Oh, there’s a lot of discussion of that too, in the previous 160 or so posts. They were better when animal fat was used, IMHO.
Regarding the idea that the french fries were cooked in animal fat (my Google search says 93% beef tallow), what does that stuff cost compared to vegetable oil? And is is solid at room temperature or liquid? The only animal fat I see regularly is lard, which is from pigs, I think.
More expensive at the supermarket than vegetable oil. It’s a lot like lard, if you want a comparison.
But McDonald’s could easily get some bulk deals considering how many cows it processes every day.
They stopped due to the massive class action lawsuit (across several states from vegetarians, some of whom were also Hindu). This was 20 or 30 years ago now.
I’m old enough that I must have been eating tallow-fried french fries as a kid and even into college. I can’t remember if they were better. I wonder if any national chain still cooks them that way?
According to this article, yes, including Buffalo Wild Wings, Popeyes, Smashburger, Portillo’s (a Chicago chain that is expanding), and Outback.
Most major chains don’t, partly due to lawsuits, though a few smaller ones do. Vegetarians like junk food as much as the rest of us and expect even burger joints to not cross-contaminate.
It’s actually easier for restaurants to intentionally cross-contaminate and notify the customers, rather than having to keep strict controls and worry about lawsuits when they accidentally contaminate. That’s why a bunch of restaurants ended up adding sesame to their products with the new law adding sesame as a listed allergen.
When I was a kid, the closest McDonald’s was across the street from McDonald’s HQ. In addition to the regular McDonald’s crew in uniforms, there were always middle-aged guys in suits in the kitchen and behind the counter. I couldn’t understand why people said McDonald’s food was so bad. I thought it was pretty good.
When l went away to college in 1974, I ate at a local McDonald’s and was unpleasantly surprised. At home on break, I went to the Oak Brook, IL McDonald’s again, and it really was better in both taste and appearance. The food prep is so standardized, I’ve never been able to figure out why there was a difference.
Also, it seems to me that price, not taste, was what they marketed. They used to advertise (late 60s to early 70s) that you could get two (regular) burgers, fries, and a drink and get change back from your dollar. So maybe it was never about the food being good. Maybe it was about price, speed, and convenience.
I think I remember later ads saying that you could get a single burger, fries and a Coke for under a buck.
Even with standard rules, it depends on how closely the staff is following those rules. Most McDonald’s are franchised. The one in Oak Brook is corporate owned.
I grew up in a small town that made the choice not to allow chain restaurants within the city limits. The only chain fast-food restaurant we had was KFC, out past the edge of town. Pretty much every weekend my parents and I would go to the nearby larger town (about half an hour away) and most of the time we had fast food for lunch. Usually McD’s, Arby’s, or Whataburger (back when it was still in California). This was the late Seventies/early Eighties, when McD’s still had their burgers in the styrofoam clamshells.
They were definitely better. The burgers were juicier (some might say greasier!) and not nearly as salty. The fries had more flavor, though I must say I still love McD’s fries even now. The shakes were tastier. I’m not just misremembering, either.
We still eat at McD’s occasionally, but usually only when we’re looking for something fast and easy and we’re not too picky. When I was a kid, it was a treat.
There are some regional menu items you can get in some parts of the US in addition to the standard McDonald’s menu – you can get a lobster roll in Maine, bratwurst in Wisconsin, Spam and rice in Hawaii. Or at least you could in the past; it’s been decades since I’ve been to a McDonald’s in any of those places.
McDonald’s even exists in India. I was really curious to try it when I had to travel there for work back in 2010, but never got the chance. I’m still not sure what meat they use instead of beef. I was told by a coworker that if you get meat resembling beef in India it’s probably buffalo (as in water buffalo, not American bison). So maybe that?
There was a lawsuit? I thought they stopped because “saturated fats” and animal fats in particular became unfashionable. They stopped using beef tallow in Germany and the UK at around the same time they stopped in the US. That doesn’t seem like the reaction to a lawsuit, but rather a marketing decision. Do you have a cite?
Also, how much can you buy at McDonalds that’s actually vegetarian? I’m surprised vegetarians even shop there. Like, is there a single vegetarian entre?
Yeah, there was a lawsuit. 21 years ago now that I actually Google it. Though apparently it was already largely vegetable oil at that point with only beef flavoring and had been since 1990, when they switched, not because it became unfashionable, but due in large part to a long-time campaign by a millionaire who attributed his heart attack to saturated fats (truth is stranger than fiction sometimes).
I don’t remember anything beef-like on the menus in Indian McDonalds. They had stuff like the Maharaja Mac (chicken), McPaneer, and stuff like that. I think there was an Aloo patty (potato) of some sort as well. Or maybe some general deep fried vegetable patty. So mainly based on chicken, paneer, potatoes/vegetables. Lamb is a common meat in the meat-eating regions of India, but I don’t remember seeing that at McDonald’s. (And there are parts of India that do eat beef and pork, but I don’t know if McDonald’s in those areas are any different–a quick Google says “no.”)
Salad?
Soda pop?
They’ve got something called the McPlant in some markets. And, of course, they have their salad, fries, hashbrowns, shakes, and apple slices.
In the UK, they have a full vegetarian menu with more options.
Well under a buck. From my earlier post:
So a burger and fries added up to 25 cents. In that era, you could get a 5 cent pepsi from a vending machine, so I imagine for 35 cents you could pig out back then
Yeah, Bangalore is where I was, specifically, and chicken and lamb seemed like the most common meats on menus there. The hotel did have bacon on their breakfast buffet, and it included a prominent warning that it was pork. I did get something at a TGI Fridays* that as I recall was described as “tenderloin” on the menu that looked beef-like, maybe that was the aforementioned buffalo. Or is Bangalore in the region that does eat beef?
*Hey, it was the closest restaurant to the office.