this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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All good points, but another big contributor here is flame retardants and packaging additives. Also, heating things in plastic containers. These come into play at various stages of ingredient prep/storage/shipping and during final prep, packaging and delivery to the consumer.
The boxes and paper used to wrap your burgers, fries, nuggets, various sandwiches, pizza, most food, are loaded with those PFAS chemicals and others designed to prevent fires near the grills and ovens, as well as help them stand up to grease, etc.
There's also several recent studies about micro/nano-plastics resulting from microwaving/heating in plastic containers.
More and more, anywhere you eat, the flavors of the packaging has become more and more pronounced over the years, in many cases over riding the flavors of the foods themselves. Surely, none of it is good for you.
It seems more and more difficult to avoid unless you're preparing food from unprocessed ingredients at home. There's just too much pressure at restaurants to deliver quickly. Especially, at your drive thru friendly establishments such as McD's etc.
Speaking of packaging --
If you're old enough, you remember when McDonald's served its larger sandwiches in styrofoam clamshell containers. I believe they also used styrofoam cups for drinks. They switched to paper packaging for sandwiches, and solid plastic for drink cups, when there was public concern about CFCs and the ozone layer. (Tangent: the entire world came together to ban CFCs, which fixed the ozone hole.) CFCs were a common substance used to "blow" plastic into styrofoam.
But McDonald's clamshell packaging never used CFCs.
Makes a lot of sense. I don't know a lot about packaging over the years. But, a lot of it seemed more neutral in flavor, from what I can remember. Hard to tell how accurate memory is though.
Honestly, I didn't even really recognize it until they brought out the Grand Mac and I tried one. "Ohhh that's the Big Mac I remember!"