I’m so tired of people acting like they’re too good for McDonald’s. As a Millennial, my peers and I had front seat tickets to the PR roller coaster than the McDonald’s brand has gone through since the mid 2000s. As children, we bought into the Happy Meal charm, much like previous generations. I loved McD’s as a child. American children have been sold this brand for 50+ years, quite successfully. But then Super Size Me came out. I remember I was shown this documentary in school. Being health conscious was becoming very popular and continues to be so. The entire fast food industry was brought under fire, but McDonald’s took the lion’s share of the blame.
I have gotten in quite a few arguments recently with people who I think represent what is now a very mainstream opinion: McDonald’s is objectively bad. I hear it all the time:
“McDonald’s is so gross”
“I actually don’t like McDonald’s at all”
“I don’t remember the last time I ate McDonalds”
All these comments are always stated as if they are new, rare opinions and by rejecting McDonald’s, the commenter is somehow more enlightened, healthy, disciplined and knowledgeable than the common folk who eat McDoubles. This is the tone of the person who thinks they are too good for McDonald’s.
Now let me give the devil his due on this take. McDonald’s has ran one of the most successful and long-lived advertising campaigns in the history of America. Due to the nature of advertising in general and this campaign’s focus on children, this has been objectively predatory. When fast food was found to be unhealthy, of course this advertising was seen as analogous to the petroleum and cigarette peddlers, which is fair. Not only was the food viewed as bad, but morally reprehensible.
But let me start with my first issue with McDonald’s haters: Quality vs. Taste. You might think that these are one in the same, but you are wrong. Instead of being fooled by McDonald’s to think that Happy Meals are magic, McD haters have been fooled by the entire food industry, catering to health halo market trends. They’ve been convinced that to taste good, food has to be “natural” and “non-processed” and “high-quality.” These are not objective metrics. A case can be made that everything and nothing is “natural, non-processed and high-quality.” This conflation of quality and taste is why people believe so strongly that McDonald’s is objectively bad, because it’s not high quality. This does not mean it doesn’t taste good. McDonald’s has sold 60 trillion burgers worldwide. How the fuck could it be possible that it doesn’t taste good? You think if you went to some undeveloped part of the world and let them have a Big Mac and hot fries that they would tell you it doesn’t taste good? Fuck no. They’d eat it until they puked. Not every single person, but a large majority. This food has been tinkered with for 70 years to be delicious and repeatable. Quality? No. Cheap? Yes. But still tasty.
The next issue I have is: why McDonald’s? Why do people love shitting on the golden arches so much compared to other sources of unhealthy food? If you look at McDonald’s food in terms of nutritional value, its not much worse than any other fast food joint. It’s also not much worse than many homemade meals. It’s not worse than barbecue, Italian food, some Mexican food, tons of stuff. It’s just high in saturated fat and salt. So is all the tasty food! Take a common meal you would prepare at home: spaghetti. Ok you go buy your processed, enriched wheat flour pasta, fry up some processed, antibiotic and hormone injected ground beef, add some pasta sauce made in a factory specifically to improve shelf-life and then sprinkle on some processed, bagged, shredded cheese covered in anti-caking agents. How the fuck is that so much better than a McDouble?
But these people I argue with, boy are they sure McDonald’s is bad. There’s really not any way I can argue against their preference, but I can argue on objective fact. Despite being the posterchild for unhealthy food during a health food market trend that has lasted 20 years, McDonald’s is still on every corner, slinging chicky nuggies. That’s the only fact I need. It’s good. People like it. I don’t care about your concerns on how they acquire their chicken, or what they put in their bread, I’m just saying the food tastes good.