McDonald's urban legends

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There are multiple urban legends centering around the fast-food chain McDonald's. These legends include claims about the food and allegations of discrimination by the company. The company also denies all these claims

Contents

Funding terrorism

In the late 1980s, rumors persisted in the United Kingdom that McDonald's was covertly funding the Provisional IRA, which was designated as a terror organization, via NORAID. The source of these rumors was eventually traced to a CNN talk show in which the company was praised for its generosity in providing funding for employees via Individual Retirement Accounts, or IRAs. [1]

Unusual ingredients

Large companies have been the subject of rumors that they substitute unusual or unethical substances in their products, usually to decrease costs. McDonald's is not immune to such claims.

100% Beef

An untrue but pervasive claim is that McDonald's buys its meat from a company called "100% Beef", making it possible for McDonald's to call beef by-products and soy products "100% beef". [2] [3]

Confectionery cheeseburgers

A McDonald's cheeseburger McDonald's McDouble burger.jpg
A McDonald's cheeseburger

One story claims that if McDonald's cheeseburgers did not include pickles as an ingredient, the cheeseburger would be classed as a confectionery item. It stems from the belief that the sugar content in the bun is high, but adding a pickle then keeps the overall sugar percentage below the threshold of what is classed as confectionery. McDonald's have stated that this story is an urban legend. [4] [5]

Cow eyeballs

One belief is that McDonald's uses cow eyeballs in its products, permitting it to brand them as "100% beef". [6] However, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) mandates that all beef by-products, including cow eyeballs, be appropriately labeled. McDonald's has asserted that its products contain "100% pure USDA-inspected beef; no additives, no fillers, no extenders." In addition, cow eyeballs are actually more expensive than the more commonly eaten cow parts due to demand from scientific institutions for experiments. [6]

Earthworms

Dating back to at least 1978, this rumor claims that McDonald's restaurants use earthworms in their hamburgers. [7] [8] This "worm-in-the-burger" rumor was originally attached to Wendy's burgers. [7]

Human meat

A claim circulating since 2014, including in a video, is that McDonald's uses human meat in their hamburgers. The claim originates from a satire blog. [9] [10]

Mutant laboratory meat

Around March–April 2000, an internet rumor spread via e-mail in Brazil claimed that McDonald's meat was actually made from a genetically modified animal maintained in a laboratory, attributing the findings to the Michigan State University. The e-mail stated that the creatures kept were "figures without legs and without horns, which are fed through tubes connected to the stomach and which in fact have no bones, but a little cartilage that never develops", and "anyone who has seen them assures them that they are very unpleasant things, because in addition to remaining immobile all their 'life', they have no eyes, no tail and practically no fur; in fact the head is the size of a tennis ball". [11]

The e-mail carries on saying that "some irreversible health damage can be done by eating this meat, resulting in diseases who manifest themselves in a way similar to AIDS, and have symptoms related to Alzheimer's disease" and ends encouraging the reader to boycott McDonald's until it sells actual beef. The urban legend has also been attributed to other fast-food chains and animal products, such as KFC and mutant chickens. [11]

Pig fat

This rumor is that McDonald's uses pig fat in its milkshakes, ice cream, and fried potatoes. McDonald's provides complete ingredient lists for all of its products on each of its regional websites: this includes unidentified fats within the ice cream used to make soft-serve cones and sundaes. The claim that McDonald's dairy products contain pig fat has been denied by the company on several occasions. [12] [13]

Pink slime

Around 2014, a photo of "pink slime" or "pink goop" was widely shared and claimed to be what Chicken McNuggets were made of. [14] [15] This has led to McDonald's Canada releasing a video showcasing how Chicken McNuggets are actually made in response. [16] [17]

Racism

Rumors in 2011 proclaimed an image shows a McDonald's sign announcing a $1.50 surcharge for African-American customers. This was proven to be a hoax. [18]

Drugs

Since 2015, fake news websites have purported that McDonald's restaurants in Colorado are converting children's playgrounds to lounges for on-premises cannabis consumption. The story was started on the fake news website Now 8 News. [19] [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hamburger</span> Culinary dish consisting of a beef patty between rounded buns

