Scottish McDonald's meals are loaded with bad fat

One of the big selling points about McDonalds is that no matter where you are, you know what you are getting. Same Golden Arches, same crap in a bun, same chemical shake...or is it?

A group of Danish doctors recently carried out an interesting experiment looking at the type of fat in food from McDonalds and KFC. During their travels round the world (including Glasgow and Aberdeen) they bought some of the local fast food and analysed it for its 'trans fat' content. Trans fat is not good for you - high consumption is directly related to high risk of heart disease. The results are interesting, and can be read only if you buy the New England Journal Medicine paper so let me summarise:

Scottish McDonald's doesn't do too well - chicken and fries from Glasgow and Aberdeen contain about 8 grams of trans fat. To put this in context - if you ate this much trans fat every day (and try telling me that some Glaswegians don't!) then your chance of heart disease would go up by 25%. Of the 24 outlets tested, Glasgow was the fourth worst; the best performing meal came from Denmark and had only 0.33 grams of trans fat.

KFC on the other hand came out a bit better with Aberdeen in particular performing well - Doric chicken and fries contain only 1 gram of trans fat.

I've no big anti-fast food agenda, a sausage McMuffin is just about one of the best hangover cures in the world. It does howver make you wonder - if McDonalds can produce a relatively healthy Danish meal - why can't they be arsed doing so in Glasgow?

technorati tags: Scotland, Aberdeen, Glasgow, McDonalds, KFC, fat, health, food, fast+food