Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun dept.

Michael 'Jim' Delligatti, the inventor of the Big Mac, has died aged 98.

Just how he made it that far, given his fondness for the lard-laden double-decker, is anyone's guess.

Delligatti cooked up the Big Mac in 1965 when, as one of McDonalds' early franchisees, he felt the menu needed a rival for local burger bars' two-storey offerings. In 1967 he put it on the menu at his Uniontown, Pa, restaurant.

McDonalds like what it saw and took it national by 1968.

The rest is history: the Big Mac went on to become a symbol of American culture and capitalism, was accused of felling rainforests and contributed to unknown quantities of myocardial infarctions.

Messiah, or mass-murderer?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by damnbunni on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:19AM

    by damnbunni (704) on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:19AM (#436456) Journal

    Consistency. McD's actually did sell chicken strips for quite a while - strips of chicken breast, battered and fried - but the irregularity of the pieces made them more difficult to work with in assembly-line cooking.

    Mechanically pressed nuggets are all the same.

    Me, I miss the dark meat nuggets - they had a bit more flavor, in my opinion.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @02:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @02:45PM (#436531)

    If I'm not mistaken, the chicken McNuggets were originally a mix of lots of different chicken parts ground up and formed into nuggets. When people found out what was in them, they changed to all white meat only. I do remember the original ones tasting different and slightly different texture.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 03 2016, @03:12PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday December 03 2016, @03:12PM (#436533) Homepage

    Approximately 10 years ago, I gave up eating McDonalds for good. For my birthday, my employer gave me a McDonalds gift certificate and so I purchased McDonald's early on by birthday, before the fun. Later, the McDonalds I ate caused me to shit myself in public, on my birthday. I have never eaten McDonalds since.

    I heard an urban legend that McNuggets were made with worm meat, and a guy I knew claimed that he knew the guy who ran the worm farm selling the processed worm product to McDonald's. Sounds like bullshit, but I'd believe it if it were true.

    Wired Magazine had an article about what exactly is in McDonald's Fries. [wired.com] You have to read it carefully to get the whole picture:

    " That's right, the fries get two batches of vegetable oil—one for par-frying at the factory and another for the frying bath on location. The second one adds corn oil and an additive called TBHQ, or tertbutylhydroquinone, which at high doses can cause nasty side effects in rats (mmmm … stomach tumors). "

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 03 2016, @05:34PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 03 2016, @05:34PM (#436565) Journal
      For me, I stopped eating frequently at McDonalds in the 1980s. But I stopped when McDs started doing hardcore portion control and getting things like really foamy ice cream and hamburgers without pickles. Occasionally, I'll be stuck going to a McDs, say if I'm with someone else who wants to go there. The food is better than it's been in the past, but that's not saying much.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @06:20PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @06:20PM (#436575)

        Most of the McDonald's I've been to recently have had crisp counter service and reasonably clean tables and restrooms. They do that part of the business better than many of their competitors.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by damnbunni on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:59PM

      by damnbunni (704) on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:59PM (#436608) Journal

      Worm meat? Worms cost WAY more than chicken, per pound. Making McNuggets with worm meat would cost a fortune. Mechanically separated chicken looks pretty gross, though.

      And sure, tert-Butylhydroquinone causes cancer in rats. Well, it causes 'pretumors'. It's also one of the most common preservatives used in oils and shortenings. If you wanted to get sick off of it, you'd need to buy a shitload of oil, find a way to concentrate the TBHQ out, and eat it in massive quantities.

      According to Bruce Ames, who developed some of the better 'is this dangerous' test methodologies - the Ames Test - more than half of chemicals tested show mutagenic/carcinogenic properties. (All carcinogens are mutagens, though not all mutagens are carcinogenic.) Not just man-made chemicals; natural chemical show the same ratio.

      The glycoalkaloid precursors in the potatoes are more dangerous than the TBHQ in the oil.

      Is McDonald's food good for you? No. But it's no worse than any other fried, fatty food. And their beef is actually lower in fat than most 'steakhouse' burgers. (This probably also explains why McD's hamburgers are pretty damn bland.)