Posts Tagged ‘ McDonalds ’

Nov.8.11-What McD Can Do For You

WHAT McD’s Can DO For YOU !!

 

The popular McDonald’s sandwich is back. Find out what’s inside — if you dare

McDonalds‘ McRib and its cult-like following are back. Thank goodness the “disconcerting” sandwich is only returning for a limited time only, says Meredith Melnick at TIME. Because if you knew about all the unpronounceable ingredients packed into the McRib, you might think twice about wolfing down the sauce-drenched pork concoction. Think you can stomach what’s inside? Read on:

How many ingredients are there?
At face value, the sandwich contains just pork, onions, and pickle slices slathered in barbecue sauce and laid out on a bun. But the truth is, there are roughly 70 ingredients. The bun alone contains 34, says TIME‘s Melnick. In addition to chemicals like ammonium sulfate and polysorbate 80, the most egregious may be azodicarbonamide — “a flour-bleaching agent most commonly used in the manufactur[ing] of foamed plastics like gym mats the and soles of shoes.” According to McDonald’s own ingredient list, the bun also includes calcium sulfate and ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, among other chemicals.

Ooof. What’s the meat made of?
Pig innards and plenty of salt. Typically, “restructured meat product” includes pig bits like tripe, heart, and scalded stomach, says Whet Moser at Chicago Magazine, citing a 1995 article by Robert Mandigo, a professor at the University of Nebraska. These parts are cooked and blended with salt and water to extract salt-soluble proteins, which act as a “glue” that helps bind the reshaped meat together.

Is it really that bad for you?
Well, it’s certainly not good for you. Though “slightly trimmer than the Big Mac,” which contains 540 calories and 29 grams of fat, says Christina Rexrode at USA Today, the McRib, first introduced in 1982, still packs in 500 calories and 26 grams of fat. And despite its name, one thing you won’t find inside a McRib is bones. The absence of any detectable “rib” is what gives the unnutritious mush its “quirky sense of humor,” says Marta Fearon, McDonald’s U.S. marketing director.

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Oct.21.10-McDonald’s Doesn’t Decompose

McDonald’s Happy Meal resists decomposition for six months

By Brett Michael Dykes brett Michael Dykes – Tue Oct 12, 1:54 pm ET

Vladimir Lenin, King Tut and the McDonald’s Happy Meal: What do they all have in common? A shocking resistance to Mother Nature’s cycle of decomposition and biodegradability, apparently.
That’s the disturbing point brought home by the latest project of New York City-based artist and photographer Sally Davies, who bought a McDonald’s Happy Meal back in April and left it out in her kitchen to see how well it would hold up over time.
The results? “The only change that I can see is that it has become hard as a rock,” Davies told the U.K. Daily Mail.
She proceeded to photograph the Happy Meal each week and posted the pictures to Flickr to record the results of her experiment. Now, just over six months later, the Happy Meal has yet to even grow mold. She told the Daily Mail that “the food is plastic to the touch and has an acrylic sheen to it.”
[Related: 'Double Down' among the worst fast food of 2010]
Davies — whose art has been featured in numerous films and television shows and is collected by several celebrities — told The Upshot that she initiated the project to prove a friend wrong. He believed that any burger would mold or rot within two or three days of being left on a counter. Thus began what’s become known as “The Happy Meal Art Project.”
[DIY: Make happier meals for your kids at home -- just don't forget one key tip]
“I told my friend about a schoolteacher who’s kept a McDonald’s burger for 12 years that hasn’t changed at all, and he didn’t believe me when I told him about it,” Davies told us. “He thought I was crazy and said I shouldn’t believe everything that I read, so I decided to try it myself.”
[Did you know? Before the Happy Meal, there was the Fun Meal]
Some observers of the photo series have noted that the burger’s bun appears at different angles, and therefore aired suspicions that the Happy Meal may not in fact be as “untouched” as the project’s groundrules stipulate. Davies says there’s a simple explanation for the mobile-bun effect. “The meal is on a plate in my apartment on a shelf,” she says, “and when I take it down to shoot it, the food slides around. It’s hard as rock on a glass plate, so sure, the food is moving.”
Click image to see more photos of the unchanging Happy Meal

Photo courtesy of Sally Davies
Davies’ friend was the person who should have done the additional research. Wellness and nutrition educator Karen Hanrahan has indeed kept a McDonald’s hamburger since 1996 to show clients and students how resistant fast food can be to decomposition.
As for Davies, she said that she might just keep her burger and fries hanging around for a while as well.
“It’s sitting on a bookshelf right now, so it’s not really taking up any space, so why not?” she said. It ceased giving off any sort of odor after 24 hours, she said, adding: “You have to see this thing.”

In response to Davies’ project, McDonald’s spokeswoman Theresa Riley emailed The Upshot a statement defending the quality of the chain’s food. Riley’s email also blasted Davies’ “completely unsubstantiated” work as something out of “the realm of urban legends.”
“McDonald’s hamburger patties in the United States are made with 100% USDA-inspected ground beef,” Riley wrote. “Our hamburgers are cooked and prepared with salt, pepper and nothing else — no preservatives, no fillers. Our hamburger buns are baked locally, are made from North American-grown wheat flour and include common government-approved ingredients designed to assure food quality and safety. … According to Dr. Michael Doyle, Director, Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, ‘From a scientific perspective, I can safely say that the way McDonald’s hamburgers are freshly processed, no hamburger would look like this after one year unless it was tampered with or held frozen.’”

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