McDonalds: Edible or Not

One of the very few things that makes me believe in an out of touch urban elite is when I see people acting like McDonald’s and its ilk are utterly inedible garbage that’s unfit for canine consumption. No, it’s not great, but it’s almost always acceptably fine.

It's not out of touch or elite to believe that McDonald's industrial food is nearly always inferior to local/non-chain options from both a taste and health standpoint.

back before i went vegan there was a period where i was seriously addicted to fast food, and McDonald's definitely has a je ne sais quoi that feels like it's going to give your guts chemical burns, beyond just the grease and salt

I can't think of the last time I bought a traditional sandwich or similar at McDonald's. The only two things I get there are the Shamrock Shake once a year, and if I'm stuck in an airport early I'll get a sausage and egg muffin (which could be worse). I don't have a problem with fast food, per se, but there are better local alternatives to McDonald's, like Culver's, or Five Guys. I have gotten really snobby about fries, though, and given there are several places around here where I can get fries cut and made to order, I can't stand the flash frozen fries McDonald's serves (knowing full well that a lot of people specifically love their fries, for some reason).

And while it's clearly baby steps, fast food chains (like box stores like Walmart) do have the ability to immediately change trends with a change in practices. For example, again, McDonald's going with all cage-free eggs forced their suppliers to go cage-free to fulfill demand. Burger King offering the Impossible Burger lead to more restaurants adding a meat alternative burger. Popeye's ultra successful chicken sandwich roll-out pressured Chik Fil A to stop donating to that homophobic charity a couple of weeks ago. And so on.

I seriously don’t think i’ve been in a McDonalds once in past 30 years other than to use the toilet

Fun fact: their toilets are very clean. When on road trips and the kids need to use the bathroom (certainly when they were younger) my wife knows she can always count on McDonald's for a clean toilet because they have a pretty strict potty policy. The McDonald's UK site lists it as such:

"How do you keep your toilets clean?

We have a dedicated team of trained customer care staff who check and clean the toilets every 30 minutes throughout the day and every 15 minutes during busy periods. The management team also complete checks every 30 minutes. The toilets are cleaned daily and additionally when necessary during opening hours."

i do feel like there's something fundamentally elitist in a lot of anti-mcdonalds sentiment. first off blaming people for eating mcdonalds, which is extremely cheap, extremely convenient food that - and this is also important - kids fucking love. something's got to give, and what gives is healthy nutrition. knowing what we know about the long-term effects of poor nutrition, mcdonalds' basic business model may well be morally questionable - but that's different from "how can you eat that crap". i've been taught that it tastes bad and i accept that, but kids, they know better.

i don't blame people for eating mcdonalds but i do blame companies like mcdonalds for predatory business models

crut and rush both otm

I like McDonalds. I eat there in Paris not infrequently because it’s fast and they have lots of seating. It’s not that cheap though, probably because the laws / the people demand slightly better quality than I remember from the USA.

I never feel more warmly about McDonald's than I do in Europe, where it's an oasis of free bathrooms and cheap coffee.

for the past 15 years or so, i've only ordered one item: the filet of fish combo meal. it's not great, but it's a reliable quick meal for quick pitstops on highway journeys.

should be renamed Filet McFish though

a Filet is the one McD item i get a regular craving for. don't eat there very often tho cos they're not geographically convenient for me and i don't like eating in there on my own

Popeye's ultra successful chicken sandwich roll-out pressured Chik Fil A to stop donating to that homophobic charity a couple of weeks ago.

Chik-fil-A walked that back pretty quickly.

what did they say?

once you make your brand political there's no easy way to extricate yourself, and it's not surprising they'd be scared at the prospect of a mass boycott by trumpworld

at this point they have of course forfeited the prospect of ever having people who prioritize queer rights eating there; at least now we have popeye's to cudgel the "but it's so delicious" people with

ultimately i have to face the prospect that i may just have to stop talking to some people altogether because that fucking chicken sandwich is more important to them than i am. well, i'm prepared to do it, at least.

Yeah, it really couldn't be any easier to avoid one of many fast food chicken sandwiches. Avoiding Chick-fil-A's a no-brainer.

not eating meat should be a no-brainer too :o)

btw doesn’t Popeyes still run those “Annie the chicken queen” commercials? doesn’t seem much more woke to eat there vs. chik fil a

Lol @ kids having better taste than adults. They also love play doh and boogers.

@Josh: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa75xg/chick-fil-a-cuts-donations-salvation-army-lgbtq

"No organization will be excluded from future consideration–faith-based or non-faith-based," Chick-fil-A President and COO Tim Tassopoulos said in a statement to VICE.

So while they are (possibly) stopping donations to hate groups next year, they're also not ruling out donating to them in the future.

"cage-free" is a total sham, fwiw. they are still industrialized products that do not roam around and are fed a diet of antibiotics
xpost to JiC

Cage free is a step below free range which is several steps below pasture-raised

Baby steps, imo.

xpost Meat free should be a no brainer, but not smoking and drinking is an even bigger no brainer than all of those things, and good luck finding much support on that front on this board, lol.

