McD's: Triple Thick Shakes, or Thin Straws?

Factual Questions
1

Just wondering: Did McD’s shakes really get thicker, or did their straws get a little thinner? I could swear their straws once looked like thin pipe! We used to laugh at how their straws were serious drinking straws…we assumed so you couldn’t pull a vacuum while sucking up the shakes - whcih would otherwise collapse the straw.

Today, the shakes seem the same thickness, but the straw wall dows collapse. Very annoying! What the truth? - Jinx

2

Extra chicken fat in the mix, maybe?

3

Hmm…so, you’re hinting that my heart will pull a vacuum on my veins trying to pull the blood back to the heart, eh? :wink: Well, as goes the rest of the menu, goes the shakes!

Hmm, IIRC, in the 1980’s, weren’t they pushing skim milk shakes on us to cut the fat and be more politically correct? I think they’ve gone full circle!

  • McJinx :slight_smile:
4

I work at McDonald’s, and I remember when we first got the triple thick shakes they were noticeably thicker. I don’t remember how thick/thin the originals were, but I and the people I worked with noticed it. That’s why, at least for the first year or so of it, instead of a regular lid with a straw you got an open lid with a spoon, because it really was harder to suck up through a straw. If they have changed the formula since its introduction, I don’t know, but all I can vouch for is that initially they were indeed thicker.

5

yes, before, the draw temperature was not as cold as that of the soft-serve ice cream, but now it is basically the same type of ice-creamyness, except mixed with room-temperature syrup. Yes, they are thicker… but shouldn’t this have been asked about 3 years ago, when the TT shakes were introduced?

6
      • Ehhh, no they haven’t. McDonalds’ (and some other fast-foot chains) no longer use any ice cream in their “shakes”. If you get a shake at Dairy Queen and take it home and leave it in the freezer overnight, it hardens up into -----> ice cream. If you do that with a McDonalds shake, you get a semi-clear solid block of pale brown ice. I don’t know what they started tripling, but whatever it was it was the stuff that made me ill. Though I love them from other places, the “triple thick” shakes got me off of McD’s shakes entirely.
        ~
7

Well they are certainly three times thicker (more viscous) than something.

I worked at McDonald’s in 1981. They weren’t made with milk then either. We weren’t allowed to call them “milk shakes,” we had to call them “shakes” because they were made with something called ice milk rather than milk.

Haj

8

they’re made with the same low-fat soft-serve frozen yogurt base as the vanilla ice cream. And DougC: Ice cream + Milk = Ice cream. heh. But my McShakes always go to something that resembles ice cream.

9

When did they stop being triple-thick? They were difinitely called Triple Thick Shakes when I first went to McD in 1974