To think McDonald's isn't actually That bad...it's not cardboard and cows ears as people seem to think?

[WittiestUsernameEver]

Looking at the ingredients in most of it, it's fine??

They use organic milk, free range eggs, burgers are meat and salt, probably better quality stuff than the likes of Harvester burgers etc.

People talk about it like you're feeding your kids arsenic, rats piss and pig shit...

Not great for kids then!

But nobody goes to McDs to be healthy, do they? It's not meant to be every day, but there's nothing wrong with it occasionally. 😊

Eating meat at all is fairly unpalatable when you think about it

What an odd thing to say. Most humans are omnivores who enjoy meat and find it very palatable indeed - most are not really bothered that meat = dead animals. Its never bothered my kids but then we live rurally, they know what happens on farms & where food comes from. Eldest recently asked if we could get a pig so we could eat it.

Exactly. It's perfectly ordinary human behaviour to eat meat.

I think it's fair to say that people who'd think twice about buying McD's would probably think twice about processed supermarket food too.

I'm not in the never ever have a McDonald's camp but I agree with pps that it should be an occasional thing, not a frequent thing.

this^
Also children often ask for milkshakes or ice cream on top of burgers which makes the meal very calorific. If you only do chicken wrap and bottle of water it’s fine.

But nobody's said it should be a frequent thing? Just that it's no worse than supermarket food and outside of MN, most people buy that kind of thing without batting an eyelid.

Trendy restaurants now call it "nose to tail" eating

The OP said "Looking at the ingredients in most of it, it's fine??" but it really isn't. The actual beef burger, OK, but who deconstructs the bun, scrapes off the gunk and eats the beef burger? The bun, sauce etc. is full of ultra-processed rubbish.

I find it delicious!

And if you read the ingredients, so are bog-standard ketchup, supermarket burger buns and sliced cheese.

I know on MN everyone cooks everything from scratch and never buys any UPF's, but in reality most people eat those things most days without any kind of worry or panic. I don't know why McD's is seen any differently.

Of course nobody should eat it regularly but OP didn't say they should.

No one has spoken of 'panic'.

I say again, the OP asked about McDonald's food. If the OP's AIBU had been 'to think burgers made out of processed supermarket ingredients are not that bad' my response would be exactly the same, but that is not what she asked.

Yeah it's fine as long as long you're not eating it everyday. People just like to be snobby about it because they think that it makes them appear superior

Probably less calories than a gourmet burger somewhere fancy

It's not the worst food for sure. It shouldn't be central to your diet but as a treat or as a quick meal on the go it's fine, not much different to a supermarket sandwich deal nutritionally speaking

So what? Kids have smoothies all the time these days, and they may as well be free sugars, but noone cares about them?

Okay. My point is that even with you listing all the ingredients, the food really isn't that bad. You clearly have a very different opinion of "bad", though!

I think we must have different definitions, yes.

If you only eat it occasionally, it doesn't really matter how bad it is. If you're eating it really often, then you need to be asking yourself why you're eating processed crap so often. And if you're saying 'How can meat, bread and potatoes be that unhealthy?', you haven't been paying enough attention to the discussions about UPF.

You don't count meat and potato as food???

I actually really like macdonalds but there's no point trying to stick up for it on here, it's like trying to say eastenders is good on a mailonline forum

TBH I quite like seeing people desperately trying to explain how awful meat, potatoes and salad is

I just meant many people can't stomach the thought of abbatoirs and probably couldn't butcher their own meat. I literally don't understand why a piece of steak is more desirable than a different piece of cow (ear for example) if it's all ground up in a burger. That's all I meant. It just doesn't bother me. Clearly it absolutely bothers a lot of people.

They don’t use mechanically separated chicken or beef.

But it’s really not great though. Full of manufactured ingredients to make us want to eat more. It is normal now though yes to see these ingredients regularly but I don’t think it should be. It’s not really ‘real’ food a lot of that stuff sadly.

It is fried in a lot of seed oil which is where the real health issue is. The actual ingredients are ok. I was raised to believe McDonalds is basically poison which it's not (apart from seed oil which actually kind of is)