A hamburger, or simply a burger, is a dish consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. The patties are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, bacon, or chilis with condiments such as ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish or a "special sauce", often a variation of Thousand Island dressing, and are frequently placed on sesame seed buns. A hamburger patty topped with cheese is called a cheeseburger. Under some definitions, and in some cultures, a burger is considered a sandwich.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mechanically separated meat</span> Paste-like meat product

Mechanically separated meat (MSM), mechanically recovered/reclaimed meat (MRM), or mechanically deboned meat (MDM) is a paste-like meat product produced by forcing pureed or ground beef, pork, mutton, turkey or chicken under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue. When poultry is used, it is sometimes called white slime as an analog to meat-additive pink slime and to meat extracted by advanced meat recovery systems, both of which are different processes. The process entails pureeing or grinding the carcass left after the manual removal of meat from the bones and then forcing the slurry through a sieve under pressure.

<i>Snopes</i> Fact-checking website

Snopes, formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.

Ground beef, minced beef or beef mince - often just generically referred to as mince or mincemeat, is beef that has been finely chopped with a knife, meat grinder, mincer or mincing machine. It is used in many recipes including hamburgers, bolognese sauce, meatloaf, meatballs, kofta, and burritos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hamburger Helper</span> Packaged food product with ground beef

Hamburger Helper is a packaged food product manufactured by Eagle Foods. As boxed, it consists of a dried carbohydrate, with powdered seasonings contained in a packet. The consumer is meant to combine the contents of the box with browned ground beef ("hamburger"), water, and, with some varieties, milk to create a complete one-dish meal.

A reconstituted meat, meat slurry, or emulsified meat is a liquefied meat product that contains fewer fats, pigments and less myoglobin than unprocessed dark meats. Meat slurry is more malleable than dark meats and eases the process of meat distribution as pipelines may be used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big King</span> Hamburger sold by Burger King

The Big King sandwich is one of the major hamburger products sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King, and was part of its menu for more than twenty years. As of March 2019, it is sold in the United States under its 1997 Big King XL formulation. During its testing phase in 1996–1997, it was originally called the Double Supreme and was configured similarly to the McDonald's Big Mac—including a three-piece roll. It was later reformulated as a more standard double burger during the latter part of product testing in 1997. It was given its current name when the product was formally introduced in September 1997, but maintained the more conventional double cheeseburger format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A&W (Canada)</span> Canadian fast food restaurant chain

A&W is a fast-food restaurant chain in Canada, franchised by A&W Food Services of Canada, Inc.

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customers daily in 119 countries. McDonald's traces its origins to a 1940 restaurant in San Bernardino, California, United States. After expanding within the United States, McDonald's became an international corporation in 1967, when it opened a location in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. By the end of the 1970s, McDonald's restaurants existed in five of the Earth's seven continents; an African location came in 1992 in Casablanca, Morocco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McDonald's Israel</span> Israeli master franchise of the fast food restaurant chain McDonalds

McDonald's Israel is the Israeli master franchise of the fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. Previously operated and licensed by Alonyal Limited, McDonald's Israel is the largest of Israel's burger chains with a 60% market share. It was the first Israeli outlet to be opened in 1993 and a major competitor of the local restaurant chain Burger Ranch. The world's first kosher McDonald's was opened in Mevaseret Zion in October 1995. After a sales decline attributed to consumer boycotts as part of the BDS movement, McDonald's Corporation announced in 2024 that it would buy Alonyal pending regulatory approval.

A hamburger is a specific type of burger. It is a sandwich that consists of a cooked ground beef meat patty, placed between halves of a sliced bun. Hamburgers are often served with various condiments, such as dill relish (condiment), mayonnaise, and other options including lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and cheese.

