WATCH: Inverness features in Highland climber's radical 8-week McDonald's burger meat-only diet
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Move over Super Size Me, there's a new challenger in town after a Highland climber embarked on an 'extreme diet' experiment which saw him mostly eating only McDonald's burger patties for eight weeks straight.
Dave MacLeod, who hails from Roy Bridge but regularly stopped off in McDonald's outlets in Inverness to stock up during his challenge, was eating up to 16 of the burger patties every day.
But unlike the famous documentary movie by Morgan Sperlock, Mr MacLeod chose to eat the meat only – foregoing any of the other highly-processed ingredients on McDonald's extensive menu and filming his challenge for a feature-length YouTube video.
So that meant "saying no" to "the bun, the sauce, the fries, the coke or the ice cream", telling viewers that "I'm only going to eat the beef and nothing else".
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Setting out his challenge, he added that folk might wonder "why would anyone do that, least of all a nutritionist and professional athlete who normally looks after their diet pretty closely? I understand that a lot of folk might think this is pretty crazy".
But Mr MacLeod added that "it was a way to draw attention to the need to think a bit more carefully about what is in our food and which parts of it are beneficial, harmful or neutral".
Embarking on his video, Mr MacLeod explained to the camera – shortly after stocking up at the McDonald's restaurants at Inshes and Inverness High Street – that his challenge would see him eat mostly just the beef burger patties, but that on days when he needed food before burger menus went active he would opt for the fast food outlet's breakfast eggs instead – again, entirely on their own.
His diet also included the likes of tea with milk, and some sugar-free sports drinks which have zero calories.
He added that each patty was 30 per cent protein, 70 per cent fat and equivalent to 93 calories.
He stressed that the challenge was nothing like the one Morgan Sperlock famously embarked on in 2004 – which the filmmaker was forced to end early after his health deteriorated rapidly.
And he added that his own, more selective choice of McDonald's ingredients was aimed at exploring four questions:
- "Is the meat the unhealthy part of McDonald's meals?"
- "Can a 'beef only' diet help break habits of junk food consumption?"
- "How extreme are so-called 'extreme' diets in health outcomes?"
- "Can these questions be asked and answered on social media?"
Before beginning his challenge he explained to viewers: "I know from conversations both in private and in public on social media that a lot of people have questions about nutrition that they are actually scared to ask for fear of backlash.
"And that doesn't seem like a very healthy position for society to be in."
And just how did he get on when he came to the end of his eight-week experiment?
"Eating only beef patties from McDonald's for eight weeks had no negative effects on my health that I could find, and possibly some benefit to general health status, to mood, to gut function, to appetite regulation and maybe even sport performance," he said.
"Personally I have no intention of continuing to eat at McDonald's but I wouldn't have any worries about eating a carnivore diet myself over the longer term."
But he stressed: "I want to be clear on what I'm not suggesting though, I'm not suggesting that anyone should actively choose to eat McDonald's food or a carnivore diet.
"That's not the point of this video. It's self-evident from any study of diets around the world that eating a mixture of animal and plant foods can result in excellent lifelong health for most people."
Mr Macleod, who is a professional all-round climber and also has an undergraduate degree in sports science and physiology, an MSc in sport and exercise science and an MSc in human nutrition, said he spends his time studying and writing about sports science and nutrition and making mountain films.
He added that if people wanted to restrict red meat intake then "at least make sure that we're doing it for the right reason".
"I don't think that reducing red meat intake to improve health is one of them. People sometimes decide to reduce meat consumption for ethical or environmental reasons. Personally I prefer just to source animal products that have been sourced in an ethical and environmentally-sustainable manner."
He explained that he felt there was a legitimate debate to be had over "how to environmentally source diets at a world level" but added that these can be "derailed" by the idea that meat is unhealthy and that there's no downside to its restriction.
Wrapping up, he said one big take away from his challenge had been seeing how busy McDonald's was: "It's just crazy, it's mindblowing to me," adding: "The whole meals that they sell are doing a 'superb' job of completing the population transition to obesity and metabolic illness and the collapse of every major health service in the developed world."
He said he'd earlier asked the question "what's an extreme diet" and said to his mind the whole McDonald's meal "and the wider western diet characterised by refined fats and carbohydrates and also dilution of nutrients – to me that's extreme and it's extremely bad and it's destroying health at a blistering pace".
"By contrast my extreme diet of beef patties had markedly different effects to Morgan Sperlock in Super Size Me. I thought the results were pretty good, and in my view those results happened because the diet is a simple whole natural food which is nutrient dense and is absent of refined energy.
"And I think that is similar to any diet that increases nutrient density. And that's generally easier to achieve if you include animal foods in the diet – especially eggs and red meat which are actually two of the best foods that I know about. Nutrient dense fruits and vegetables are also good foods of course. There is more than one way to have a healthy diet for most people."