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2 things: 1. flash frozen food is a wonderful achievement. 2. Five Guys fries are shit.

As Dave Chang has said, you are buying into performance when you think fresh fries taste better. That's why every place that does it makes a visual show of it. To compensate for the worse flavor and texture.

Another thing about McDonald’s is they have indoor playgrounds and where I live it’s cold for half the year. I don’t feel great about it but those cold January days where I’m on my own with the two of em it’s really quite nice to have around

I like McDonalds. I eat there in Paris

If I were planning on eating regularly at a McDonalds, I think I would prefer to do so in France over any other nation. The French hold food in high esteem and demand higher standards than most other countries. Even the McDonalds corporation would have to conform to the French idea of edible food or perish.

they use a copper ring lined with tin for the egg mcmuffin

and 3x the butter in everything

I had some bespoke duck fat fries last night, and no way were they inferior to flash frozen fast food fries.

3x the butter

I seriously doubt that McDonalds in the USA uses any real butter for anything.

not smoking and drinking is an even bigger no brainer than all of those things, and good luck finding much support on that front on this board, lol.

not sure there’s a huge pro-tobacco lobby on this board in 2019

I correct myself. McDonalds began to use butter late in 2015, after a mere 75 years of operation.

"2 things: 1. flash frozen food is a wonderful achievement. 2. Five Guys fries are shit.

― $1,000,000 or 1 bag of honeycrisp apples (Sufjan Grafton)"

my problem with five guys, beyond the fact that everything on their menu has approximately five billion calories, is the complete lack of consistency for their food. again, we rep for artisanal bespoke everything and excoriate assembly-line processed food but mcdonalds is very good at delivering consistent quality. whereas five guys, you tell them what you want on your hamburger and half the time they fuck it up. i don't blame the employees for that, it's just obvious to me that mcdonalds' food delivery processes are superior to five guys'. this also matters with for instance chipotle where they advertise "natural" food and then have foodborne illness scares every year or so. i like their burritos but i'm disinclined to risk it. (though at the same time i have stopped eating at places that are too chickenshit to take a risk on alfalfa sprouts, simply because i don't like the implicit double standard there)

"Lol @ kids having better taste than adults. They also love play doh and boogers.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger)"

i will also rep for play-doh and boogers. again they're taboo so we don't eat them but let's not pretend either of those things taste bad.

"not eating meat should be a no-brainer too :o)

― 💠 (crüt)"

so here's where we acknowledge that everybody has different standards and for some people not buying from amazon and/or not eating meat is so obvious it's not even something they'd consider. i don't even think it's wrong for people to value a chicken sandwich more than they value me, probably there are people who I value less than a good chicken sandwich in practice, and those people would be well advised to not consider me a friend.

duck fat is the only good part of bespoke duck fat fries. Worth reading the history of the lawsuit that changed mcdonalds fries from beef fat if you haven't already. Place has some good stories.

I think the quarter pounders got way better once they switched to fresh beef a couple years ago. They’re yummy now imo.

Like I said, baby steps.

I really miss the beef-fat cooked fries.

i do wish Chick Fil A could just get out of the politically-tinged charitable giving game altogether because nowadays it's basically the only fast food I eat, not because the other stuff tastes bad so much as it often makes me feel like shit afterwards. I can manage CFA without feeling like a beached whale when it's finished.

I've only had it once, when I was stuck in the Philly airport for 5 hours years ago and figured what the hell. It was an ok chicken sandwich - they're all kind of the same - but certainly not good enough to want again, not least because the Popeye's sandwich (which I finally had) was at least as OK, but to my memory a lot better.

It helps that I live in a place with plenty of great hot dog/hamburger/etc stands/spots (yes, with excellent fresh-cut fries), so I have no real reason to go to fast food places. You want some local color, here's the guy down the street's response to Popeye's (and CFA):

Public Service Announcement! pic.twitter.com/uzEnBZbAKh

— Big Guys Sausages (@BigGuysSausages) November 13, 2019

I wonder what you think flash freezing does to the fries that is so bad? (outside of allowing for vastly improved made to order fries)

Nothing, I don't think, except that's what most fast food places do and I don't like most fast food fries very much.

could the root of it all be temperance? you don't want to enjoy your fries too much?

not because the other stuff tastes bad so much as it often makes me feel like shit afterwards.

Elitist. A true man of the people would eat McDonalds and tell your gut to shut up.

mcdonalds never really gives me the shits but it does make me feel like shit during the post-prandial dip

filet o fish is my jam

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Funny how I can be elitist for thinking McD's is crap but the ppl eating it on the reg in their car that I can't afford or their huge home I can't afford aren't.

In 'n' Out has it both ways (so to speak), as elitist (we're better than every other burger) *and* populist (everyone goes to In 'n' Out).