FOOD FOR THOUGHT: THE ALTERNATIVES
Out with your mates and craving fast, convenient food that doesn’t contain twice your daily calorie intake and leave you looking like a London bus? jellyellie, a typical English teenager, knows exactly how you feel. Fed up with the seeming lack of alternatives, she sets out to uncover the healthy eating options available on our high streets to help you be the trendsetter in your group.

Yesterday, I’d had enough. I was out with some mates and we fancied a bite to eat. We examined our options: McDonald’s, KFC, Subway and Burger King. And some little café that costs the earth. We’d spent the weekend eating junk food and thoroughly wanted a change, but where were we supposed to go?

It’s a common dilemma that more and more teens are facing today. Aware of a shift towards healthy eating, many teens are keen to ditch the billions of burgers and fries that are sold worldwide each year in favour of something more nutritional. I’m not saying I’m a health-obsessed twiggy freak – I love a good Whopper every now and again – but sometimes we just feel like something natural, unprocessed, and not guilt inducing.

We all know that fast food, junk food, whatever you want to call it – is bad for us. I recently stumbled upon NutritionData.com, a nifty little website that has databased the nutritional content of the majority of food available from restaurants across the world. For example, it shows that a McDonald’s Big Mac has 590 calories and 34g of fat, well over half your recommended daily allowance (RDA). Burger King’s large fries, commonly shared between a couple of friends, contains 600 calories and almost half your RDA of salt. Even a healthy-sounding tuna 6” sub from Subway contains 450 calories and 22g of fat. Now, all these numbers might not mean much by themselves, so let me illustrate the point: those 600 calories alone would take 4 hours of walking at 2mph to burn off. And, well, who has time for that? I could go on, but I think you get the point: it’s heading towards a major coronary.

“But,” I hear you cry, “it’s convenient, quick, and easy. It’s sociable, and fits our teen lifestyles”. Yes it is, and yes it does. And that’s why it’s so hard to let go of it; despite a recent ban on the advertising of junk foods to under nines on TV, and the Jamie Oliver backed push to promote healthy eating in schools, we still don’t want to banish those golden arches from our lives.

So how can we compromise? Surely they have some healthy options; maybe a nice chicken salad, or light turkey wrap. They’ve got leaves, tomatoes – healthy food! Right?

Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to investigate. Don your long black mac, bowler hat, and stoke that pipe – wait, forget the pipe, it’s bad for you – we’re going on a mission, Holmes.

First, to McDonald’s. Imagine it’s 11pm, you’ve just been out with your mates, and you’re heading back home – all the while trying to fight off those pangs of hunger. Cap’n! McDonald’s, starboard bow, full steam ahead! Open the doors, to the tills - a haar! Enthusiasm like that probably dwindled four paragraphs ago when you learnt of the horrific contents of a Big Mac, but you still need something to eat, so let’s examine the options. First up, you can’t go wrong with a delicious Caesar Salad (unless you forget to ditch the sauce, which has over twice as many calories as the salad itself and over four times as much fat). But with over 90% RDA of Vitamin A, not only could this salad be described as vaguely, gasp, healthy, but it only has 90 calories and 4g of fat. It’ll fill you up good’n’proper too, so what are you waiting for? Ah, you don’t like salads? Don’t want to be seen as a health-obsessed skinny anorexic teenage girl, when actually you’re a pretty average, well-balanced sorta person?

Well, for you, my spies inform me a quick nip across the road to Subway will lead to success – they obviously knew we were coming, as they have a range of “Under 6” butch 6” subs with less than 6g of fat. From ham to roast beef, turkey breast and chicken, there’s even a veggie delight for the animal-lover in you. Again, just skip the dressing, and you’ll walk out feeling pretty good about yourself.

Ok, so what if your McDonald’s and Subway have both just been burnt down by some mad ex-employee, but who, luckily enough for you, was never fired by your local Burger King? In that case, I would advise the Baked Potato with chives, containing just 250 calories and 0g of fat. Aha! Now there’s something I bet you didn’t know Burger King sold. See, that’s what I mean – I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but every time I walk into a fast food “restaurant” I immediately think my only options are burgers and chips. I know the salads exist, but they just don’t seem, very, filling (but they are. You should try one some time). So Burger King sell baked potatoes, Pizza Hut sell pasta (490 calories, 6g of fat), and McDonald’s sell carrots. What has the world come to?

So that’s McDonald’s, Subway and Burger King down, and just KFC left to go. This isn’t too difficult – despite its 29% RDA of salt, the Tender Roast® Sandwich (without sauce) has just 270 calories and 5g of fat, and is an excellent source of protein.

As we come to the end of our mini investigation, I hope you are feeling a little perkier. Life is, once again, good – we can go out with our mates, not feel sick when we step inside a fast food restaurant, eat a relatively healthy meal and come out again feeling good about ourselves. You don’t have to spend more money, go hungry, or look like a sissy in front of your mates to eat well.

P.S. Yesterday we ended up in the “expensive” café – I paid £2.50, less than the price of a Whopper, for a cheese and gammon toastie on multi-grain bread and stuffed full of salad. Now there’s food for thought.