Lab Tests: McDonald’s ‘Devastates’ Gut Health in 10 Days
We all know food at McDonald’s is virtually unfit for human consumption. Now, disturbing new lab results have reportedly demonstrated the true extent of the damage you are doing to your body when you eat fast food. Specifically, we’re talking about the ‘devastation’ of your gut health — the attack on the most important part of your biological immune response.
In a report that really brings into focus just what’s going on when we throw a bunch of chemical additives together with some ‘meat-like substances,’ a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London used one unlucky college student (who also happened to be his son) to see what truly goes on in our stomachs when we chow down on some quarter-pounders.
It goes way beyond just super sizing your pant size and clogging up your arteries.
According to professor Tim Spector, whose research on the effects of McDonald’s food on the gut are published in his book The Diet Myth, something really unexpected happened. Speaking on what happened to his test subject (his college student son):
“His gut bacteria were “devastated.”
In just 10 days of consuming Big Macs, chicken nuggets, fries, and Coca-Cola, Spector’s son was found by laboratory fecal testing to lose nearly 1,400 types of bacteria species from his gut – that’s nearly 40% of his total variety. What’s worse is that these did not return after he switched back to a normal diet.
This is really concerning news. It’s the kind of news that helps bring the full picture into view when it comes to the average American diet. As you probably know, I’ve been passionate about the secret to gut health — probiotics and the balance of bacteria — for quite some time.
It was back in 2011 when I told you about the ‘new’ research that revealed the way in which antibiotics were actually leading to mental illness. This is something that’s now being covered by the mainstream press years later.
But let’s go back to these findings. The discovery is extremely important not just because it shows how damaging fast food can be to the body’s main defense systems, but because it shows how lasting the damage can be. If we don’t take the proper steps to recover our ‘good’ probiotic bacteria, we can suffer for what may end up being a long time.
Here are my tips to get that ‘good’ bacteria back and regain some balance:
- Take a high quality probiotic with at least 1 billion CFU (colony forming units)
- Eat fermented foods like kefir on a routine basis
- Drink fermented teas like kombucha on a regular basis
And, even if you’re starving on an island following a shipwreck, think twice about eating McDonald’s again.
Additional Sources:
Image cropped and sourced from:Â monicamuller/Flickr
I make my own fermented food. In a large jar I put rinsed chopped cabbage, red bell pepper, grated ginger, cilantro, celery, then cover with 2 tb Himalayan salt, and 2 tb honey in filtered water, pour over top to cover, put 1 large cabbage leaf on top, store on countertop, open lid daily to air and push down contents, repeat for 5 or so days till you like the way it tastes then store in fridge, use within 1 month.
while hes correct about the poison food that is McDonalds, I found this article very lacking in relation to how to get the Bacteria back on track. only probiotic methods are mentioned ( which fits the direction the article is going in) when Prebiotic is a hell of allot more important for the most part then you have to make sure you are ingesting human compatible foods (a dairy product full of bacteria ain’t going to work very well) that are also clean (organic and or wild). it has been scientifically proven that a pre biotic diet makes staggering improvements in relation to friendly bacteria in the body then a pro biotic diet does in fact it was observed that taking things like probiotics capsules, yogurt have little to no effect in comparison.
your best bet would be to stop buying rubbish products and go get your self some healthy green organically grown fruit and vegetables along with a slow juicer and a bullet blender of some variant and consume mostly that and reduce animal products especially meats. ignore industry twats and do the right thing for a change lol and its super easy with a juicer and blender! no or very little chewing required lol!
This wasn’t scientific at all and proves nothing. There are literally a hundred factors that could result in a change in the count of gut flora and the “study” didn’t control for any of them; many of which are not related to the food at all. The soda alone probably had a lot to do with it; the beverage is highly acidic which can easily kill off a lot of gut bacteria. If it was diet cola, the artificial sweeteners could also result in a substantial shift in the kinds of bacteria seen. Was the single subject’s diet prior to this keeping gut flora diversity artificially high, such as through the use of probiotics, prebiotics, and fermented foods? How accurate was the method for measuring gut diversity? How much meat did the subject eat prior? Switching between mostly plant-based diets and mostly meat-based diets changes gut bacteria. Not that any of this matters. A double blind sample group of 20 would be considered too small by many. A single experiment on a single subject where both subject and experimenter are fully aware of the aim of the study and have a personal and financial interest in getting certain results? That’s not science – that’s a joke.
Side note- McDonalds has been shifting to sourcing some of their food from farms that don’t use antibiotics, meaning it’s possible you get fewer antibiotics from their food on average than what you do from your local supermarket, which makes me further suspect of the author’s findings.
You are quite right, this was not a “Study”. Although the article does not make any claim that it was a “Study”, in fact yours was the first mention of the word.
In reality, it would be an experiment, one that identified some possibly disturbing information that may well warrant further study (i.e. a proper study) that would take into account and control for many of the factors that you rightly point out.
It is good news that McDonalds is sourcing their ingredients from suppliers who use less (or no) antibiotics. Although, I suspect that you might be correct in that the broader nutritional makeup of the food (e.g. large amounts of Sugar in the drinks and other foods) may be having a large effect on changing the gut bacteria.
Definitely an issue that could do with some real study.
Could you help me access the actual lab research results. I have been running into A LO of naysayers who want copies of the actual evidence (research article). Thanks!