Stick With Flipping Burgers.....

You don’t get to be called the Fat Grappler without eating your fair share of Big Macs. The truth is, though, I don’t get to any of the fast food joints regularly, anymore. I guess I could probably change the name of the column to the “Slightly Overweight Grappler”. It doesn’t quite have the same ring, though, does it?

Nonetheless, I recently took my family to my old stomping ground of McDonald’s. So, we got dressed up, put on the good fake jewellery and headed out for a bang up meal.

The first thing that struck me as odd is that McDonald’s seems to have become a health food store. There are salads and Heart Association Ticks as far as the eye can see. This could be a good or a bad thing, but that’s another can of worms for another time.

The item that stood out for me this trip was far simpler than the paradox of the only restaurant to be sued for making people obese being marketed as a healthy food distributor. No, it is far simpler, but equally telling. Nonetheless, many people will dismiss my observation as the opinion of an obsessive compulsive geek with too much time on his hands, but bear with me. You might even start to share my outrage.

You see, I started by ordering my Quarter Pounder. As you can see, I’m taking my health seriously. I’d usually order a Pounder. I’m trying to move away from downing four all beef patties per burger, so I settled for a standard 206g of 100% beef on a bun with some pickle.

Or at least that’s what I thought.....

You see, the Quarter Pounder now has new packaging and on the inside of the package is a little text.....

“If there are 2.2 pounds in a kilogram and McDonald’s Australia bought 18,000,000 kilograms of beef last year, how many quarter pounders is that? Well? Maybe you should get back to your burger.....”

Well, maybe that’s what you should do. McDonald’s probably don’t want you to actually read the equation they’ve printed on the box.....

18,000,000 / 2.2
4

It’s fantastic to see that the healthy food options have reduced the number of burgers by over 88%.

Now, I always knew McDonald’s couldn’t cook, but I thought they could do simple math. The equation should read:

18,000,000 x 2.2 x 4

I know McDonald’s core competency is serving Cheeseburgers, but if they can expand into healthy food, then surely they can expand into primary school mathematics. Either that or get someone to check their maths before the print run. A ten year old kid couldn’t cost that much for three minutes’ work.

Alternately, maybe we should adopt McDonald’s new conversion. Australian beef sold in the US and other places that measure in pounds would be 8.8 times as expensive, world records in weightlifting would be a lot less and I’d probably be able to move my fridge by myself. But, most importantly, the Fat Grappler would weigh about 15 pounds.

Post Script: McDonald's changed the packaging for the Quarter Pounder at some point to reflect the correct math. Good on them. At least they can read.