Burger King is never going to be a health food, let’s get that clear. But it might sometimes be the healthy option.
It happened for me once.
Somewhere between 28th December 2017 when at around 3:30am my dad had suddenly died before my eyes, and 4th January 2018, when I had been scheduled to leave the country, but instead was awaiting autopsy results.
I was reminded of it last year whilst travelling a familiar road I had been along countless times since childhood due to my divorced parents living 200miles from one another.
Seeing the sign for burger king brought back memories of what had happened a little over 7 years prior.
A gentle smile found its way across my face as I realised how far in the past it was, both timewise and in terms of its emotionally hold in my body, and that although we may be entering a similar epoch now with the decline of my step-mum’s health, it was a much gentler version of it as she headed towards the end of her life.
Seven and a bit year’s previously, (eight almost to the day as I write now in early January 2026), I was travelling the same road.
It was dark, I was driving on autopilot as I often had on that journey, but this time was unique because I was also in the kind of stupor that only the shock of sudden grief can put you in.
My Dad had just died quite unexpectedly* before my eyes (and those of the various other family members we had managed to gather at the A and E department of the hospital in the 30 minutes or so they had given us as notice that there was ‘no more they could do for him’).
*Side note: it always strikes me as strange that we consider any death ‘unexpected’, since dying is one of the few guarantees in life. But we do. It’s human nature to be perplexed by one of life’s few certainties.
One of the A&E doctors had said: “We just need to make him look presentable, we’re a bit messy when we work, hahaha, so er, we’ll just clean him up a bit and you can come to say your goodbyes. Call anyone who you want to be here, we won’t be able to keep his heart beating for long.”
So, we did, and we did get to see him die.
During that conversation thoughts raced briefly through my mind of what the fuck they had done to him to make him look messy and unpresentable. The vulnerability of his small body being pulled around by them without any sense of the tenderness that he deserved.
Recalling how as I had watched the paramedics carry him on a stretcher down the awkward staircase of my dad and stepmum’s home, his head rolled to the side banging on the wall, and that they had not noticed one of his legs was hanging off the side of the stretcher and caught on the top banister until it was pointed it out to them. This was when I realised, he had at that point become a piece of meat, no longer a human being, and that it was probably the beginning of the end.
It became very clear to me in that moment, that when any of us reaches this point of urgency in the care of the medical profession it is unlikely we will return from it, at least not the same. I guess for the paramedics a mild concussion or bruised limbs were the least of their concerns.
I immediately dismissed that trail of thought. It was ugly, and only likely to make things which were already about as intense as they could feel, even worse.
I stopped in my tracks searching for blame or trying to solve what was inevitable for all of us, and acknowledged what I already knew to be true: that my father was about to die.
The words and mannerisms of the doctor had made me feel like I was simultaneously participating in and observing some strange, dark, satirical theatre scene.
Every time she came into the small room we had been ushered into on arrival at the hospital there was this sense that she was perhaps smirking at the absurdity of the situation.
As soon as we were shown into that small room (a private cupboard through a door on the side of the main waiting room) I knew it was not a sign of positive news.
I had learnt this from watching a hospital drama called Casualty during childhood, the haunting theme music from which always gave me an eerie feeling, because of the certainty that something horrific was going to happen during each episode.
Whenever anyone in Casualty was taken to the small room, it always meant the worst news was coming. I guess this is another of those weird ways that people are shielded from death: nobody wants the looks of agonising horror on the faces of the newly grieved to be witnessed by people who are in for a broken arm or a sprained ankle.
There was a vain hope that maybe this smirking doctor would say: “No, no, he’s not really all messed up and almost dead, his lungs are definitely not deflated and his heart is surely still beating by itself. You’re all actually part of a big prank”, and then Jeremy Beadle would walk out cackling and let us all go home after his film crew had caught the emotive horror and relief flashing across our faces doubtlessly followed by angry outbursts and tears of relief as we either slapped of hugged him, or both.
The only relief was when it was over.
When the beeping and whirring sounds of the respirator, the visible pulsating of my father’s veins as they pumped some ridiculous measure of adrenalin through his system to keep his heart beating which the doctor had quoted to me at some point as if to explain the severity and urgency of the situation, and the palpable tension of anticipation finally stopped.
All of this was of course immediately replaced by another type of horror (aka grief).
