Joe McNamee: I enjoy some fast food but here's why I avoid McDonald's like the plague

McDonald’s news that didn’t fill me with joy

News of the planned opening of 25 new McDonald’s in Ireland over the next five years, doesn’t fill me with quite the same joy with which others, including national politicians, have received the news. 

People always presume I’m too ‘snobby’ or ‘elitist’ to ever eat fast food, but I’m ever partial to a good fish supper or a decent kebab. However, I avoid like the plague, McDonalds, Burger King and all those other American fast food models. Probably because I know too well the allure of ‘dishes’ crafted in labs, combining high-sugar, high-fat and excess salt to hit that sweet spot driving dopamine-dense addiction.

In Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Penguin, 2001), a critical deep dive into the inner workings of US fast food, author Eric Schlosser defined it as the ‘crave factor’, a compulsive desire for more, particularly targeting children to establish lifelong eating habits and taste preferences.

Morgan Spurlock’s subsequent film, Super Size Me (2004), documented the negative impacts of eating only at McDonalds for 30 days. He was late to the party — I undertook a similar experiment years prior at my first job, in a Cork city fast food restaurant modelled on Wendy’s, another recent arrival to these shores. 15 years old, I was rail thin, with the pristine skin of an alabaster Virgin Mary. I also came from a home where food was functional but flavourless. Now I had unfettered access to seemingly the most flavoursome food in the world.

Burgers, cheeseburgers (‘cheese’ being processed orange slices with an artificial sheen), quarter-pounders, ‘Maxi’ burgers’, novelly enhanced by ‘healthy’ iceberg lettuce and a secret sauce that squirted all over my candy-stripe work-shirt with every ravening bite. Dense, sludgy milk shakes, slow-moving frozen lava of liquid sugar, flavoured with chocolate, strawberry or vanilla syrups.

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My mouth became a permanent blister, wolfing down deep-fried apple turnovers, oily, crunchy pastry, wincingly sweet apple, hotter than a dragon’s nostril; burns I treated with bucket-size cups of sugary, glacier-cold Coke. Oh, the French fries, salty, crisp crystal meth of fast food, an instant hit, immediately demanding another. I devoured them constantly, mindlessly, even in between eating. I ate them in my dreams. Sheer heaven. Until it wasn’t.

My once lean frame (yes, I pine for those days) was now bloated and fattening, pouchy belly, puffy, greasy face, more boils and pustules than a biblical leper. Energy and mood, no better, the once chirpy kid with the energy of a coked-up whippet became a cranky ‘old man’, eternally exhausted. The magic was gone. I worked there for almost two years, eventually subsisting on cold milk, coffee and cigarettes (different times, before wellbeing and TikTok).

After I left the job, I never again ate another American franchise fast-food meal, even in America. I also refused to buy one for my children. 

I’d buy my oldest a Happy Meal toy, never the Happy Meal. I didn’t even bother with the toy for my younger pair. It wasn’t a blanket prohibition. What they did at school birthday parties, or with malleable aunts and uncles or with their own money was their business. I’m a firm believer in freedom of choice.

That belief wavers, however, when I see my taxes used to treat preventable diet-related health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease, with fast food and ultra-processed foods the primary culprit.

For too many people in Ireland, fast food isn’t an ‘occasional treat’ but most of their daily diet. Curiously, for all the junk my three kids, now teens and adult, still put away, American-style fast food is never on their list.

Let me finally give over my pulpit to one of Ireland’s finest and most conscientious clinicians, HSE obesity lead Prof Donal O’Shea, who was deeply upset in 2024 by the building of a Ronald McDonald House Charities support unit at the entrance to the new children’s hospital: “I don’t get angry often, but the positioning … is something I have not been able to shake off or get past. To allow branding outside the most expensive hospital ever built remains just incredible to me …. We have an obesity epidemic that is driven by ultra-processed foods and this is advertising”.

Table talk

Paul O’Dea pictured outside The South Gate Bar. Picture: Chani Anderson

A new restaurant opening of a different order has dining Cork in a tizzy with The South Gate set to launch in the coming days.

At the bottom of Barrack St, the former Flying Enterprise bar complex with its spacious courtyard has undergone a major renovation, including a brand-new upstairs restaurant space to be run by chef Nicolas Alegre, most recently executive head chef at Greene’s, where he turned out some very tasty food. Interiors and menus are still under wraps and though it is backed by the owners of Royal Palace and Pearl River, two longstanding Chinese food stalwarts in the city, I suspect the offering will be more general casual dining, designed with the broadest appeal possible in mind. Makes a pleasant change to report on a new opening rather than yet another closing restaurant.

Instagram: @TheSouthGateCork

Inchydoney Island Lodge & Spa, one of the most beautifully situated hotels in the land, is doing its best to combat the endless monsoon with the introduction of its new Spanish-style tapas menu.

Head chef Alan Forde and Spanish colleague chef Emilio Lopez unleash a medley of Iberian small plates, including gambas al ajilo; padron peppers; and Caherbeg jambon croquetas, with matching Spanish wines and beer.

inchydoneyisland.com

TODAY’S SPECIAL

While I’m a great fan of fundamental flavours of a fine primary ingredient, lately I’ve been energising my usual ‘brunch-fast’ eggs with Mi Amor, traditional Mexican salsas made by Mexican-born, Dublin-based Paola Almeida.

Best in the range is Cheeky Green, with tomatoes, jalapenos and bird’s eye chillies, though chilli heat is kept in check and there is an uplifting lightness and brightness to the flavour profile, thanks to premium fresh ingredients, including coriander, Mexican oregano, and lime — real sunshine on the plate, €6.50.

miamorsalsas.com