Interesting; my similar study has yielded the same results! We must publish!
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Is anyone really headed to McDonald’s thinking they are getting an apple?
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Yeah. The thing that annoys me more is that the price of McD’s menu items depends on the exact code in which you order them. (I know prices vary between locations, these are for the ones near me.)
20 piece McNuggets? $6.29. 2 10 piece McNuggets? That falls under the “2 for $5” deal.
Hash browns are $0.95, or 2 for $1 but only if you order it from the dollar menu.
The McD’s near me are now also moving towards order-by-kiosk, so it’s now up to individuals to know where to look for the different prices of the same food.
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I don’t eat at McDonald’s any more, but I wouldn’t be steered to a “preferred menu item” because when I get fast food, I know exactly what I want before I enter the place. I guess some people would have the attitude, “I’m hungry, let’s go to McDonald’s and get something”, but not me. I go to Burger King when I want a Whopper and two orders of onion rings, period.
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I’m not really sure that McDonalds makes anything other than french fries.
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Makes it a lot less awkward to duck in to use the gentlemans
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Julia Child on McDonalds
Burger King used to have a excellent Veggie Burger. But the vegans complained it was cooked on the same grill that meat touched.
So now they just warm it in the microwave and it’s pretty bad.
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Many neoclassical economists discount, or at least ignore, these developments. I was at a conference a couple of years ago, a behavioralist was presenting a paper, and one of the reviewers started his critique by saying “like all good neoclassical economists, I refuse to believe that people’s preferences can be changed.” This in spite of the existence of a multi billion dollar industry that does exactly that… That was the moment I knew that academia was not for me.
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I wouldn’t necessarily trust what comes out of the Food & Brand Lab at Cornell. They’ve been pretty credibly accused of p-hacking.
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Oh, absolutely. There’s no doubt that moving menu items get your attention, and it seems reasonable that the things that get more attention get more dollars.
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I’ve been a vegetarian for most of my life. I’m pretty fit and I’ve rarely been sick.
As a side-experience of being a vegetarian - as in, I chose to change my diet - I became much more aware of the provenance and quality of the food I eat.
Which means that now, unless you’re a billionaire, you literally could not pay me enough to even walk into a McDonalds and piss in its toilets.
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I consider myself an opportunistic omnivore, but the base line of my diet is vegetarian. When i’m out and about i find the vegetarian/vegan options to be overpriced or seem like the meals on offer would not sate my hunger, or the options with meat seem much much nicer, so more often than not i end up ordering meals with meat. That being said i quite enjoy eating vegetarian.
I hate eating at McD’s but once in a blue moon i get a hankering for a big mac even though i know it’s terrible. Usually it’s like once a year 
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/anecdote_alert
Back in the early '90’s I was working full time in a supermarket, when the store had a sound system connected to the speakers spread around the place. For the first couple of months it was just local radio stations, including one particularly weird indy station. That was neat, but eventually corporate developed their own programming, which featured short rotations, shitty muzak, and relentless advertising. I fucking hated that constant buyBuyBUyBUY assault on my ears.
In a strange coincidence, a few years later I found myself flatting with Derek in Roseneath. That was … an odd year.
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They show a photo of a salad or bottled water on the menu display, which, studies show, makes customers perceive the entire menu to be healthier.
That’s strange. When somebody shows me a picture of bottled water, I perceive them to be an asshole who thinks they can sell me a product encased in non-biodegradable plastic that I’m already paying the city to provide me straight out of my faucet.
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But with yummy saltiness, and they give you free salt to make it more so.
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Trump eats his burger out of a bowl?
Last weekend I was out running errands with my kid. We were hungry and in a bit of a hurry so we stopped at Burger King. She had a 4-piece chicken (“chicken”) nugget meal, with apple fries and milk. I had an Angus burger and a bottle of water. We shared my small packet of fries.
Then she played in the play area (“microbial cesspool”), chatted with a friendly stranger who undid a knot in her shoelaces while I answered an email on my iPhone. We split our pile of trash into the correct bins and left.
She held my hand through the parking lot, climbed into her car seat, and put on her seatbelt. I went around to pull the plastic bags off our license plates, we ducked our heads, I slammed it into drive and we got the fuck out of there.
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Regarding the “health halo”, I’m reminded of Dave Barry’s complaint about breakfast cereal ads that claim the cereal to be “part of a complete breakfast” by showing it next to fruit, eggs, toast, etc. In other words, just adjacent to a complete breakfast.
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