Two guys who haven’t seen each other for some time are driving in a car on their way
to a bible meeting.
One of them, who’s recently returned from a trip around Europe, says to the other, “You
know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris?”
The other man looks perplexed, surely, it’s just a quarter pounder, he thinks.
His friend explains that in Europe they use the metric system, so a quarter of a pound
doesn’t really mean much.
In France, he says, they call it a “Royale with cheese.”
He further surprises his good buddy by informing him that in France a burger weighing roughly
113 grams is a damn tasty burger, somehow a better burger than what’s served in the
McDonalds restaurant they frequent in North Hollywood.
The question is why?
Why do Europeans get a better standard of McDonalds than Americans?
After all, the fast-food burger, the cornerstone of any nutritious diet, was invented in the
U.S.
It just wouldn’t seem right for Europeans to get a burger of a higher standard.
The answer might surprise you.
Let’s start with a few McDonalds facts so you know how such a great American institution
made its way across the pond.
The first restaurant was opened in 1940 in San Bernardino, California.
That was basically a hamburger stand, but a few years later the owners, Richard and
Maurice McDonald, got the idea to create a system in which food could be made and served
fast.
They called this their “Speedee Service System” and they had a mascot called “Speedy”
to go with it.
That clown that a good chunk of the world is familiar with known as Ronald McDonald
didn’t appear until 1965, and by that time the company had been franchised and McDonalds
restaurants were popping up all over the U.S.
By 1968, there were a thousand franchises and in 1970 the company opened its first place
outside of the U.S. and Canada, which was in Costa Rica.
A year later and a branch was opened in Japan, quickly followed by entries into the European
and Australian markets.
What the company attempted to do was make the food pretty much the same everywhere.
With McDonalds, the idea was you always knew what you were getting wherever you went.
You’ll see today that this hasn’t always been the case, but the same meals for the
most part featured on menus all over the world.
In 1975, if you were to order a “Filet-O-Fish” or a “Quarter Pounder” or an “Egg McMuffin”
in Stockholm, those dishes should have tasted the same as they would have in Boise, Idaho.
So, if you’re one of the 68 million folks in 119 countries that every day hands over
his cash for a burger washed down with a tasty beverage, you should be getting what someone
on the other side of the world is getting.
We can tell you that our wayfaring staff at the Infographics Show have guiltily wolfed
down a McDonalds meal in countries far and wide, and we can say the same-taste experience
that McDonalds wants people to have works, but there are some differences.
And we’re not just talking about meals specially devised for the tastes of certain cultures.
For instance, you can get a McFalafel sandwich in Egypt, or a McArabia sandwich in Bahrain,
or a Bulgogi Burger in South Korea, but you can also get the standard fare.
Ok, so first of all, just so you know we aren’t making this up, the web is full of Americans
asking the question: Why on Earth does McDonalds taste so much better in Europe, or even in
Australia or New Zealand?
Americans it seems are getting a raw deal when it comes to one of their most famous
exports.
The first thing we should talk about is mind over matter.
If, for instance, you are eating your McDonalds in a very beautiful building, what you eat
might just taste better.
Trust us, a steak served on a fine China plate will taste better than a steak served in an
ashtray.
On the outskirts of Rome, you can visit the McDonalds’ “museum-restaurant”, a place
where you can chow down on fine pastries and burgers next to ancient ruins.
In Porto, Portugal, you can eat under chandeliers in a quite exquisite building.
In Ireland, there’s a restaurant situated in a 19th-century town hall, and on the Rue
Saint-Lazare in Paris, you can have croissants and coffee inside a building that looks like
something out of a children’s fantasy book.
Ok, so some restaurants might serve some quality extras, but even if you’re getting a standard
chicken McNuggets meal it’s bound to taste better when you’re eating it in a historic
building.
It’s also very likely that the meal served in this building is made with more care and
attention, rather than your Big Mac coming to you looking like it’s been in a terrible
accident and subsequently reconstituted by a drunk surgeon.
Nonetheless, for the most part, McDonalds restaurants the world over, look pretty similar.
In the UK there are around 1,300 branches and most of them wouldn’t look out of place
in the U.S., but something they do over there in the UK might make a meal taste a little
bit better.