As soon as we were taken into that small room an eerie feeling arose in me, similar to the one evoked by the Casualty theme music, only grotesquely amplified, and not erasable by simply covering my ears and closing my eyes to block it out.
During the wait which felt timeless but was probably no more than 2 hours, maybe 90 minutes, each of the few times the doctor entered that small room she seemed to smile or almost be laughing (nervously I expect) while she spoke with us, as if slightly bemused or unsure of something.
She would ask me strange questions about whether he was conscious at home (yes but delirious I would say, the last thing I heard him say with a slurry voice was “merry Christmas”). He had also squeezed my hand tight before they took him (maybe he was saying goodbye?).
It was if she was trying to get a grasp of the situation herself, explaining that in the ambulance they had just inserted a ‘little tube’ into his lungs to drain the fluid, but now his lungs weren’t really working any more.
She assured me that another doctor will hopefully come soon (I never saw that other doctor), as if they might be able to solve the mystery. It felt as if she was hoping that maybe I would be able to give her some trace of information which might provide a clue as to why my dad was no longer breathing on his own and had required a couple of rounds with the defibrillator.
Yet to me, she was supposed to be the one who would know what was going on, who would solve the mystery and tell me it was all going to be ok. But with this bemused and almost panicked look on her face, she really didn’t seem to.
Of course, the being in that small room, and the questions which came on the second entry about my ‘dad’s wishes’ despite any surrealness, did make it clear that she was not about announce the joke or tell us anything was going to be ‘ok’.
Jeremy Beadle did not appear: the stone-cold, pan-faced, heart-wrenching reality of death was surely coming.
And it did, at around 3:30am.
When did Burger King Become the Healthy Option?
Somewhere in the following days, after having carried out the suddenly very grown-up seeming task of going door-to-door with my brothers in the early morning to deliver the news to family members, I drove back to Devon.
I had not slept much. The flashbacks were beginning.
I had been there on a Christmas season visit with the family. There was a party, mostly organised by Dad and my stepmum. A huge lunch on a beautifully laid table: which we all knew beneath the frilly tablecloth and colour-coordinated napkins was some pieces of dusty plywood brought in from the garage, balanced on top of the regular table, and decorated accordingly for such large gatherings.
There were carefully crafted games, a lot of silliness and laughter which went on into the evening when dad ate a cold turkey sandwich. This is what we blamed his vomiting on the next morning: ‘something he ate’, or ‘maybe a stomach bug’.
We had a wonderful time together. A rare occurrence of both my brothers and I being present, with their various children, partners, our aunties, the whole family package.
The next day Dad died amid a tangle of beeping hospital machines as we looked on in disbelief. The family gathering was, in a way, a perfect send-off.
I had borrowed a friend’s car to make that trip. Although she had said not to worry too much about bringing it back based on the circumstances, I did want to return her car so she could continue with her family Christmas. Besides that, I also needed to move out of my accommodation by 3rd January which I had already given notice on due the ‘plan’ to leave the country.
So somewhere between those dates, on that extra dark winter’s night, during the hazy drive back to Devon I realised I was going in the wrong direction.
Somehow, I was seeing signs for the motorway we had left some miles back and was headed in completely the opposite direction to the one I thought I was going.
I guess that was a fat metaphor for how my life was about to unfold over the year which lay ahead, in a totally different direction to that which I thought I would be going.
It was in that moment I felt the rug had been pulled from under me, which in many ways it had.
It was a similar sensation to the one when you realise you’ve been looking at an optical illusion and see something completely unrecognisable in front of you to what you believe you had first seen.
Once the route on that journey was corrected and we were heading back in the ‘correct’ direction, towards Devon again, it was gently suggested to me that pulling over to eat might be a good idea.
We pulled in. Burger King was open.
We went in. I ate something warm.
It grounded me.
In that instance it was definitely the ‘healthy option’.
The alternative would have been not to eat, and who knows what the consequences of that would have been if I was already capable of seemingly turning the car around in space and driving the opposite way to where I was trying to go.
It is so easy to categorise things as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’, forgetting about the context, which is everything when determining what ‘healthy’ actually is for you.
Social media is flooded with ‘diet culture and ‘health shaming’.
Often from ‘professionals’ claiming to be nutritionists or coaches. Who in doing so, are actually only highlighting their lack of professionalism or sensitivity to the nuance of life.
