Leave McDonald's Alone!

This post is nothing to do with books or writing. Sorry about that. Once in a while I wander off topic.

You've probably seen the picture circulating round Facebook and elsewhere on the net of some gooey grey-pink sludge coming out of a factory pipe. The tag line asks us to guess what McDonald's food product it is. Strawberry milkshake, we hope, until told that it's actually the mechanically recovered bits of chicken, including feet and eyeballs, used to make McNuggets. There are probably several comments below along the lines of, "I would never stoop so low as to eat at that dreadful place, the food is terrible, and the staff are little more than brainless slaves."

So there.

Well, bully for you, you great hoity-toity food snob commenters. The picture of the pink slime is a hoax, of course. (McNuggets are made only of chicken breast meat.) Many other malicious rumours circulate. A friend recently informed me, in all gullible conviction, that McDonald's milkshakes are made from the used oil from frying the chips.

I wish people would stop using McDonald's as a whipping-boy and thinking that it's somehow fashionable or popular to be disparaging about it. Here's why I love McDonald's.

• You can take three small children out for dinner as a treat, and still have change from a tenner. (Can't beat a 35p ice cream cone.)
• The food is delicious. It just really is. The breakfasts are particularly good, and the Big Tasty is well named. But for my money (all £3.49 of it) you can't beat a quarter-pounder with cheese, regular fries with extra salt and barbecue sauce, and diet coke. 
• The kids get a toy! It was Roald Dahl books that came free with a Happy Meal not long ago. How fabulous is that!
• I love randomly winning stuff in McDonald's Monopoly.
• Students get a free cheeseburger or McFlurry with every meal.
• It's varied. Wraps, fish, salads - it doesn't have to be a burger. I did three months as a vegetarian a couple of years ago (as an experiment) and discovered that McDonald's vegetarian offerings are excellent too.
• It's healthy. Yes, I did say that. Read it again. McDonald's were one of the first restaurants in the UK to include the calorie content on the menu, so I can make healthy choices when I want to. Their salads are generous, delicious, and under 300 calories. Perfect with a fruit bag and diet drink. Yes, many of their foods are high in fat and calories, but McDonald's is a restaurant, it's meant to be an occasional treat, not a replacement kitchen. And it's not McDonald's job to care for our health, it's ours.
• I have two friends who work at McDonald's and they are far from brainless (in fact, they are both college students) and are reasonably paid and have good perks, starting with a free meal each shift.
• McDonald's do a lot to support the local community, including sponsoring local football teams. I particularly admire their charity which provides Ronald McDonald Houses for parents and siblings to stay in when children are in hospital. Having stayed in hospital with two of my children I know how important it is that families can remain together at these times of crisis.
• It's fun and relaxed for families. It is lovely to go to a restaurant where it doesn't matter if the children are a little noisy or get up and run around. Some even have play areas, and even those that don't provide colouring pictures and crayons. A visit to McDonald's is always a happy occasion.

Go on, mention Morgan Spurlock. He had two very stupid rules in his "Supersize Me" documentary. The first one was in the title. Every time the staff asked whether he wanted to supersize his order, he had to say "yes". Well, they always asked, and he always ended up consuming twice the fat and calories he otherwise would have done. He also decided to do no exercise at all. He was trying to show why Americans are so fat and unhealthy, but that didn't need to be done. It's because they eat far too much fast food, make poor menu choices when they do, and don't do exercise.

I would dearly like to repeat Mr. Spurlock's experiment but with my own rules. I would, like him, have to eat all my meals at McDonald's. Unlike him, however, I have no car, so I would have to walk or cycle there three times a day. I would have to have everything on the menu at least once, but, unlike him, I wouldn't have to bow to everything the staff suggest. I bet that if I did this for an entire month, I could be shown at the end of the month to have lost weight, and be healthier than when I started.

Anyone want to sponsor me to do that documentary so that I can once and for all silence all the annoying and petty naysayers?