It’s all about standards, something the U.S. seems to have a deficit of in the fast-food
world.
We need to talk about something called “dimethylpolysiloxane”, a chemical Americans have been unknowingly
eating for decades.
They might not have known this because it’s kind of in the small print on the McDonalds
website.
It’s there if you look closely, with McDonalds saying the chemical stops oil splatter.
This is one reason it’s found in French Fries and Chicken McNuggets, as well as hash
browns.
It’s not added directly to the food, but it gets in there via the cooking oil.
We’re not quite sure just how much of a bad thing dimethylpolysiloxane is.
When the Chicago Tribune contacted McDonalds about it, the newspaper received no reply.
As it stands, the EU says it doesn’t have harmful effects on the environment, but still,
the UK won’t allow it on their fries.
Perhaps one positive thing about the chemical, which is a kind of silicone, is it promotes
hair growth.
That’s what some scientists in Japan said anyway.
Maybe if you’ve been eating McDonald’s French Fries your entire life you won’t
go bald.
Maybe…The scientists injected the chemical in their test subjects rather than make them
eat it.
Another place you’ll find this chemical other than on your fries is on condoms, where
it acts as a lubricant.
We could make a lewd joke about putting things in your mouth, but in the interests of decorum
and monetization we’ll leave it there.
What we will say though is some countries don’t think dimethylpolysiloxane is a suitable
or even safe accompaniment to a bit of deep-fried potato.
For this reason, the British won’t allow that chemical in their French fries.
In fact, when you look at all the ingredients that go into U.S. French fries, it adds up
to quite a lot more than goes into UK fries, three times as much.
Someone asked McDonalds on its own website why this is, but the answer was vague, with
the company saying every country has its own regulations.
The EU in fact, is quite a bit stricter than the U.S. when it comes to what can be put
in your food.
In conclusion, fries in Europe might just be a bit more wholesome, a tad more potatoey.
There’s also the fact that in some European countries you can get variations of fries,
and some of them actually taste like they contain lots of potato.
You can find “big French fries” or “fried potato wedges” in some countries, and they
might be served up with a bunch of different sauces, including cheese sauce with bacon.
Sweden went one step further.
Over there you can order flat fries with a truffle-based mayo.
Yep, that definitely sounds like a step up from the lube-imbued American fry.
Now let’s talk about beef.
On its U.S. website, McDonald’s admits that it uses growth hormones on its cattle so the
meat you eat has less fat.
This goes into the cow feed and so isn’t directly shot into the animal.
The company says this is not unusual at all, but when we went to the McDonalds UK website
there was a declaration that no hormones are used on the cattle.
You can read this statement on the Mcdonalds UK website:
“The use of hormonal growth promoters for cows is banned in the U.K. and rest of the
European Union.
The beef used across our menu is 100% British and Irish, and comes from farms accredited
by a national farm assurance scheme.”
Ok, so if the UK is saying this, obviously proudly saying it as a means to win-over its
base of burger eaters, what does that say about growth hormones in cows?
If it’s banned, is it bad?
This might just be an ethical concern, but Europe goes a step further with its beef.
You have to ask what the cattle have been dining on.
In 2020, McDonalds boasted about a new burger that was made from grass-fed cattle, but that
was in Australia.
Again, if that’s a good thing, then a cow that doesn’t get its regular fix of rolling
meadow might not taste as good.
In 2013, NPR wrote an article about how burgers were made for McDonalds in France.
That article stated that all the meat was locally sourced, and all the cattle was grass-fed,
compared to in the U.S. where the cows had to make do with the less superior corn.
French cattle also had to have a passport detailing where each cow was born, where it
grew up, and where it was slaughtered.
All this, according to the writer, made for a much tastier burger than Americans were
getting.
The European Union is also not cool with how Americans treat their chickens, or we should
say some companies that mass produce chicken.
The process of washing chickens in a chlorine bath to disinfect the bird is pretty much
outlawed in the EU, which may explain why a chicken sandwich in Europe tastes a little
better than a chicken sandwich in an American McDonalds.
