I barely ever go into McDonalds. Lately they have been putting new ads on tv about how they’re going to put the dietary information on their food packets as well now. Before it was just hung up on a banner somewhere in the restaurant sometimes.
Now this is the thing, they have all the dietary information, which is supposed to “assure” the unsuspecting customer… but I find it a bit suspicious that although they put dow fat, sugar and salt content etc per serving, never do they mention what a serving is!
Now although you could assume a serving was a small serve, or 100g, 200 mL or the like, this could be easily erroneous.
After all, a can of diet coke apparently has 1.83 servings(approx)! But it does serve the purpose of them being able to say “Under 1 calorie per serve!”. So is the McDonalds advertising misleading? The straight dope please.
Cheers
Engine.
A lot of games can be “legitimately” played with Nutritional Panel information.
They don’t have to send the food to a lab for analysis. They can use values from essentially any published source. They are also allowed to pick and choose. If they deem the ingredients in a 1960s weight loss cookbook substantially identical to their burger, they can adjust those calorie counts to allow for differences in ingredients e.g. if the cookbook uses rings of fresh onion, instead of minced reconstituted, and include pickles and ketchup at all, they can adjust the calorie count. Of course, it’s unlikely that the cookbook listed the calorie count of each ingredient separately (and they aren’t obligated to use those figures, if listed - “Our pickles are different”). Any science student quickly learns that you can rack up substantial differences by picking and choosing your source data, and this is especially true of food. How big is a pickle slice? Moderate differences in thickness, diameter and pickling solution can change the per-slice count over a range of at least 500% (I’ve personally seen the value listed at 2 and 10 calories)
The “consumer reporter” at your local TV stations have almost certainly done an expose’ of calorie count practices. It’s a cheap and easy story with popular appeal - one they can ‘put in the can’ for their next publicity push or revisit several times a year. [Today, even our scandals come pre-packaged] Smaller manufacturers often use recipe books calorie counts that ar off by a factor of two or more. In our area, baked goods seemed to be particularly prone to this: a “healthy 250 calorie bran muffin” might be 675 calories according to the independent lab analysis.
Few of us can measure calories directly, and we can’t calculate the calories from the ingredients, since we don’t know the ingredients. Cookbooks have a motive to understate calories, because they are judged mostly by how tasty their recipes are. If you gain weight, you’re likely to blame the amount you ate, not the printed calorie count (Indeed, you might not want to question the favorable calorie counts for your favorite recipes.) Further, there are no penalties for publishing even a grossly inaccurate calorie count in a recipe. If you sit down with a detailed calorie counter and add up the ingredients, you’ll find that quite a few books are substantially off.
Now, McD’s food is pretty highly standardized, and I imagine -imagine!- that they directly measures their foods sometimes, if only in an in-house lab, but when I went on a diet a couple of years ago, it seemed that they simply added ‘standard values’ to get the numbers for their various sandwiches.
BK, McD, and other major chains moved their info around every few weeks, making bookmarking useless, and often the info wouldn’t download at all. Also, I rarely if ever saw a COMPLETE list - some dishes were always missing–often precisely the specialty items they were pushing on TV that month. I made a point of saving their pdf charts over the course of my diet year, hoping to fill the gaps. You wouldn’t think the numbers would vary from month to month, but they often did.
Even if the values are measured in a lab, that doesn’t mean they represent the food you are served. McDs may specify a measured tbsp of minced onion or ketchup and three pickle slices, but is that what you got? [Some days you’re lucky if you get the right sandwich, or even the right number of sandwiches]
How carefully does your local McGrill Teen degrease your patties? How carefully do you think the lab tech at McD central does? That can add 100 calories to your Big Mac, right there. I’ve seen a lot fo corporate disavowals on this point “We really have very little control over local preparation.” McDs will fire you for a violation of their “ice serving protocol” but not for serving a needlessly greasy burger.
Sit-down fast food restaurants do a particularly bad job of giving accurate calorie counts. Cooks and waitresses know that an extra healthy slathering of cheese (even on recipes that didn’t list cheese) can mean more satisfied clients and higher tips. One “breakfast scramble” out local TV reporter tested weighed in at well over 1600 calories as served, not the 600 calories claimed in the corporate info.
Now that I think about it, in the 70s, I tried to do a science fair project using a “bomb calorimeter” (the food industry’s standard calorie measuring lab device ) made from a discarded pressure cooker. After I kept getting numbers that were way off, I switched projects. Maybe it wasn’t my apparatus at all!
In short, I wouldn’t trust any published calorie counts, carb grams on those new “low carb foods” or any other diet-related label info. I admit it may often seem that you “need” to eat fast food during your busy day, it’s usually possible to work around this with little extra inconvenience. Grocery store may not have drive throughs, but you’d be surprised how few extra minutes it can take to grab lunch there [I’m thinking more of a bag of carrots, not a trip to the fat-laden salad bar) It’s tougher if you’re hauling kids, but parents really should plan ahead more anyway.
In fact, when you consider how long you have to wait in line at a drive-through during lunch or dinner “rush” (a good 5-6 hours out of the day, hereabouts), and then checking and correcting your order, you might actually end up saving time by avoiding those fast food joints. Most people really eat there because they like it.
Here is the McDonalds nutrition chart. It has all the serving sizes, which seem to correspond to the food item. It looks like a sandwich is a serving.
Good link, Telemark, but the Original Poster is in Bundaberg, Australia. The composition of meals meant for the USA may or may not match the meals served Down Under. The menu is undoubtedly different in small ways. Caloric content may vary widely depending on the local bakery (and what they put in the hamburger buns) and the local meat supplier (who may be providing meat that is a few percentile points more or less lean—less lean means more calories for you).
