In my health and nutrition classes in school, I remember watching Super Size Me, a documentary following a man attempting to subsist on McDonald’s menu items for a month. My family and the families of my friends frequently chose fast food establishments such as Burger King, Wendy’s, and Arby’s over McDonald’s because of its negative health connotations. And ironically, McDonald’s has worked the hardest to improve their quality.
In March 2017, McDonald’s announced the switch to fresh beef in their quarter pound burgers. A year later in May 2018, McDonald’s in the Rocky Mountain Region announced that fresh beef, cooked right when you order, is available across more than 240 restaurants throughout Colorado.
The recent changes make a large difference in the flavor. To me, the burgers taste less like chemicals, and more like an actual meat patty. The ground of the beef is also less fine, resulting in a less-grainy texture and more natural-tasting chunks.
McDonald’s sports this as the most significant change to its system and operations since the introduction of the All Day Breakfast, where the fast-food company committed to sourcing only cage-free eggs by 2025 in the United States, serving chicken not treated with human antibiotics, making specially designed packaging for beef patties, engineering dishes and tools for safely handling food, and installing new refrigerators with multiple temperature regulation “fail-safes”. A couple months before, McDonald’s had broadly switched from using margarine to real butter.
As of May 2018, McDonald’s has completed the transition to fresh beef in approximately 3,500 restaurants across the United States.
