Fast food has always been a treat in my life, from mum taking us for happy meals on the last day of term to hungover pizzas at university but since the beginning of the year I’ve changed my eating patterns to the point that fast food hardly figures.

So when I was on a road trip last week and the sign for McDonalds popped up, I was slightly curious (and hungry!).

I stocked up and started chowing down…. but hang on…. it wasn’t as good as I remember!

The chips were tasteless, soggy and didn’t have the same texture as potatoes. The nuggets were salty, greasy and watery. The milkshake was sugary, synthetic and sickly.

Nothing tasted or felt real compared to all of the fresh fruit, vegetables and whole foods that I’ve been eating, it was all very disappointing. I ate it at twice the speed that I normally eat and hardly tasted it.

Fast forward to an hour or two later and I was experiencing a sugar low the likes that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was exhausted, emotional and fed up. I’ve worked hard to limit the amount of processed food, particularly sugar and caffeine, that I eat and it means that my energy and emotional levels are more level and constant than they’ve ever been. But this ruined it for the rest of the day.

And no wonder….

This is the nutritional breakdown for what I ate (in about 2 minutes). Not only is it ¾ of my daily calories (I’m on a 1500 calories/day plan) but there were 44g of fat and 1.9g of salt. And although there were 32g of protein in it, none of that was high-quality and natural. No wonder I crashed so hard and felt awful.

It was certainly an interesting experiment and one I won’t be repeating. I like my calories, fat, carbs and sugars to come from whole foods, preferably organic ones that I prepare myself so that I know exactly is going into it. That helps me to stay level without the scary highs and lows of processed foods.