This story might be an extreme example, but it’s a poignant one to highlight that even ultra processed convenience / fast-food, can be a healthy option when circumstance calls for it.
Remembering this is what transforms things from guilt tripping yourself and feeling you are ‘doing wrong’, into fully embodying whatever you are doing as healthy for you in that moment.
This changes the whole experience.
By no means am I telling you to go and eat burger king (but if you want to, be my guest!).
Because trust me, I am someone who would never have thought of eating burger king at all, let alone consider it healthy.
I had been that ‘healthy girl’ who diligently excluded food groups (which can be helpful, in some circumstances), did Yoga asanas ‘every damn day’ (to her own detriment), and was so rigid about her ideas of ‘healthy’ that there was no space to listen to what her body really needed (like rest, for example).
But I am telling you that whatever food and lifestyle choices you make, find peace with them and trust that they are serving you and your wellness in that moment, and then they will be!
Of course, if burger king or ultra processed foods are the mainstay of your diet, that is probably not a sustainable model of healthy and may eventually catch up with you (or not).
But something I loved to tell herbal medicine clients who may have come shrouded in guilt over a food choice they had made was:
“If you are going to eat cake, enjoy the cake. Then it will be good for you!”.
Doing this allows your body to know that the joy of that experience will bring you health benefits which far outweigh whatever the ingredients may be up to.
It is a quantum shift. A frequency upgrade away from shame into embracing what is and expanding into that.
This idea of ‘being with what is,’ is a very big part of Yoga practice, both with the exploration of asanas, and with your mind in daily life.
The lesson
The message which came through clear to me last year on recalling the experience I had had with eating burger king, and suddenly realising that had been the healthy option, is that ‘healthy’ is about context, and how you frame things.
Being at peace with eating burger king or cake is not about ‘making excuses’, ‘being weak’ or ‘lacking will power’ (despite what social media health coaches or ‘experts’ might say!). It is about acknowledging the nuance of being human, and its relevance in the choices you make, which might not always match with how you had planned things out.
It is about stepping away from rigid ideas of what is or is not healthy and being kind to yourself when the reality of your choices does not align with your ‘intended plans’.
It is about knowing that these deviations from your ideal version of events do not mean you have ‘failed’ or ‘done something wrong’.
If you are able to embrace these shifts, guilt-free, with a tenderness and curiosity towards yourself, therein lies potential for the expansion.
There is learning to be received from everything which unfolds unexpectedly (the beautiful mess of life), from all adversities, and when plans are thrown to the wind because life has other ideas for you, or because you simply decide to eat cake.
And if you are open to it, within that learning is the potential for great transformation.
Being healthy is about remembering that you are unique.
Your circumstances are unique.
Healthy is a spectrum and your place on it will shift and change as you navigate scenarios specific to your journey through life.
Being rigid and maintaining fixed ideas around healthiness regardless of circumstance, is to deny your humanness.
To deny context in health is to deny that it is something dynamic, traversing a continuum which has no defined beginning and no fixed end point (except maybe your birth and your death).
You get to decide where you want to take your steps of healthy, as you dance along that spectrum.
And although sometimes burger king might be the healthy option, it very often won’t be, I tried it again more recently to check.
During the weeks after my step-mum passed I was at the gym, there is a burger king cleverly positioned within view of the windows from the gym, right opposite, just metres away. It seems like me and grief and burger king have a connection as there was something in me which was pulled to the burger king, perhaps for nostalgia, perhaps for hunger. It’s not a ‘normal’ food choice for me, but I guess grief can spark all sorts of ‘abnormal’ behaviours.
Anyway, it turns out that that time round it was not the healthy option.
It tasted horrible and I got the sense that there was almost 0% nourishment being offered to my body from it.
I did not feel grounded by it.
There was no joy in it (except to feel the freedom to try it without judging myself!).
And there were plenty of other food choices available (just a little further away).
But it was good to check.
So, the invitation is to know yourself well enough, so that you can discern what the healthy option is for you moment to moment.
And to relax into knowing that this will change, and that is totally ok. Just as you can see it did for me with burger king and grief!
If you are curious about redefining your own version of healthy, you might like to explore the holistic health embodiment programme which does just that, supporting you every step of the way over the 12 weeks we work together.
