years ago when they were outed over their use of ammonium hydroxide in “washing” their meat. The beef I ate was still far from grass fed organic. Who knows what’s in there? (Well, that’s an idea for another post).
What about the special sauce in the Big Mac? Let’s look at the ingredients from McDonald’s themselves: water, rapeseed oil, spirit vinegar, gherkins, glucose-fructose syrup, sugar, modified maize starch, EGG yolk, spices (contains MUSTARD), salt, thickener (E 415), natural flavourings, yeast extract, firming agent (E 509).
Readers know what I think of rapeseed oil (aka canola) and its inflammatory properties. I’d bet a lot that the burgers are being fried in the same sh*t. Glucose-fructose, modified maize starch, E509 and E415 are worrisome as well.
So putting it all together, I probably ate poor quality beef and definitely ate unhealthy rapeseed oil along with “food-based” products. I’m not surprised my stomach was unhappy. Next time, I think I’ll just skip dinner too.