The USA Poultry and Egg Export Council didn’t much like snub from Europe, and came out and
said there’s nothing unsafe about those chicken baths.
It seems right now in Europe, chlorinated chicken is still a big no-no, although in
the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been busy trying to cozy up to the States and reverse
the ban.
He says there’s no evidence that washing the birds in disinfectant is dangerous for
the consumer, but the EU has stood its ground, stating the process leads to horribly crowded
abattoirs.
Is meat that hasn’t taken a posthumous bath in chemicals any less tasty?
Well, that’s not an easy question to answer.
Maybe you just feel better knowing the dead animal in your sandwich - “Frankenbirds”
to animal activists - didn’t suffer as much.
Saying that, according to the World Animal Protection organization, fast food joints
in Europe aren’t exactly taking chicken welfare seriously.
Then there’s the ‘does size matter debate’?
In the U.S., the Big Mac is just a little bit bigger than it is in the UK.
If you have more quantity, though, does that mean the quality is affected?
Let’s also remember that the drinks are bigger in the U.S.
The large is larger than in European countries as are the medium and small sizes.
That might sound like a good thing to American diners that would happily mainline a 30 ounce
(887 ml) Coke, but again you have to ask, does quantity affect quality?
Would you sacrifice some soda or a bit of burger to know you’re not eating chicken
that was once so deformed and depressed it longed for its big day in the abattoir?
So, the meat and the fries might taste a little bit different because of where the food is
sourced and what is added to it.
There are more reasons why Europe’s McDonalds are better.
For one thing, all over Europe, you can get a beer with your burger.
In Belgium, you can order a beer with your Belgo burger, a sandwich garnished with roasted
onions and smattered with cocktail sauce and Maredsous cheese.
Let’s face it, the American cheese slice is not the finest tasting cheese in the world.
In parts of Scandinavia, you can get potato tots filled with smoked cheese and spicy chili.
In Greece, you can opt to change the regular cheese and have creamy yogurt on your burger
and you can change the bun for a pita bread.
Come on, who in the U.S. wouldn’t want to try one of those?
You can also get tzatziki wraps in countries all over Europe, which is similar to the Greek
wrap.
They come with vegetables and beef or chicken and they taste very fresh compared to regular
burgers.
They contain fewer calories, too, but for some reason, they’ve never made it to the
U.S.
We guess test audiences in the U.S. have never taken to them, even though sales surged in
Europe when McDonalds introduced a healthier menu there.
In France, you can visit a McCafe.
In one of those places, you might not always hear, “Do you want fries with that,” but
they might ask you if you feel like a chocolate croissant straight out of the oven, or perhaps
a couple of colorful macrons.
As for food for vegetarians, in 2020, McDonalds said it would start rolling out a McPlant
burger in various countries around the world, but right now and in the past, options have
been very limited for vegetarians.
Not in Finland, though.
In that country they’ve had a quarter-pound “El Veggo” burger since 2018 and it’s
been selling like hotcakes.
And let’s talk about breakfast.
You already know you can get croissants in France, but all over Europe you can find much
better breakfast meals than you can find in the U.S.
Let’s face it, the traditional McMuffin doesn’t taste much like a muffin, and eating
the McDonalds bagel is like chewing on a sock filled with ketchup.
Over in the UK at the place they sometimes call “Maccie Dees”, you can have a bacon
sourdough roll for breakfast and it’s actually quite good.
The bread tastes like bread, the bacon is bacon.
Those McMuffin meals sometimes taste like airplane food or something a spaceman might
eat, but the British rolls actually taste fresh, as if they were made by your mom.
In 2019, some discerning Brits voted the McDonalds roll the best breakfast sandwich in the city
high street...Well, at least according to one taste test which pitted the roll against
five other popular breakfast sandwiches.
So, there you go.
It seems McDonalds in Europe offers many more choices and often you can eat your meal in
very nice surroundings.
There are more laws as to what goes inside your meal which makes for better quality meat
and fewer chemicals.
That’s why Europe wins.
Now you need to watch this, “McDonald's vs Burger King - What Is The Difference?
Fast Food Restaurant Comparison.”
Or, have a look at this, “I Only Ate Fast Food For 30 Days And This Is What Happened.”