Giant burgers cause jaw injuries in Taiwan
Posted: 08 July 2010 1415 hrs
TAIPEI : Taiwanese dentists have urged fast food chains to drop over-sized hamburgers from their menus following a growing number of jaw injury cases, a report said Thursday.
Patients have developed sore jaws or had difficulties opening their mouths after consuming giant burgers, the China Post quoted professor Hsu Ming-lung of the School of Dentistry at National Yang-Ming University as saying.
Problems can arise when fast-food fans tuck into hamburgers larger than eight centimetres (three inches) high, Hsu said according to the paper.
A human mouth is designed to gape over objects measuring up to four centimetres, and overextending can hurt the joint between the jawbone and the
temporal bone in front of the ears, Hsu said.
By Sien Wee.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading through this article, I too am surprise by this fact that burger over four centimetres long can hurt our joint between the jawbone and the temporal bone in front of the ears. However, instead of asking fast food restaurant to drop the over-sized burger, I think they instead ask the patient to stopping eating it. I am quite positive that the fast-food restaurant will not stop in selling their over-sized hamburgers. Instead it will be more effective to educate those who the people so that they will know the damage of eating such big burger can cause them to have jaw injuries. There are also other ways of solving this problem, like splitting the burger in half and eating them separately. Either way, I am sure that some people who do not care will continue to eat those over-sized burger. There will surely be an increase in the number of people seeking dentists for jaw problem in Taiwan.
Adeline
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with the dentists that the fast food chains should drop over-sized hamburgers from their menu as it resulted in jaw injury. Why do they want to make such humongous burger? Are they not aware that the burger is too big for our mouth? There might be possibility that they want to create a new burger to attract more customers. Alternatively, there might be feedback that the usual burger is not satisfying at all.
As for the consumers, since a normal burger is not filling, they will tend to buy the giant- sized burger to satisfy their stomach. Despite knowing that the burger is so big, they still open their mouth widely to the extent of injuring their jaws when consuming it.
However, if they insist on selling the giant-sized burger, my suggestion to the consumers is that since the burger has double layer which consists of four patties (as shown from the picture), they should eat the first layer which consists of two patties followed by the second layer. This will minimize the chance of hurting their jaws and it is definitely easier to eat it this way.
In conclusion, I still feel that the fast-food chains should drop over-sized burger for the benefits and well-being of the consumers.
By Dewei.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article, I think that the fast-food chains should stop selling these over-sized hamburgers immediately. This is because more patients are having jaw problems as written in the article.
According to the dentist, a human mouth is designed to gape over objects measuring up to four centimetres. However, the hamburger is double the height of what our human mouth can gape, thus this is the reason why the consumers’ jaw are hurt. Therefore, something must be done in order to stop this situation from worsening.
To effectively and efficiently stop this situation, I suggest that the Taiwanese Government should step in to stop the fast-food chains from producing these over-sized hamburgers. However, if the fast-food chains insist on selling their over-sized hamburgers, the Government should close down or fine these fast-food chains. Media can also do their part in conveying messages through televisions and radios to tell their people the consequences of consuming these over-sized hamburgers. As picture says a thousand words, posters of swollen jawbones etc should be pasted in front of all these fast-food chains to remind the consumers about the consequences.
By Yeh Gee
ReplyDeleteIt is shocking that fast food restaurants in Taipei do serve over-sized hamburgers that reach a height of more than eight centimetres. The reason that they serve over-sized hamburgers may be to arouse curiosity and attract customers.
People may purchase double-sized or over-sized hamburgers because of the cheaper price as compared to the normal-sized burgers. However, it can be quite harmful to the jaws when people stretch their mouth to consume over-sized hamburgers.
Since the professor have stated that consuming over-sized hamburgers will cause overextending of the mouth and hurt the joint between the jawbone and the temporal bone in front of the ears, it is advisable that fast food restaurants reduce the size of hamburgers to a height of maximum four centimetres.
In addition, I have observed in the fast food restaurants in Singapore that customers do divide their double-sized hamburgers into two portions and consume them separately.
Thus, in my opinion, people who consume over-sized hamburgers should be more aware of their health and think of ways, such as consuming the hamburger in two portions, to avoid jaw injuries.
By Yee Hong.
ReplyDeleteI think this kind of giant hamburgers will be more popular if it is introduce to the western countries such as United States or United Kingdom. Westerns will be much favour towards such a large size of hamburgers because they do eat hamburgers often and from my personal point of view, westerns have a bigger mouth.
But, for the eastern countries such as Taiwan and China, people do most often eat rice or noodles. Compare to hamburgers, the Chinese will still prefer rice to hamburgers as rice has been part of their main dishes for the past thousands years. Therefore, it is ridiculous for the Chinese to swallow such a big piece of hamburger which is over 8 centimetres long as it will easily hurt our jaws when consuming.
The best way is to immediately stop selling this kind of giant burgers and start promoting the normal burgers we use to consume at. It is to prevent further injuries before the problem goes out of control.
After reading this article,I have to agree that this problem has affected so many people have been affected by the size of these new burgers. It has been a serious health problem that doctors are looking into the number of jaw injury cases. It is absurd that a burger has to be such a size for customers. It may be because the fast food industry think that bigger burger sizes are more attractive or "worth" the prices that customers are paying for. Many people tend to purchase these kind of "big" burger meals to satisfy hunger pangs, or just for pure complete fun. There has been challenges in the modern fast food world now, as people try to finish huge burgers and servings together. This is really a very pressing issue to the modern world today. Especially if the younger crowds prefer fast food to healthy traditional Chinese food.
ReplyDeleteBy Teresa