Empirical Foods, formerly named Beef Products Inc. (BPI), is an American meat processing company based in Dakota Dunes, South Dakota. Prior to high media visibility of its products, it was a major supplier to fast food chains, groceries and school lunch programs. It had three additional plants, which closed in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the hamburger</span>

Originally just a ground beef patty, as it is still interpreted in multiple languages, the first hamburger likely originated in Hamburg (Germany), hence its name; however, evidence also suggests that the United States may have later been the first country where two slices of bread and a ground beef patty were combined into a "hamburger sandwich" and sold as such. Shortly after this combination, the hamburger quickly included all of its currently typically characteristic trimmings, including onions, lettuce, and sliced pickles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pink slime</span> Meat by-product

Lean finely textured beef (LFTB)—also called finely textured beef, boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT), and colloquially known as pink slime—is a meat by-product used as a food additive to ground beef and beef-based processed meats, as a filler, or to reduce the overall fat content of ground beef. As part of the production process, heat and centrifuges remove the fat from the meat in beef trimmings. The resulting paste, without the fat, is exposed to ammonia gas or citric acid to kill bacteria. In 2001, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the product for limited human consumption. The product, when prepared using ammonia gas, is banned for human consumption in the European Union and Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McDouble</span> Hamburger sold by McDonalds

The McDouble is a hamburger sold by the fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's. It is a variation on the double cheeseburger, with only one slice of cheese placed between the two beef patties. It was introduced in 1997. It is one of the cheapest products sold by the company, and for this reason is often included in the chain's budget menus. The burger is almost identical to a Double Cheeseburger, except for the extra slice of cheese in the cheeseburger.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lists of foods</span>

This is a categorically organized list of foods. Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is produced either by plants, animals, or fungi, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells in an effort to produce energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth.

Crowd Cow is an American online meat delivery marketplace. It connects fisheries and ranchers who raise livestock with consumers who want to buy meat.

References

Citations

  1. "Topics of the Times - The IRA you say". The New York Times . 30 November 1989. Archived from the original on 2010-01-29.
  2. "Are McDonald's Hamburgers 100% Beef?". Snopes . 24 January 2011. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  3. "FAQS | Is '100% beef' a company owned by McDonald's (and therefore your beef products are not actually 100% beef)?". McDonald's UK. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  4. "Are McDonald's cheeseburgers counted as confectionery?". YouTube. McDonald's. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  5. "Are gherkins added to a Big Mac® to offset the sugar content & avoid it being called a dessert?". www.mcdonalds.com. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  6. 1 2 Mikkelson, David (15 April 2015). "McDonald's: World's Largest Purchaser of Cow Eyeballs?". Snopes . Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  7. 1 2 Mikkelson, David (5 July 1999). "FACT CHECK: Is Worm Meat Used in McDonald's Hamburgers?". Snopes . Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  8. Taylor, Kate (2016-01-21). "A viral rumor that McDonald's uses ground worm filler in burgers has been debunked". Business Insider . Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  9. "False claim of human meat in McDonald's factories stems from old hoax". AP News. 2020-08-24. Retrieved 2024-07-08.
  10. Lee, Ella. "Fact check: No, McDonald's doesn't serve 'human meat'". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2024-07-08.
  11. 1 2 "As coisas da McDonald's: hambúrgueres são feitos de seres geneticamente modificados. (hoax)". www.quatrocantos.com (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  12. Kelly, Debra (2020-07-16). "The Untold Truth Of McDonald's Ice Cream". Mashed.com . Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  13. "McSalads bring back health". The Sydney Morning Herald . 2004-04-20. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  14. Behr, Felix (2020-11-09). "Don't Believe These Myths About Chicken Nuggets". Mashed.com . Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  15. Mikkelson, David (2015-01-28). "Pink Slime and Mechanically Separated Chicken". Snopes . Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  16. "McDonald's Shows How Its McNuggets Are Made: No 'Pink Slime'". NBC News . 2014-02-06. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  17. Tuttle, Brad (2014-02-05). "McDonald's Made the Right Move in Response to Gross 'Pink Slime'". Time . Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  18. "McDonald's racist Twitter message was hoax". CBS News. 15 June 2011. Archived from the original on 3 May 2012. Retrieved 29 July 2012.
  19. "NOT REAL NEWS: McDonald's not adding pot-smoking centers". AP News . 2018-04-18. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  20. Evon, Dan (2015-10-08). "McWeed". Snopes. Retrieved 2024-07-08.

Bibliography