The “trans-fat” is usually the oil they use to deep-fry. They do not need to add fat/grease/transfat to burgers. Or, they use vegetable oil but they coat their fries with a light coat of beef tallow (source of a shake-down lawsuit by some vegetarians a few years ago).
Plus, IIRC, cow fat is high in transfat. The healthy stuff usually comes from expensive vegetable sources.
Yeah, there seems to be some determination to believe the urban legend that McD’s stuff is not 100% beef. Hey, they use real beef, they are one of the largest buyers of beef in N. America, there is no need to cut corners on beef. A patty is IIRC 1/10lb, so selling you a burger for even a dollar probably means a significant markup even if it is real beef. Even at retail prices they would make a killing. The patties are plopped out and frozen by the millions, so there are huge economies of scale.
The only “gotcha” loophole is that you can add stuff like salt or pepper or seasoning and it still can be called 100% beef. I don’t see this as deceptive; the amount of seasoning you add is miniscule compared to the volume of beef.
Yes. Yes, it really is. What did you think cooking meant?
Keep in mind that, because it’s legal terminology, food terms have very precisely-defined boundaries. “Drink” does not mean juice because, well, only “juice” means “juice.” You associate the term “drink” with juice but it’s just that - a mental association you’ve formed. They exploit that, but really, that’s the whole purpose of marketing.
Silver costs money. If I replace gold with silver, am I adding to my cost? No, because gold also costs money, and more importantly it costs more money than silver, to create the same volume.
Just the same, if some stale bread costs 10 cents a pound and a pound of meat costs 20 cents a pound, then if I replace 1/10th of my meat with bread (ground in), then I’m saving 5% of my overhead.
the cooking method can also make things taste different. A restaurant i work at used to cook full sized burgers and smaller sized “shooter” the burgers were grilled, and the “shooters” were cooked in a clamshell grill. though they came from the same beef, there was a definite difference in taste so much so that they’ve recently abandoned the clamshell grills entirely.
This is wrong. Trans-fat is an entirely unnatural byproduct from the hydrogenation of unsaturated fats usually found in vegetable oil. I doubt that any burger joint would add hydrogenated vegetable oil to burgers because burger meat has a short shelf life, and one of the advantages of hydrogenated oil is a longer shelf-life. If one is going to add fat to a burger, you may as well add cheaper lard. Better yet, add beef tallow and then you get to claim you have an all beef patty.
From experience, I can say that the two biggest differentiators between McDonald’s burgers and “normal” burgers is the concentration of black pepper and how thin they are. If you fry up incredibly thin burgers with a bit more salt and black pepper than you think is sensible, they taste a lot like McDonald’s.
I’d be inclined to think that’s why they use those cuts, but the almost ubiquitous presence of decidely non-kosher cheeseburgers would seem to refute that idea.
Maybe it’s so Jews can order without cheese and still keep kosher, and McDonald’s doesn’t have any special kosher supply chain issues to deal with anywhere.
Hmm so no loopholes? Maybe cooking is easier than I thought. I don’t have anything against McDonalds, in fact I like it more than I should, I was just wondering if they were getting away with anything.
I don’t have issue with the drink part, only that adding it negates the “juice”. As long as juice is used, it should have juice inside. It’s like saying this is 100% pure wholesome premium stuff! Not.
Is their food more natural than everybody thinks? How did their burger last a year, then?
I know that chicken nuggets (maybe not McDonald’s) have additives to plump them up and absorb water. Aren’t there conventions for food additives manufacturers? That means someone must be using them, and it must be profitable to do so.
Oh and I didn’t know the burgers didn’t earn much money. I always thought they can’t be earning much by giving me more fries and drink for only 50 cents.
It has been known for several thousand years that salt + meat + cool dry place (like an apartment shelf) = Preserved meat. Also bread will go stale and get moldy and potatoes will rot. Everything in that experiment behaved exactly like it was supposed to.
My understanding is that additives are focused more on retail food sales, where product apperance and shelf life are more important.