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You could call this a case of an early bird not wanting to catch the worm. All high school student Derrick Holt wanted was a quick bite to eat when he purchased a Sausage McMuffin at a McDonald’s in Buckeye, Arizona. What he says he got was a disgusting surprise, a stomach problem that’s kept him out of school and mixed messages from the restaurant that served him. Looks like Mc Donalds' McRib won't be the only pressed pork patty in town. Burger King is about to offer up some competition. The fire-grilled burger-maker unveiled its summer BBQ menu on Wednesday, which includes the Rib Sandwich along with 12 other items. The menu, also featuring a Memphis BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich and a Carolina BBQ Tendercrisp Sandiwch, will debut on May 21. While a Burger King publicist wouldn't confirm if this menu is intended to lure customers away from the McDonald's McRib, the Burger King rib sandwich does bear a BBQ-themed resemblance. Read - Burger King's answer to the McRib Previously:  A golden marketing and do-good opportunity for McDonald's may have lost its luster. The fast food giant found itself at the center of big news this week in Cleveland, when Charles Ramsey freed three women and a girl who police say were held hostage for years. Ramsey became a viral video star, and in interview after interview, he told TV anchors that he had gone to McDonald's before rescuing the women and rushed to their aid carrying a "half-eaten Big Mac."  McDonald’s president Jan Fields announced today that starting next week, menu boards in the chain's restaurants and drive-thrus will contain calorie counts for all menu items in accordance with the company's ongoing Commitments to Offer Improved Nutrition Choices program. The announcement came as part of the presentation of McDonald's 2012 Nutrition Journey Progress Report, which highlight's the company's stated goals, including an active interest in children’s well-being, more and better nutritionally-balanced menu choices and increased customer and employee access to nutrition information and education.  Editor's note: All summer long, the Southern Foodways Alliance will be delving deep in the history, tradition, heroes and plain old deliciousness of barbecue across the United States. Dig in. One of the great ironies of American barbecue history is that the world's leading hamburger chain, McDonald's, got its start as a barbecue restaurant. Long before the golden arches, barbecue restaurants dotted street corners in cities and towns throughout the South and West. From California to Florida, impromptu barbecue stands had "grown as thick as filling stations" along the sides of highways, reported Collier's Magazine in 1937. America's first drive-in chain - the Dallas-based Pig Stand - featured barbecue, and by World War II, pit-cooked meat was a staple of fancy steak and chop houses, too. So, when brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their drive-in in San Bernadino, California, they naturally built a hickory-chip pit out back. The original menu featured sandwiches with "our famous barbecued beef, ham, or pork" for 35 cents and a barbecue plate for 60 cents. Hamburgers shared second billing, followed by chili, tamales and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Jane Velez-Mitchell is the author of 'iWant: My Journey from Addiction and Overconsumption to a Simpler, Honest Life' and 'Secrets Can Be Murder: The Killer Next Door' as well as 'Addict Nation: An Intervention for America'. She hosts the Jane Velez-Mitchell show nightly on HLN at 7p ET. McDonald's says it’s phasing out pig gestation crates. When I heard that news, I almost started crying. I was so grateful because I have witnessed the horror. One look at a pig gestation crate and you will know exactly what I mean. A breeding sow spends most of her life in a tiny cage. It’s usually about seven feet long and two feet wide. She cannot turn around. She cannot scratch herself. She must urinate and defecate where she stands. Simply put, I believe she is tortured, day in and day out.  In cooking, the process of clarification entails straining out extraneous muck from liquids so that they might be pure, clear and ideal for consumption. With this series on food terminology and issues we're attempting to do the same. This little piggie is bred for market. This little piggie can't turn her body around. That's about to change. The term "gestation crates" has been trotted out across news media and social networks over the course of the last few months as major corporations declared plans to phase out their use, but what exactly are they and why is their use so controversial? Some incremental changes are coming to a McDonald's menu near you – what are the implications? Later this month, McDonald's will change some of its Dollar Menu items and it will begin offering an expanded value menu, including 20-piece chicken McNuggets, double cheeseburgers, chicken snack wraps, and Angus snack wraps, according to Reuters. As we learned in a conversation with the company, McDonald's is focusing its menu on four tiers (not including combo meals):
In trying to understand the implications of what McDonald's is doing, a restaurant industry consultant and associate of ours had this to say: "I get a kick out of these corporate guys at Wendy's (WEN) and McDonald's pretending they have some magical formula for value pricing. It's 100% driven by food costs and customer behavior." Read the full story on CNNMoney: "McDonald's new menu is about inflation more than value"  McDonald's said it will get its pork suppliers to phase out the use of immobilizing cages for pregnant pigs, a move that was applauded by the Humane Society of the United States, but not the pork industry. "McDonald's believes gestation stalls are not a sustainable production system for the future," said the fast food chain in a press release. "There are alternatives that we think are better for the welfare of sows." Animal activists oppose the use of gestation stalls, which are cages that keep individual sows in close confines while they're pregnant. "Confining pigs in gestation crates is arguably the cruelest practice in factory farming," said Josh Balk, spokesman for the Humane Society of the U.S. "These are iron maidens that are barely larger than the pigs' own bodies."  McDonald's extreme-green shamrock shake is going nationwide for the first time, the fast food franchise revealed on Wednesday. The leprechaun-colored shake is currently available at every one of McDonald's 14,000 U.S. restaurants, according to company spokeswoman Ashlee Yingling. The shamrock shake itself isn't new. It's been offered by McDonald's restaurants at or around St. Patrick's Day since 1970. But in the past, only certain restaurants offered the familiar green shake. |
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