I don't think this is the issue.

Nobody would eat something called "McMeat", it begs the question "What kind of meat?" and usually the assumption is the worst. When I hear "McPlant", what comes up in my head is eating a tree or grass. If you leave it to people's imagination, often what comes to mind is the worst not the best.

This is the genius of "Impossible Burger". They manage to suggest it's great and sidestep the inevitable question of what is in it. They are literally suggesting the opposite, that they found the holy grail of food, great tasting and healthy.

Though I have the same feelings when I read "McRib" as well and it's making another comeback so maybe I'm off base here.

(insert guy looking at girl meme, with McPlant being overlooked for McRib is Back)

Me too! That name invariably forces a cringe as I imagine biting down on a rib bone secreted away between two buns.

For an interesting account of their first failed attempt, 30 years ago, I highly recommend this New Yorker article, The Trouble with Fries (2001):

https://web.archive.org/web/20081218211703/http://www.gladwe...

It's Malcolm Gladwell so take it with a packet of salt I suppose. I think it's Gladwell at his best and I often find myself referring back to it whenever the topics of fast food or marketing come up.

On the naming:

The McLean was a flop, and four years later it was off the market. What happened? Part of the problem appears to have been that McDonald's rushed the burger to market before many of the production kinks had been worked out. More important, though, was the psychological handicap the burger faced. People liked AU Lean in blind taste tests because they didn't know it was AU Lean; they were fooled into thinking it was regular ground beef. But nobody was fooled when it came to the McLean Deluxe. It was sold as the healthy choice--and who goes to McDonald's for health food?

Times have changed, but I think there's still a lot to be said for this suggestion at end of article:

But transparency can backfire, because sometimes nothing is more deadly for our taste buds than the knowledge that what we are eating is good for us. McDonald's should never have called its new offering the McLean Deluxe, in other words. They should have called it the Burger Supreme or the Monster Burger, and then buried the news about reduced calories and fat in the tiniest type on the remotest corner of their Web site.

As long as the burger tastes good, and isn't gross or labour-neglected or similar (like their salads and wraps occasionally were), then I suspect the Plant-based Burger to do reasonably well.

Anecdotally, I'm at McDonalds about once a week, and I'd try it at least once.

Communicating that it's a plant based food isn't good enough, they need to communicate that it tastes good first and foremost.

This is such a weird statement, especially when McDonald's constantly markets itself as a hangout/social/party food and is often perceived as such culturally everywhere around the world. So limiting variety seems like an awful contradiction here.

When I was teen we'd hit mcdonald's constantly as a group of friends, that was pretty much the only time any of us would eat mcdonalds. Now that vegetarianism is becoming more popular mcdonald quickly dropped out of the menu since they don't have a single valid option.

To me it's just so mind blowing that mcdonald's didn't carry a single vegetarian meal other than salad, fries or desserts; what a rookie business mistake.

Exept how do you reach your target audience now? Vegans wont be checking the remotest corner of the mcdonalds website every sunday. Worst of all, you'll probaly piss off meat eaters who might feel deceived, your main customer.

Most people know that "Chicken" McNuggets are only modestly-chicken-based (and are primarily corn starch and whatever other stuff). McNuggets are still a top seller, even though real 100% Chicken Tenders were on the same menu right next to them for years.

Similarly McChicken "nugget-paste-based" sandwiches are on the McDonalds menu, right next to 100%-real Buttermilk Chicken sandwiches.

I could see something similar working out with a McPlant-type burger.

This is not true. Lookup the ingredients

Hypothetical ofcourse as I dont go to mcdonalds

One of the problems with all the lying in advertising is you never quite know how cynical you need to be.

In the US, McDonalds Nuggets contain way more filler -- up to 50% of any given nugget isn't even actual chicken meat at all, according to the University of Mississippi - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/10/11/232106472/wh...

In other counties I believe McDonalds uses vegetable oil for the fries.

They use vegetable oil in the US. The reason why McDonald fries are not vegan is due to the flavoring, not the oil.

From https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/small-french-frie...

> French Fries

> Ingredients: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (maintain Color), Salt. natural Beef Flavor Contains Hydrolyzed Wheat And Hydrolyzed Milk As Starting Ingredients. >Contains: Wheat, Milk.

Restaurants tend to take the strictest interpretation of a diet because that minimizes angry customers.

It is wrong, it a real sense, to have unreasonable personal rules about a restaurant kitchen.

It's wrong to eat meat.

This is all obvious and well-known. I know that righteous indignation is a drug, and it shows mostly on the internet, thank goodness. But we should all strive to break the addiction. The world will be a better place.

And don't be silly - everybody has had to suffer through the lunch-time episode of somebody at the table grilling the waiter about how the food is cooked and what exactly is in it and don't they know they should do it different? While everybody else wishes they'd get on with it because we're hungry. Takes no imagination at all.

At least for me, the point is that I'll try to make choices that reduce suffering. You can't reduce it to zero, but most animal products can be replaced with a similar alternative with a similar price and less suffering.

Even organizations like PETA recommend against pestering restaurants about small details and trace ingredients, and I couldn't agree more: it makes vegans look nitpicky and rude and makes it harder for most people to want to make baby steps in the direction of reducing animal products.

My advice to new vegans: be easy on yourself and others. I'd rather see ten people who reduce their animal products consumptions by 90% than one extremist who does 99% and alienates everyone else.

Would you care if bits of human carcass were mixed into your food? That's how I feel about the cows that you all are murdering.

It matters because a burger that smells and tastes like real meat because it got into contact with meat is not vegan.

