for the record, it’s close to 600 for just the sandwich.
Says I, with my diet coke, I didn’t want fries anyway, and it’s a pretty good dinner for my required calorie intake.
Calorie law?
-FrL-
I think s/he means the N.Y. law (it got a lot of press coverage) requiring chain restaurants to post nutritional info. on menus – which has horrified a lot of people, esp. those who thought their crispy chicken salads (with high-fructose vinaigrette dressing) or whatever were a pretty healthy alternative.
I dunno, I’ve been getting them in my neck of the woods for at least four years now. But I know different regions have different prices and promotions.
[off-topic] I can’t speak for all Americans, but I don’t find the metric system difficult. What I find difficult is my ability to approximate in metric. Just today I was changing my oil. I normally pay someone to do this, but for irrelevant reasons I had to do it myself today. I took a look at the plug and said, “hmm… that’s like 1/2”-5/8" and I grabbed a few wrenches and slipped them on.
None fit.
Clearly, this was a metric bolt.
I just can’t look at something and say, “oh, that’s about 15mm.” So I pulled out my socket set (I don’t have metric wrenches) and just started plugging them on until I found the one that fit.
Today I can tell you that 15mm is about 5/8", but 2 weeks from now give me a bolt that’s approximately 5/8" and I’ll be be figuring out the metric size by trial-and-error again.
The same goes for other weights and measures. I know that a kilogram is about 2.2 pounds. But for me to approximate how much something weighs (in kg) I need to do a conversion in my head.
People don’t want to do the conversions. For most, it’s sadly difficult. For the rest of us, it’s just annoying. It’s like trying to speak another language but having to pre-translate stuff in your head first.
If there’s a brain/learning expert out there, I wonder if s/he can confirm that the weights-and-measures language we learn is like the spoken language in our ability to learn it later in life. I suspect they are somehow related.
That said, once I’m “in” the metric system, it’s incredibly easy to use; I think most Americans would agree with that (if they bothered to learn & remember it in the first place).
Yes, once you’re all the way into the metric system, you don’t need to worry about conversions – it’s a 15mm spanner, and you don’t worry about what fraction of an inch that is.
Regarding the OP, this is very easy for a chain to calculate. They look at how many people buy one size and then another size. Change the price in a sample market and see how much the profits change. Apparently anti-bulk pricing is profitable, and I fully believe that.
After all, people paying for bottled water must be the most tired stand-up comedy gag of 90’s, yet hardly anybody would consider the same material with sliced bread or cheese to be funny. On average people do not have the mental bandwidth nor desire to pay attention to even a substantial % of things they do and why they do them.
I’m not a brain/learning expert, but I can comment that a huge problem with this is how segmented it is for me. I switched from metric to american when I moved here as a teenager, and there’s some things that I mentally can only do in metric and others only in American, but the separation is not nicely along units.
I would think that it’s not a matter of switching only one brain area. You might think of “distances” but there’s a significant brain difference between 3 feet of rope, 3/4" bolt and 16 mile car trip. You’d have to re-learn each of those in metric, or convert. In my case, relearning had to be experimental. No matter how many times I convert in my head, until I re-experience it many times with metric in front of me it just doesn’t click right.
For example:
I do very small distances well in inches, it’s hard for me to use mm/cm.
I prefer meters to feet, when estimating horizontal distances.
I prefer feet for vertical height.
I can’t do speeds/long distances in kph/km, I have to convert to miles for it to make sense.
Most weight only makes sense in pounds and ounces, but I have trouble with the standard ton (My first thought is always “is that bigger or smaller than metric”) mainly because to me a ton is a meter cube of water 
Volume I like all in standard.
Since I moved from Russia, temperatures are all screwed up. I need my below freezing temperatures in celsius and hot temperatures in farenheit or I can’t visualize them. I can imagine exactly what 105F feels like and -20C. However, the kicker is that body temperature only makes sense in C.
Edit: I should clarify that the point is that switching systems is going to be challenging, confusing and uncomfortable for people who already learned the American system. A system is just a system, and even if you think the metric system is much better I don’t think it’s easy to justify switching the entire country just to be like the rest. Loss of spacecraft aside, conversion is not difficult, both systems have merits and it’s not causing any problems other than spiteful ridicule from the French.
I’ve notice this too on items like for instance we have a sale on peanut butter 3 for $5.00. If you add up the weight and try to buy the jar with the same weight the combined weight of the three is $5.19.
So you save 19¢ by using a coupon
Let’s see
20 pieces = 31.45¢/piece
10 pieces = 39.90¢/piece
4 pieces = 25.00¢/piece
My guess is they want to put McNuggets on the dollar menu so they have to charge a buck.
So if they put 3 pieces in a box it would be 33.33¢ a piece. If they put 5 pieces in a box it’d be 20¢ a piece.
So putting five would lower the price per piece way too much and putting 3 in a box would be the best but from a marketing standpoint look to small a portion.
So three pieces on a dollar menu wouldn’t sell, and they want the item on the dollar menu. So four is the best thing and they just hope the public won’t notice.
It’s kind of like when I went to the Natural History Musuem, in NYC it says “SUGGESTED donation.” So I asked the guy, what if I don’t want to pay the suggested amount. Or what if I want to pay a penny. He said “We don’t encourage that but if someone insists on a penny, we’d let them in.”
I thought “suggested donation” meant you didn’t** have ** to pay anything.
One thing I’ve noticed is that you don’t get offered any sauce with the 4-piece, but they will give it to you if you ask.
See? You also have to figure out how many wrenches to a spanner, which is a pain in the ass.
I don’t really care if that donkey feels pain: I just need to watch my arse.
(Note: Although I live in the US, I think and talk like an Australian)
:eek: Did you really just cite Yahoo answers?!??!
This thread just caused me to look at my McDonald’s bill. How many of us look at it. Right beneith the subtotal is a “Take Out Tax” of 27 cents. I used the drive through so I assume this is some sort of drive-through tax.
Anyone else run into this? Could it be regional or even limited to one franchise?
Yeah, I have. It’s just sales tax. It’s an easy way for them to program the register for “To go” vs. “For here” to have two tax buttons. If you eat inside it will say “Eat In Tax” unless your location does not charge sales tax for eating inside but does for to go.
Well, not really. I believed that “Suggested Donation” usually means the fee is optional, and found someone else who believes the same thing. Not a cite really; more of a corroboration, similar to others I found. Officially, yes, they say pay what you can, something.
I ranted about this in my Livejournal several days ago. It’s bizarre.
Here’s a similar “deal” from KFC
You pay more per wing for 20 or 30 wings than you do for 6 wings.
Bah!
I weighed the individual elements of the last chinese take-out I had at work.
I was able to separate noodles from veggies from meat, and I came up with 3400 calories.
So I was back in that same McDonalds again today (good to see it’s been almost 2 months, although I have hit up Wendys a couple of times), and the person next to me was trying to order a 20 piece mcnuggets, and the cashier actually SUGGESTED that she order 5 of the 4 piece from the dollar menu, and adjusted the order for her. I’m glad to see that they’re starting to catch on, and are beating the system themselves now!