McDonald’s popped up in the news a couple of time last week with efforts to define its future of transforming sedentary Americans into sedentary Americans, with cheese.
It seems the burger franchise wants us to eat healthier. Or it wants us to pull up a chair and eat as many fries as we want. Or both.
Yeah, probably both. “Eat” is the important part.
Because — and try not to recoil in shock, here — McDonald’s doesn’t care about you beyond the dollars it can extract from your wallet. Or should I say, corporations in general gauge the amount of effort they put into the pretense of caring based on that pretense’s effectiveness in extracting dollars from your wallet.
Never mind that if McDonald’s really cared about me, they’d make the french fry containers better fit my cupholder, so I could consume my shame safe in the knowledge that the detailing guy won’t later be able to judge me for any petrified, vacuumed remains.
On Thursday, “the McDonald’s of the Future” opened in St. Joseph, Mo. Because nothing says forward-thinking like Missouri.
Table service is, apparently, part of the future. As is something called “pico guacamole.” And unlimited fries.
As the franchise owner, Chris Habiger, told the St. Joseph News Press, “We’re making the shift from fast food to fast-casual.”
I suppose the next logical step is stainless steel sporks.
Earlier in the week, the chain announced its intention to replace the high-fructose corn syrup it uses in buns with sucrose. Artificial preservatives have already been eliminated from Chicken McNuggets, scrambled eggs and breakfast sausage.
I’ll address the last of those first by saying: There goes my plan for surviving the zombie apocalypse. I was counting on the shelf life of McGriddles to sustain me (and seriously, “Walking Dead” producers, why in this era of product placement have we never seen Carl scavenging at, say, Carl’s Jr. for a vat of pickle slices?).
As for the whole corn syrup vs. sucrose debate, I hope McDonald’s has done enough taste-testing to ensure its buns will continue to taste exactly like its buns are supposed to taste.
Given there is no scientific proof that there are any differences, health-wise, in the ingredients, going from syrup to sugar is little more than pandering — which McDonald’s all but conceded in announcing the switch.
“We know that (consumers) don’t feel good about high-fructose corn syrup, so we’re giving them what they’re looking for instead,” Marion Gross, senior vice president of McDonald’s North American supply chain, told Reuters.
In other words, some anti-vaxxer’s blog post got one too many “likes,” so McDonald’s changed its recipe.
I call it, “Pulling a Diet Pepsi.”
Bear with me. This is difficult. I am a first-thing-in-the-morning pop guy. No coffee for me. For the first 24 1/2 years of my marriage, the Mrs. and I both enjoyed a nice Diet Pepsi over ice upon rising, winter, spring, summer and fall.
(Granted, in some of the lean years, we occasionally went with sale brands. Even Tab. But, ultimately, we decided some sacrifices were too great.)
Then, a year ago this week, my diet soda of choice, because of the vague, scientifically dubious discomfort some consumers have over aspartame, dumped that artificial sweetener in favor of sucralose — which is fine if you like your Diet Pepsi to taste as if it has been filtered through a health club towel bin.
At the time, Pepsi VP Seth Kaufman conceded the new product had a “slightly different mouth feel,” but added, “aspartame is the No. 1 reason consumers are dropping diet soda.”
Turns out mouth feel prompted significantly more droppage.
While the wife stuck with Diet Pepsi, I couldn’t stomach the flat, tinny new flavor and divided the household, switching to Coke Zero, which uses sweet, sweet aspartame. By the way, so does Pepsi MAX, which ought to tell you where Pepsico falls on the whole marketing ploy/health concerns divide.
Meanwhile, Diet Pepsi sales fell off a cliff, and in September Pepsico is bringing back aspartame-sweetened Diet Pepsi.
Might be too late to bring me back as a customer, which ought to serve notice to McDonald’s.
Watch your buns.
