Egg and Pancake Breakfast (Fast Food vs Slow Food) DiTuro Productions

Hi, this is Daniel DiTurro. Americans love fast food, with revenues exceeding 200 billion dollars annually, and that excludes sales of hundreds of prepared foods. Fast foods have many advantages. It's convenient, tastes good, affordable, there's no planning, shopping, or cooking, and it saves time. Slow foods give you more control of your diet. You can use higher quality ingredients, there's usually less sodium, it's more nutritious, has fewer chemical additives, provides more variety, and saves money. This series of videos goes beyond the marketing hype to look at the cost, nutrition, and ingredients of fast versus slow foods. In this video, I'm comparing a fast food egg and pancake breakfast with a similar homemade breakfast. The website for this breakfast claims that a fast food breakfast should not come in a bar or glass. That breakfast is served on a plate, a jumbo plate, like the plate for the homemade breakfast. The plastic container in the photo doesn't look like a plate, jumbo or otherwise. Both meals include eggs, bacon, pancakes, and hash brown potatoes. The fast food breakfast provides about 9 ounces of food without syrup, while the homemade breakfast provides about 12 ounces of food, including the butter and syrup. While it appears you're saving 200 calories, it excludes syrup and you're getting 35 percent less food. Adding one pancake syrup adds 120 calories, but I doubt the photo depicts adding one package of syrup. If you did add just one package of syrup, it's equivalent to 60 percent of the pancake weight. Adding two packages gives you more syrup than pancakes. The homemade breakfast is higher in saturated fat if you use butter. Most of the saturated fat comes from the eggs, bacon, and butter. Most of the cholesterol comes from eggs, making only one egg decreases cholesterol to around 300 milligrams. Like most prepared foods, the fast food meal is higher in sodium. The fast food meal is slightly higher in carbohydrates if you only add one packet of syrup. The amount of dietary fiber is about the same. Both are low fiber meals. The amount of sugar is about the same and is dependent on the amount of syrup you add to your pancakes. The homemade breakfast has two tablespoons or 30 milliliters of maple syrup. Checking the ingredients used to make the scrambled eggs, I discovered why they were much yellower than homemade scrambled eggs. Anato food coloring is added in addition to other ingredients you wouldn't normally use at home. Homemade hash brown potatoes don't have disodium dihydrogen pyrophosphate to promote color retention. If you're allergic to soy, these pancakes are not for you. They contain soy flour, soy lecithin, and can be made with soybean oil. One way to cut cholesterol is to use less egg than soy lecithin. When it comes to home cooking, you have a choice between pancake syrup, usually made with high fructose corn syrup, or real maple syrup. With pancake syrup, you usually get artificial flavor, preservatives, and caramel color. Nutritionally, both meals are very similar, especially when you compare equivalent amounts of food. Differences are due to the type of ingredients used, like oil instead of butter. Many prepared foods also provide more sodium than most Americans need. For less than five dollars, you can buy a breakfast providing between 700 and 900 calories. The cost of the homemade breakfast is about two dollars and fifty cents, including butter and maple syrup. Comparing equal amounts of food reduces the cost of the homemade breakfast to under two dollars per serving. Please leave a comment if you have any questions about this video. Thank you for watching and healthy eating!