Why are hamburgers unhealthy if they have bread, cheese and lettuce? Miguel Ángel Lurueña, food technologist and author of From grocery stores to hypermarkets, finally offers an answer to the eternal question. Through a post on Instagram (@gominolasdepetroleo), the author of this book confesses that for himself this was a recurring question before studying the world of food. But, after analyzing his ingredients, he discovered that hamburgers were much more than a seemingly innocuous piece of meat between two buns.
“It has vegetables” is usually one of the main arguments of the staunch defenders of this guilty pleasure. And yes, obviously, lettuce, onion, tomato or cucumber make up the healthiest part of a burger. Furthermore, the main ingredients such as meat, which is usually red and contains more fat than a lean steak, or white bread, often made from refined flour, pose the main risks to our health, according to this expert.
Regular consumption of red meat increases the risk of colon cancer, while too much white bread promotes the onset of diabetes and obesity. In addition, hamburgers usually contain other ingredients that are not at all suspicious of being healthy, such as bacon, melted cheese or condiments such as mustard, ketchup or mayonnaise. Not to mention the context in which they are eaten, accompanied by soft drinks, nuggets or chips.
All these factors make the hamburger a food with a high energy content, but of little nutritional value, due to the excess of salt and fat in its composition. However, not all hamburgers are the same—a simple one is not the same as a full one—and not everyone eats them in the same contexts or with the same frequency. In fact, measuring these aspects is what helps gauge the impact of a hamburger on our global health.
As Lurueña points out, people with healthy habits such as exercising, eating a healthy diet, not smoking and not drinking regularly, can eat a hamburger occasionally without endangering their health. The problem comes when the consumption of this dish becomes habitual in our diet, which could even lead us to reject other foods with much less intense flavors, but infinitely healthier, such as, for example, French omelette, cabbage or an apple. .
