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?
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:19AM
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @02:45PM
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
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:
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 03 2016, @05:34PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @06:20PM
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
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.)