Moreover, to many "McPlant" will sound like a healthy alternative, when in reality many plant-based meat replacements are a similar number of calories or higher than meat, and are unlikely to be healthier in general.

That's right.

> Can we decouple the idea of "healthy" from calories?

Not completely. While calories themselves don't make a food healthy or unhealthy, healthy foods definitely skew towards low caloric density, and unhealthy foods definitely skew towards high caloric density.

No causation, very strong correlation.

Can you list a five things that are calorie dense that are healthy, and five things that are not calorie dense that are unhealthy?

2. There are no unhealthy foods, only unhealthy diets. Even a bowl of ice cream isn't unhealthy if you're getting all your nutrients and not eating too many calories.

Also, the food pyramid (which, admittedly, is so incorrect that it should cause you to question any healthcare professional who quotes it) does include a small layer for fat, oil, sugar, and sweets, implying you can have them as an occasional treat but not all the time. No doctor is going to tell you to never eat at McDonalds, only to make it a rare treat.

Sure, they're still burgers and not kale salads.

Are there more than a tiny number of us? I don't know.

That said, this is another benefit of the kiosks.

Most people misunderstand Starbucks size names. They think they're all smart assuming that Starbucks calls a small drink "tall" because of marketing or whatever. But it's actually the too-cool-for-school crowd that is wrong.

"Short" is in the shortest cup. It's the small size.

"Tall" is the taller cup. It's the regular size.

"Grande" is the large size. "Grande" means "large."

"Venti" is extra-large. "Venti" means "twenty," and is used because the drink is twenty ounces.

Because Starbucks doesn't list the "short" size on the menu, angry people assume Starbucks is trying to hide something. But it's not. Just ask for a short. I've never been to a Starbucks that didn't have the short size.

When I order a "short," about 90% of the time the response is, "Don't you want a 'tall,' instead? It's the same price." My response is, "It's not about money. It's about portion control." And everyone goes about their business.

That said, I'm already order what amount to a liquid dessert with a silly name, so IDGAF. Venti Frappathingamajig with extra whip and a side of the 'beetus please.

I don't go to Starbucks often, but I also dislike the naming convention.

As such, being someone with a sense of humor, if I do go to Starbucks, I'll often order a 'grande culo' beverage and see what happens.

It's amazing how few Starbucks barista are fluent in Spanish. :)

(Reminds me of a report I read ages ago about the "Ziosk" on-table ordering devices causing customers to be more likely to order desserts and other "guilty pleasure" foods.)

I am actually surprised how bad many Mac Donald's are at Time and Motion - or maybe its the UK Franchises

Indeed. Why not something that suits our self image? McMindful perhaps.

> Are there more than a tiny number of us?

There are plenty.

It's easy to imagine some sort of stylized green leaf on the wrapper, would would fit well with their other iconography. To understand why it's a good name, you need to imagine it in the visual context of their design language.

I'm just throwing this out there, but maybe there was an equivalent to what "Supersize" meant for going larger in size instead that's geared towards plant-based versions of each burger. So maybe I still want a Big Mac, but I want it with these plant-based burgers but still with the extra slice of bread and the special sauce.

I don't have a name for this as clever as Supersize, but it seems feasible.

Why?

Their burgers are BigMac, Quarter Pounder, (and Quarter Pounder WITH stuff), Cheesburger, McDouble, Hamburger, McChicken, Fillet-o-Fish.

While "Mc" is the start of some of the names, it's certainly not a must.

I would have gone with "McMiracle Burger" (as a riff on "Impossible Burger").

(McDonalds is working with Beyond Meat, one of Impossible Foods' largest competitors, for their plant-based meat substitutes; deriving their product name from a competitor's product is almost certainly a bad idea.)

Taco Bell did a good job: they just give you a burrito full of beans. The only problem was they have no idea how to cook vegetables with seasonings so the bean burrito is just bland and nasty. For McDonald's, make an actual vegan sandwich: spinach, cucumbers, sprouts for texture, some kind of sauce, tomatoes, a dash of salt and pepper. Vegan food is just like meat-based food: if the recipe is good, and the cook does a good job, it tastes good.

I don't think that's true, particularly "natural". People have been labeling everything they can "natural" for years in order to boost sales.

But it's interesting that McDonalds is being so explicit. Perhaps Impossible and Beyond Meat have already done the hard work of exposing people to these products and now McDonalds hopes to swoop in without dealing with any of the product confusion?

Either way I'm interested to try them. I've had a few of the Dunkin Donuts Beyond Meat breakfast sandwiches and they're fantastic.

There was an article in one of the business magazines about a year ago about why so many fast food companies are adding meatless options.

It's not about health. It's not about choice. It's not about the planet. It's about money.

The menus need high-priced items and low-priced items to appeal to different types of customers. Most fast-food joints need a basic product they're known for, and a premium product that costs the consumer more and has a larger profit margin, that the average consumer might occasionally try.

The fast food companies can charge more for a meatless product, and reap bigger profits.

A little greenwashing doesn't hurt, either.

The goal really should be to cut down on the carbon impact in the long term with a product that is hopefully also tastier and healthier, that will entice a large fraction of the country to increase the plant-based fraction of their diet. Not just offer a veggie burger for "poor liberals and vegetarians" who have nothing else to eat at McDonalds.

I really hope they don't screw this up by producing a crappy Costco-quality veggie burger. Impossible and Beyond are doing great on the taste front, Burger King already engaged Impossible, and I'm not sure how much research it will take McDonald's to catch up.