Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad

Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by elithrar on Wednesday June 20, 2012 @09:55PM (#4140101)

> Also their burgers are pretty gross.

Some people must think they taste "good enough", given their popularity. Convenience and price obviously play big roles here, but they are also likely choosing McDonalds over other options on at least some basis of taste.

> But make no mistake that McDonalds is a business that is, if not as harmful as Philip Morris, gradable on the same scale. For the most part it's a company whose core business model is "leverage unfathomably vast marketing resources to coerce large numbers of people into making the least healthful dietary choice available to them at any given moment".

In Australia, they actually [no doubt due to social pressures] a large range of "healthy options" that are actually half-decent. I'm not sure whether they offer this stuff in the US, but compared to the numerous fried chicken, roast chicken and Burger King restaurants here, they are leagues ahead.

Note that I'm not defending their past behaviour-which I think we can agree was abysmal-but they have at least tried to reform and for a business of their size and brand, is no easy feat.

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by tptacek on Wednesday June 20, 2012 @10:13PM (#4140144)

Their burgers are (deliberately, carefully engineered to be) hyperpalatable. There are plenty of hyperpalatable foods that also happen to be gross.

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by lucian1900 on Thursday June 21, 2012 @05:14AM (#4141120)

The ones I've had both in Romania and the UK have been excellent.

Can't comment about US ones.

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by goodcanadian on Wednesday June 20, 2012 @10:26PM (#4140197)

In Australia (and Canada for that matter), McDonald's food is far better than it is the the US.

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by megablast on Thursday June 21, 2012 @02:59AM (#4140865)

Rubbish. As an Aussie who has tried both, I have not noticed the difference. I deliberately tried the ones in the US to see if they were better, as people had said. They were the same tasteless garbage.

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by geoka9 on Thursday June 21, 2012 @03:31AM (#4140931)

I can't eat at McDonald's in Canada, but I really like to go there when I'm in Eastern Europe. It tastes so much better there.

UPDATE: And I didn't like it in the US either.

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by jules on Thursday June 21, 2012 @05:40AM (#4141171)

I only have experience with McDonald's in Western Europe, and here the food is not good. The pattys seem like the meat was thoroughly grinded to a smooth paste. The bread doesn't have any flavour, and because it's in a closed package with the rest it becomes soaked and soft from the steam. The worst part is the cheese (if you can call it that -- it doesn't look or taste like cheese at all). The fries are okayish. On the rare occasion that I'm with a group of people who want to eat something at McDonalds, I usually take a salad with the sauce in a separate package, because even the salad sauce doesn't taste good.

This was surprising to me. You can make a much better burger than McDonalds in 10 minutes with standard equipment. Just take some minced meat, form it into a flat cylinder, rub some olive oil salt and pepper, cook it in a frying pan, after you turned it around add (real) cheese on top and cook the other side, slice a bread in two and roast it a little in the same pan, and stack up the burger with some lettuce, tomato and some mustard and/or ketchup. Why can't a company whose primary purpose is to make burgers not make a burger half as good? It's not like the ingredients here are more expensive. Or do people really prefer McD's burgers?

Don't get me started on restaurants that use canned peppers and mushrooms that make the whole pizza wet and acidic. Also: http://popsop.com/wp-content/uploads/kraft_cheese_snack_befo... WTF? "Natural cheese made with 2% milk no added growth hormones"

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by tptacek on Thursday June 21, 2012 @01:16PM (#4143087)

The cheese on a fast food hamburger is really more a condiment than an ingredient, serving a purpose somewhere in between "cheese" and "mayonnaise".

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by hessenwolf on Thursday June 21, 2012 @09:07AM (#4141761)

The price of beef varies pretty dramatically around Europe.

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by maguay on Wednesday June 20, 2012 @10:46PM (#4140273)

I think it's better in most of the world than the US. It's almost considered classy in Thailand, and to me, it seems to taste better, too.

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Re:Why Your McD's Burger Doesn't Look Like the One in the Ad by philbarr on Thursday June 21, 2012 @05:45AM (#4141182)

Obviously you've not tried them in the UK. We've been to Vegas in the US and thought the burgers there were amazing. Like, "oh my god, this actually looks a bit like real beef!"

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