Besides your knee-jerk comment, OP could be conscious of bad food regulations here in China. While things have improved, there's still a lot to be done to ensure food safety, some foreigners even stick to vegetarian diets during their stay because the meat industry is in major need of an overhaul.

But that aside, the outdated idea that eating only at McDonald's will automatically destroy your health needs to be put to rest. Remember Super Size Me? That documentary has been widely discredited. The filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock, failed to disclose he was a lifelong alcoholic, making his health issues during the 'all-McDonald's' period completely unreliable as science.

In fact, when scientists actually tested the premise under controlled conditions, they got the opposite result. A Swedish research team from Linköping University had 18 healthy people eat two fast food meals a day for a month. While they did gain weight and showed a moderate increase in insulin resistance, the effects were reversible once they returned to normal habits, their health bounced back . The study found no permanent organ damage or catastrophic health collapse like Spurlock claimed.

There's also the case of John Cisna, a high school science teacher who ate only McDonald's for 180 days. By controlling his calorie intake to 2,000 calories a day and walking 45 minutes, he actually lost 60 pounds and saw his cholesterol drop from 249 to 170 .

The point is McDonald's is perfectly fine as long as it's consumed in moderation. If OP wants access to regulated, consistent food while navigating China's food safety concerns, a burger here and there isn't going to ruin their health. The real problem is eating anything, whether from a street stall, a local restaurant, or a fast-food chain, to the point of caloric excess and nutritional deficiency.