Burger vs Fries

#167

After a month of struggling to balance cooking with household chores with office work with hobbies with virtual socializing, we thought it might be nice to order in every once in a while to save ourselves that time and energy in making something at home. Boy, was it bad! I ended up gaining 3 kilograms in just one month. For me, gaining weight used to not be easy at all. Now it's the opposite - hustling to lose weight via cardio, skipping, equipments, yoga, and staying away from rice and other unhealthy complex carbohydrates.

I slowly started tracking my weight on a weekly basis, sometimes losing 500 grams, then gaining it back within a day or two, tracking my calories intake via a food diary, and tracking the exercises I'd do every day, which varied a lot initially and then stabilized to a fixed set. During this period, I was super curious to learn the ingredient proportion and the calorie amounts in everything we ordered - pizzas, burgers and fries, coke (Coca-cola I mean, not the other one!), biryani, pasta, burrito, and more. I found out an interesting thing about one of the most popular food combinations in the world - burger and fries. 

Did you know that you're better off eating 2 burgers rather than 1 burger with fries?

I didn't until I read about it. The burger and fries combo has a lot of fat and carbs, which give it about the same number of calories as a burger, but very little protein. By swapping the fries for a second burger, you double your protein intake while simultaneously reducing both your fat and carbs intake. Burger + fries is listed as one of the top five unhealthiest meals in the fast food category.

Let's look at the calorific values. A typical burger with large fries amounts to around 1200 calories with 1700mg of sodium. Bump it up to a combo with soda to supposedly "save" costs, you'll be consuming a whopping 1500 calories with that one meal alone! A regular burger from McDonalds has 250 calories and 13g of protein. A medium portion of fries has 337 calories but only 3.3g of protein. A burger has 31g of carbs while the fries are at 42g. Moreover, the fries have double the amount of saturated fat (3g) as compared to a burger (1.5g). I'm feeling full and unhealthy just writing this.

Swapping those scrumptious-but-harmful fries for a second burger - what about 'balance' though? For that, it would help to talk about the ratios of the crucial components of any food - carbohydrates, proteins, fat. As most of us learned in school, carbohydrates provide us energy, proteins fuel our muscles, keeping us full for a good period of time, while fat helps us absorb vitamins and minerals and keeps cells healthy. Maintaining a well-balanced ratio of these three components will result in fewer cravings, lesser desire to binge-eat and better control of what we eat.

How about swapping burgers altogether for a more healthy choice going forward, eh?