[Doomkitty]

I just got this in an email from LIVESTRONG: http://www.livestrong.com/article/55...-egg-mcmuffin/

a) Unbleached wheat flour. Wheat as our grandparents knew it—the four-feet-tall “amber waves of grain”— isn’t the same. For the past 40 years, farmers have been manipulating the gene to grow a crop of two-feet-tall dwarfed wheat that contains gliaden protein, which produces a morphine-like compound that binds to brain receptors and triggers overeating up to 400 extra calories a day! Gliaden has also been linked to inflammatory issues from irritable bowel to heart disease. That's not all: There's also wheat gluten, which may cause digestive problems, headaches, brain fog, fatigue, and other symptoms, and amylopectin A, which is responsible for “wheat belly” (you know, the new “muffin top”).

b) Azodicarbonamide. This hard-to-pronounce ingredient (first sign it's bad news!) has been banned in Australia, the UK, and in most European countries. In Singapore you can get up to 15 years in prison and penalized nearly half a million dollars in fines for using this chemical as an ingredient. But in the U.S., this asthma-causing allergen is totally legal and often used in foamed plastics, like yoga mats and sneaker soles, as well as in bleach flour as a whitening agent. Apparently impatient American markets can't wait one week for wheat to whiten naturally.

c) High-fructose corn syrup. You know the drill: Stay away from this stuff! Why? Besides giving you a sugar high, it depletes your body of essential minerals and increases food cravings, which can lead to lots of serious issues like obesity.

d) DATEM. Short for diacetyl tartaric acid esters of monoglycerides, this dough conditioner ensures that all muffins are made to look the exact same. Though it is FDA approved, it has been linked to heart muscle fibrosis and adrenal overgrowth in animals.

And that's not all, they list even more bad junk! x.x

I've only had one a few times in my life but I couldn't stop reading. I can't believe this stuff is perfectly legal to serve!

[Ruze]

Yuck! Until last month, I would have one of these every morning!

[forkeeps]

Oh my. Of all the fast foods items in the world, that is definitely my favorite. No more, though. If I ever get a craving again I will make them at home.

[Josiee]

I don't know, here the English muffin that McDonald's uses is just the same as you would get in any grocery store as well as the eggs and ham so singling it out as a McDonald's product kind of is not really fair, they should have just said those types of food in general. I didn't know about the liquid margarine though and that's not something I would buy at the store but I would buy all 3 of the other ingredients.

[lex talionis]

Egg McMuffins aren't good for you, but I think you can say that about a lot of stuff. These chemicals are found in quite a lot of foods and even in "diet" foods. Also, I'd take some of these studies with a grain of salt. Some studies have suggested that Azodicarbonamide is a respiratory sensitizer but you'd need multiple studies to confirm that it actually causes asthma. But a place like Livestrong isn't going to put "Some studies suggest this might be a respiratory sensitizer but others haven't received the same result so the jury's still out", they're going to say that "it causes asthma".

I eat an Egg McMuffin maybe twice a year. I figure I'm doing okay so far as long as I don't consume them every day.

[Stars]

I wouldn't trust Livestrong entirely. They tend to have a lot of inaccurate information. Anyone off the street can write an article for livestrong. I am not saying this article is inaccurate btw.

[427pounder]

High Fructose Corn Syrup is as bad as it gets. I've cut it almost completely out of my diet and I feel a lot better. Just do some research and see how they fatten cows. If it does that to cows, it probably does it to people as well.