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Potential Effects of the Next 100 Billion HamburgersSold by McDonald’s
Elsa H. Spencer, PhD, Erica Frank, MD, MPH, Nichole F. McIntosh, MD, MPH
Background:
McDonald’s has sold
100 billion beef-based hamburgers worldwide with a potentially considerable health impact. This paper explores whether there would be any advantages if the next 100 billion burgers were instead plant-based burgers.
Methods:
Nutrient composition of the beef hamburger patty and the McVeggie burger patty wereobtained from the McDonald’s website; sales data were obtained from the McDonald’scustomer service.
Results:
Consuming 100 billion McDonald’s beef burgers versus the same company’s McVeggieburgers would provide, approximately, on average, an additional 550 million pounds of saturated fat and 1.2 billion total pounds of fat, as well as 1 billion fewer pounds of fiber,660 million fewer pounds of protein, and no difference in calories.
Conclusions:
These data suggest that the McDonald’s new McVeggie burger represents a less harmfulfast-food choice than the beef burger.
(Am J Prev Med 2005;28(4):379–381) © 2005 American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Introduction
M
cDonald’s states that the company has sold
100 billion hamburgers, and are continuingto sell “more than 75 hamburgers per second,of every minute, of every hour, of every day of the year.”
The potentially considerable health impacts of this quan-tity of beef were considered, at a time when soy-basedMcVeggie burgers (and other veggie burgers) have mul-tiple national and international outlets,
when the American Cancer Society
and World Health Organiza-tion
(among other health promotion organizations)encouragelimitingtheamountofgrilled/processedmeat consumed, and when consumer concerns persist regard-ing “mad cow disease.”
This paper does not aim todocument the health consequences of beef consumptionor of fast food, per se, but rather of one product whoseeffect on health may be negative,
and which has beenconsumed
100 billion times.
Although McDonald’s isonly one source of beef consumption, it is the leading worldwide hamburger retailer and food service retailer,
and holds the leading share (42%) of the U.S. fast-foodmarket.
About 8% of Americans eat at a McDonald’s onan average day, and 96% of Americans eat a meal there at least yearly.
The hypothesis of this manuscript is that there may be fewer health disadvantages if McDonald’snext100billioncow-derivedburgerswouldinsteadbe100billion plant-based burgers.
Methods
Nutrient composition of the beef hamburger and the McVeg-gie burger patties were obtained from McDonald’s website
;recent sales and price data were obtained from McDonald’scustomer service and electronic sources.McDonald’s does not publish sales and profits of individualitems.
Thus, it is not possible to estimate how many of McDonald’s first 100 billion beef burgers sold were 1.6-ozhamburgers, 3.2-oz Big Macs (introduced in 1968),
4.0-ozQuarter Pounders (introduced in 1973),
or other sand- wiches. This paper conservatively (given progressively largerhamburger sizes)
projected that the next 100 billion ham-burger patties sold by McDonald’s would be a 2.4-oz simpleaverage of the 3.2-ounce Big Mac and the 1.6-ounce ham-burger patties. (All burger weights reported herein are un-cooked weights of U.S. burgers.) The Big Mac provides aconservative burger weight estimate because it is the smallest of the larger burgers that have been sold during McDonald’smost sales-intensive years (since the 1980s).
It was alsoselected because (according to a survey of a 10% sample of Atlanta-area McDonald’s) the Big Mac now dominates burgersales, and it is reported to be the top seller worldwide.
Values for the mean 2.4-oz composite burger weight wereconservatively computed by multiplying values for thesmaller, less calorically dense (1.6-oz) hamburger by 1.5, andthen multiplying by 100 billion (Table 1).
Results
If the next 100 billion beef patties were instead 100billion McVeggie patties, McDonald’s customers wouldconsume an equivalent number of calories, but alsohundreds of millions more pounds of fiber and pro-
From the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Erica Frank, MD,MPH, Department of Family & Preventive Medicine, Emory Univer-sity School of Medicine, 69 Jesse Hill Jr. Drive, Atlanta GA 30303-3219. E-mail: efrank@emory.edu.
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Am J Prev Med 2005;28(4) 0749-3797/05/$–see front matter© 2005 American Journal of Preventive Medicine
•
Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2005.01.009
tein, hundreds of millions fewer pounds of saturatedfat, and
1 billion fewer pounds of total fat (Table 1).
