Thanks to Todd, who, in a comment critiquing the Freakonomics praise of the McDonald’s double cheeseburger as the world’s greatest food source, found an even better alternative.From Todd Stadler:
Behold the superior alternative that I discovered with less than 10 minutes of Googling:
Peanuts.
At $3.17 a pound (I saw them cheaper on Amazon, down to at least $3/lb.; no idea what you personally can get at your local store), you’d get just under a third of a pound, obviously, for the $1 you’d pay for a McDouble. In case you’re wondering, that’s 1 cup of peanuts. If you’ve ever snacked on peanuts, you know that’s a lot.
In fact, it’s a lot, nutritionally, as well. For that $1, you’ll get 812 calories–more than double the McDouble’s puny 390. You’ll get 37 grams of protein, 60% more than in the McDouble. You’ll get a whopping 47% of your daily fiber, nearly 600% more than the McDouble’s chintzy veggies offer. And you’ll get 36% of your daily iron, up 80% from the McDouble.
In fact, the only nutritional metric I looked at by which the McDouble measured better at all was in daily calcium. The $1 McDouble gives you 20% of yours, while the $1 cup of peanuts gives you 13%. Hardly significant, given the way peanuts far surpass every other metric, and if you really care, buy a five-pound block of cheap American cheese to accompany your 30-pound bag of peanuts.
But then, telling people to eat peanuts just doesn’t pack the same politico-cultural punch as does bandying about a McDonald’s product, does it?
Of course not, unless you are praising Jimmy Carter. And this is historically significant, since scientist
George Washington Carver made the same point. (He also showed that peanuts are uniquely “sustainable” because they put nutrients into the soil instead of leaching them out like most other crops.)
I guess those with peanut allergies–which can have horrific effects, as I have personally witnessed–can always go to McDonald’s.
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