Dear McDonalds, You are poisoning the world with your food.
And thanks for a delicious breakfast. I hate you. Nathan
- From Nathan Fillion's Twitter Account (actor on Firefly and Castle)
I have always been picky about my burgers. I don't eat ketchup, mustard, pickles, or raw onions. Over time, I started to eat mayo - but not as a kid. I liked cheese and bacon on my burger. That was it. McDonald's put all kinds of junk on their burgers, and they took like twenty minutes to make one fresh without that stuff on it. Burger King didn't do that. We had no reason to go to McDonald's. Their worm burgers took forever to make they way we wanted them. So it wasn't an option. We finally started going once in a while when they built one eight blocks from our house - and when they introduced McNuggets.
But McDonald's has a way with people - it sucks you in. It is like the Fast Food Mafia. Soon, I had discovered their breakfast sandwiches. My mom started getting them for me every Saturday on the way back from the grocery store. Then, in high school, I realized that my mom was full of it - and the burgers were actually pretty good. That combined with their Jurassic Park and Olympic promotions. I started eating Mickey D's quite frequently.
When I went to UCF, they built a McDonald's literally right across the street from the school. It opened right before I enrolled (a little before the Burger King a couple blocks away). I ate there a LOT. They had free student drinks. Then they had tons of coupons for free Arch Deluxes when that aborted effort was being launched. My friends and I ate there all the time. When I moved off campus, my last house was across the street from another McDonald's. I stopped there almost every morning on my way to my internship for breakfast.
This was also when I started having major acid reflux problems. I didn't know what was going on - just that I felt horrible. I missed days from internship, or left early a few times. I honestly had no clue that my atrocious diet was wrecking havoc with my digestive system - that combined with my quickly escalating and undiagnosed egg allergy. Even with all of that, McDonald's was just too easy to keep in my life.
When people think about McDonald's there are certain things that come to mind. Reliability and affordability are two of them. That is what made the chain explode in popularity in the 1950s. You could go anywhere in the country and get the same quality and price. Sure, that quality was mediocre at best. But at least it wasn't awful. Now, McDonald's is almost the benchmark for affordable dining out. I know that in our family, we have a saying when we try a restaurant. "Cheaper Than McDonald's (CTM)" A dining establishment will get a ringing endorsement if somehow the bill is less than we would pay at McDonald's. It is not easy to find these places - but there are some out there. [In Orlando, Uncle Al's Hot Dogs was one of them. In Tallahassee we have a few places. Our school discount card makes Tijuana Flats and Pepper's Mexican Grill CTM. With free kids' meals on the weekends, Steak and Shake becomes CTM. Black Bean Cuban Cafe always has free kids meals. Boston Market is always CTM.]
There are two other qualities associated with McDonald's: Kid Friendly and Marketability. Mickey D's has some of the best marketing in the world. There ads are everywhere. They have had songs on commercials that were virtually radio hits. And their Kids Meal tie-ins have been legendary. That adds to the kid friendly label. Most of the big family movies end up going through McDonald's. They have cool toys and promotional things like glasses. Plus the McNugget cannot be matched in the pantheon of addictive foods for kids. Josiah, when he was younger, could spot a McDonald's anywhere. Gabe is the same way. If I was to ask the kids right now where they wanted to go to dinner, even odds would be that they picked McDonald's. It doesn't matter if they went there yesterday or even this morning, they would cheer if I asked them about going for dinner. As parents, it is hard to find a place the kids are so happy to eat.
So it becomes very difficult to avoid interacting with McDonald's. But, for me, I have come to the place where I hate McDonald's. I'm not talking about the normal parental burnout. I'm saying that I actually detest the place. When I take the kids, I don't even order anything any more. I'll sit there and watch everyone eat and get something at home. Part of it is that there is virtually nothing on the menu I can have. I mean, look at the foods I could even possibly eat there. Grilled Chicken sandwich (without the bread), apple dippers, chicken caesar salad, yogurt fruit parfait, and their new fruit smoothies (which are okay - but not that great). That's it. While that may seem like a decent option, that brings up the second problem.
Their "healthy" food options are horribly expensive. The chicken sandwich is almost four bucks. It seems like a big sandwich, until you take off the football sized bun. Then it is a pretty pitiful excuse for a chicken breast. Plus it is jammed full of water and sodium. The apple dippers are "only" a dollar. Super, until you realize it is only about a half of an apple's worth of slices. The yogurt parfait is maybe the size of kid's yogurt with a smattering of fruit. All of their salads come with cheese on them - plus other stuff. The caesar is the only one "plain enough" for me - and then you get to top it with their inferior chicken. The fruit smoothie isn't the worst thing ever - and it is yogurt and fruit. But it is almost three bucks for a small! So, if you want to eat healthy at McDonald's, you have to pay through the nose for it.
So, McDonald's tries to position their other food as healthy. They pitch their McNuggets as a healthy option. (Only 420 calories for 10!) DEEP FRIED PROCESSED CHICKEN IS HEALTHY?!? I can't blame them, per se. They honestly tried to do things differently. I remember a few years back, McDonald's introduced a whole line of salads and healthier options. (Salad Shaker, anyone?) After a year or so, they quietly made an announcement that they were pulling most of the promos. There was not interest to justify the new items. The opposition to McDonald's is always loud. They scream about how unhealthy the food it. But then, when the new options were put out there, it turned out there were fewer opponents than everyone thought - they were just very loud. [SIDE NOTE: That is the same thing Apple is facing right now. The media makes things out to be huge whenever someone is upset with Apple. But the number of people is actually small. Apple sold 4 million iPhone 4 units in the first month. Only 20,000 people had problems with their antennae. That is under 1%. With all the news coverage, you would have thought it was 50%, right?]
One of my bigger frustrations in my weight battle has been that even if I can fight the cravings and addictions, I can't find the culture. Between traveling and the crazy schedule everyone has, there are just times when we have to eat out. If you want to eat fast, it is virtually impossible to eat healthy. If you want to eat healthy, you cannot eat fast - and you often have to pay a tip, which jacks the price up more. McDonald's just capitalizes on the fast paced way of life. In that regard, they aren't any different than Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, or any of a hundred other places. But they certainly do seem to capitalize on that mindset - even encourage it. And I swear, there is some kind of chemical they put in their McNuggets that make kids crave them all the time. For now, I am letting my frustration with McDonald's manifest itself as hatred.
I loved the salad shakers and was sad when they stopped offering them. And I agree about the addicitive chemical in the nuggets...I used to think it was the trans fats, but I don't think they have trans fat in them anymore.
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