It is also useful to compare these burger options onindividual patty and sandwich scales. When comparingthe 1.6-oz McDonald’s beef patty (100 calories, 7 g fat,3 g saturated fat, 0 g fiber, and 8 g protein) to the3.2-ounce McVeggie patty (150 calories, 5 g fat, 1 gsaturated fat, 5 g fiber, and 15 g protein), the McVeggieburger patty has 50% more calories but also one thirdthe saturated fat and twice as much protein.
Whencomparing the 3.2-oz Big Mac patties (190 calories, 14 gfat, 6 g saturated fat, 0 g fiber, and 16 g protein)
tothe McVeggie patty, the McVeggie patty has 20% fewercalories, one third the fat, one sixth the saturated fat,and nearly the same amount of protein. Additionally,the beef patties have no fiber.
Conclusions
What might be the health consequences of the next 100billion beef burgers that McDonald’s and others may sell? Such calorically dense, fiber-poor, and highly accessible fast foods have been linked to the obesity epidemic in the United States.
Hamburger/cheese-burger consumption has increased as a percent of totalcalories over the last 20 years,
and contributes sub-stantially in energy
and fat
to the U.S. epidemic
and global pandemic
of obesity. McDonald’s is anespecially important source of beef burgers because thecompany is an industry leader with
30,000 restaurantsin 119 countries.
Red meat consumption has beenlinked to colon cancer,
diabetes,
and over- weight/higher body mass indices.
Obesity has beenlinked to a host of health problems including arthri-tis,
cancer,
cardiovascular disease,
diabetes,
high cholesterol,
and hypertension.
Further, subse-quent burgers are likely to be bigger than the first 100 billion burgers (even in a post-“supersized” era forMcDonald’s),
as portion sizes at restaurants, espe-cially fast-food restaurants (including McDonald’s),
increased in the last decades of the 20th century.
Thesaturated-fat–rich and fiber-poor beef burger is a nutri-tionally suboptimal choice, both for those individuals who might consume hundreds of such burgers over alifetime, and for a population that cumulatively willconsume hundreds of billions of burgers.There is evidence that plant foods such as the McVeg-gieburgermaybelessharmfultothehealthofconsumersthan beef burgers. Soy protein, the primary constituent of the McVeggie burger, can reduce cardiovascular diseaserisk (e.g., by lowering the total to high-density lipidcholesterol ratio).
The U.S. Food and Drug Admin-istration has therefore approved soy protein claims forlowering Americans’ cholesterol.
Furthermore, the American Dietetic Association,
the American Heart Association,
and the American Cancer Society
haveendorsed plant-based diets to help prevent disease andsatisfy nutrition requirements.TheMcVeggiepattyandotherveggieburgersrepresent a less-troubling fast-food burger alternative, given thecurrently limited fast-food choices available to individualsconcerned about their health (and the environment).
These results may encourage policymakers to recom-mend choosing plant-based patties as a less-unhealthy substitute for fast-food beef patties.
We wish to acknowledge McDonald’s domestic and interna-tional customer service representatives for sales data, as wellas Jennifer Carrera for her statistical contributions.No financial conflict of interest was reported by the authorsof this paper.
Table 1.
Comparison of McDonald’s beef and McVeggie patties
100,000,000,000McDonald’s average2.4-ounce beef patties100,000,000,000McDonald’sMcVeggie pattiesDifference betweenbeef and McVeggie patties
Total fat (in billions of pounds)
a
2.32 1.10 1.22Saturated fat (in millions of pounds)
a
992.25 441.00 551.25Fiber (in billions of pounds)
a
0 1.10
1.10Protein (in billions of pounds)
a
2.65 3.31
0.66Calories (in trillions) 15.00 15.00 0
a
1 lb
454g.
What This Study Adds
. . .
Eating large quantities of meat has substantialnegative effects on health, and McDonald’s hassold more than 100 billion hamburgers.Compared with McDonald’s plant-based burg-ers, these cow burgers provided approximately 550 million additional pounds of saturated fat, 1.2billion total pounds of fat, 1 billion fewer poundsof fiber, 660 million fewer pounds of protein, andno caloric difference.These data suggest that McDonald’s McVeggieburger is a less-harmful fast-food choice than theirbeef burger.
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American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 28, Number 4
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