McDonald's food safer than school food

The folks at McDonald's and other fast-food chains must be smiling this week. A headline on a USA Today story the other day pretty much said it all: "Fast-food standards for meat top those for school lunches." To echo the reaction I'm sure many fast-food executives had when they saw it: Ha!

An investigation by the paper found that fast-food companies such as McDonald's and Burger King test their beef five to 10 times more than the meat that is bought for schools by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Same goes for chicken. The USDA supplies schools with meat from old chickens - so-called "spent hens" that are past their egg-laying primes - whereas KFC won't touch them. As J. Glenn Morris, a professor of medicine and director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, puts its:

We simply are not giving our kids in schools the same level of quality and safety as you get when you go to many fast-food restaurants. We are not using those same standards.

If you're too lazy to read the in-depth USA Today report, you can watch an ABC News report that distills it down into a minute-and-a-half (in a way that only television can) by going here.

This goes to show that while fast food may generally be high in calories, fat and salt, it is - thanks in large part to technology - generally safe and won't poison you. Unlike the lunch lady.

(Image courtesy of DaniDraws)