I know, having worked at a Wendy’s, that it sometimes (but rarely) occurred that our regular supplies of meat and/or buns would run out and we would ask the Franz Bakery guys (for instance) to give us the off-brand buns to keep us stocked until the real stuff could be available. I don’t remember ever telling any of our customers that day that the calorie counts would be off.
Also, depending on the sandwich prepared, the local Kitchen McMonkey may slather on more mayonnaise or special sauce than normal, adding another few hundred calories. (My mayonnaise at home lists at 100 calories per tablespoon—a conveniently round number, if you ask me.) That blop of it on your Athero McSclerosis Burger is where a lot of the calories are—that and the cheese.
Lastly, the recommended daily allowance information (as provided on food labels in the US) bases this information on a 2,000 calorie per day diet. If you’re a 50kg woman or a 35kg youth, this is waaaayyyy too many calories unless you shovel coal for a living.
McDonald’s Canada has pamphlets with nutritional info in all their restaurants. A serving is a burger, etc. While calorie and fat counts are often a little shocking, I think the numbers are accurate on average. These values would likely vary in the States, though, where portions are often bigger and the fries aren’t cooked in beef fat.
No. I won’t post in a McDonald’s thread!
You wouldn’t believe this, but McDonald’s procedures are standardized
Ketchup comes out of a dispenser. One lever depression is the amount that goes on a sandwich.
Mustard comes comes out of a dispenser. One lever depression is the amount that goes on a sandwich.
Big Mac sauce comes out of a dispenser. One handle squeeze is the amount that goes on one side of a sandwich.
Mayonnaise comes out of a dispenser. One handle squeeze is the amount that goes on a sandwich.
Tartar Sauce comes out of a dispenser. One handle squeeze is the amount that goes on a sandwich.
Meat is not to be drained before coming off of the grill. Each patty is pre-formed to avoid fluctuations that way, and the grill is scraped of meat residue before each run of meat. Each run of meat is cooked for the same length of time to the same temperature.
Fried products are fried for the same length of time. A timer goes off, and the products are removed.
Pickles are only counted, not weighed. Hamburger/cheeseburger: a pickle, double cheeseburgers/big macs, etc: two pickles (Big and tasty: arguably three; they haven’t updated it since we took it off of the dollar menu.)
Reconstuted Onions: there is an amount… but I’ve forgotten it. Our rule of thumb is a dime-sized amount.
Slivered onions: A quarter-ounce per sandwich.
Honestly… how often does this happen? I can’t think of a time when I’ve ordered and not gotten what I’ve ordered in the recent past. At least the last 6 months, and I eat fast food 3x a week, at least. If you have a problem with this often, you just need to drop the damn “I don’t work at McDonald’s, therefore I’m better than you and you’re my slave” bullshit. Enunciate. Order what you want in clear English. It works. Trust me. They have little buttons on the registers that indicate to the kitchen what to make, and how to make it. These same buttons indicate to the front drive thru people what to bag up, in what quantities etc.
I’m not continuing here… I just wanted to shed McDonald’s worker light (SFX: heavenly chorus) on this issue.
Thanks for the link Telemark.
What happened to your 40c (adjust for location) cones? All I can see is “Vanilla Reduced Fat Ice Cream Cone” which we don’t have. My friend claimed that when she was on Weight Watchers, they recommended the cones :dubious: But then again, she thinks that McDees orders in the water they give you in cups (for free if you want it,) when they get in the syrup. (“OH no this can’t be Brisbane water! They can’t do that! It tastes nothing like Brisbane water!” “That’s funny, tastes just like Brisbane water to me! Brisbane water if it had ice in it.”)
AAAAHHH! I did it again!
All McDonald’s soft-serve, as far as I know, is that same low-fat stuff.
This seems to be a little more discriptive; perhaps it will help. I can’t seem to find an online list of nutritional information for the Australian McDonald’s, though.
Here.
The serving size is the menu item, with no apparent fancy tricks along the lines of “one serving popcorn = 16g = 2 cups popped” for an 85g bag.
Now it all seems a bit too honest. :dubious:
I apologize to you, chaoticdonkey, for any emotional distress. I thought I had made it clear that McDonalds food prep was highly specified. I was speaking of general concerns with Nutritional Information across the spectrum of chains and vendors. However, re-reading my post, I see that I could have made that point more strongly or clearly.
[I am, however, at a loss to explain the difference in calorie counts between McD’s Nutrional Information PDFs I downloaded mere months apart – but that’s an issue for HQ, and no reflection on you or your coworkers.]
As for getting the order right: sadly, on my few visits in the past year, it’s been a genuine coin-toss. Admittedly they were in boondocks New Hampshire, and there was no customer-verifiable order display. (Perhaps that’s unusual, but I tend to hit McD’s only where there are no any grocery stores visible nearby. No offense.)
For example, my last order was two burgers, two side salads, one coffee, and one water. I was initially handed two burgers, both drinks, and one side salad with no dressings [which I didn’t mind] or utensils [which I did]> We received enough ketchup and napkins to choke a horse, but no sugar or cream. True, I forgot to request the latter, but isn’t it standard to ask? I can see that it’s partly our fault that we were so distracted by replacing our missing salad (paid for, and on the slip), that we forgot to check that the coffee was right before we drove off.
I didn’t mean to single out McD’s in this regard. In fact, one nearby Wendy’s has done far worse. I don’t consider that one shop typical, either.
I’m sure that you and your team are more on the ball, but I can only go by my own limited experience.