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McDonald’s has quietly changed the size of one its most popular items, the Quarter Pounder, CNBC reported.
The Quarter Pounder now includes 4.25 ounces of beef, slightly more than its former size of 4 ounces before cooking.
The former 4-ounce patty cooked down to just 2.8 ounces after heating.
On its most recent earnings call, McDonald’s noted domestic commodity costs rose about 1 percent, mostly due to climbing beef prices.
It will be up to the food chain’s operators to decide whether to raise prices for the bigger burgers, one source told CNBC.
The move comes as McDonald’s seeks to improve its core menu as part of an ongoing turnaround led by CEO Steve Easterbrook.
McDonald’s initiatives include different cooking methods, such as changing how it sears and grills its beef to deliver hotter and juicier sandwiches, and a new drive-through ordering process to improve accuracy.
Fast-food restaurant workers are staging a 24-hour strike in protest against low wages.
Walkouts were reported in New York, Chicago, Washington DC, and also Detroit, Michigan; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Organizers hoped workers in as many as 100 cities will participate in what is the latest in a series of such actions.
Unions want a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. The current one, set in 2009, is $7.25 per hour.
President Barack Obama, who has backed a Senate measure to increase the minimum to $10.10, specifically mentioned fast-food workers “who work their tails off and are still living at or barely above poverty”, in an economic policy speech on Wednesday.
Barack Obama’s Democratic allies, who control the upper chamber of Congress, have said a vote on the matter could be held this month.
But even if it passes the Senate, it is not clear if it would be approved by the Republican-led House of Representatives.
Nearly 100 protestors gathered around a Wendy’s restaurant in Brooklyn, New York, at midday, carrying signs saying “stick together for $15/hr”.
Fast-food restaurant workers are staging a 24-hour strike in protest against low wages
In Detroit, about 50 demonstrators turned out for an early morning rally in front of a McDonald’s, including a handful of employees who walked off the job. However, the restaurant stayed open.
Another 40 demonstrators rallied at a Burger King in Atlanta.
The American fast-food industry has come under increasing scrutiny because part-time jobs, including retail and food positions, have made up most of the job growth since the recession.
It is not yet clear how many fast-food restaurants will be affected by Thursday’s industrial action.
The workers’ last nationwide strike, in August, was patchy, with some restaurants appearing to function normally while others were unable to do business.
The National Restaurant Association, an industry lobbying group, called the strikes a “campaign engineered by national labor groups”, claiming the vast majority of participants were in fact union protestors.
The association said firms already face “great uncertainty”.
“Calls to double the minimum wage only intensify the challenges faced by job creators.”
This week, a measure in the tiny airport town of SeaTac, Washington state, to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour passed by 77 votes.
As a result, some 6,300 workers at SeaTac’s airport, which primarily serves the region’s largest city, Seattle, will be paid the highest minimum wage in the nation.
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McDonald’s has decided to stop serving Heinz ketchup in its stores after 40 years.
McDonald’s said it would drop the ketchup after Bernardo Hees, the former head of rival Burger King, took over as Heinz’s chief executive.
“We have decided to transition our business to other suppliers over time,” the world’s biggest fast-food chain said.
In February, Heinz was purchased in a $28 billion takeover.
McDonald’s has decided to stop serving Heinz ketchup in its stores after 40 years
The company said that it would work with Heinz “to ensure a smooth and orderly transition of the McDonald’s restaurant business”, which has 34,000 restaurants around the world.
Bernardo Hees took over after Heinz was bought by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and Brazilian investment fund 3G Capital. Burger King is controlled by 3G Capital.
McDonald’s uses Heinz ketchup at many stores around the world, though only in Pittsburgh and Minneapolis inside the US.
“As a matter of policy, Heinz does not comment on relationships with customers,” the ketchup-maker said.
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World’s largest fast food chain McDonald’s has just released its highest calorie item ever in Japan: the Mega Potato.
The Mega Potato is almost a pound of the brand’s famous fries, and contains 1,142 calories and costs $4.9, the Consumerist reported, citing Japan Today.
The Mega Potato is almost a pound of McDonald’s famous fries, contains 1,142 calories and costs $4.9
“The Mega Potato will set you back 490 yen and also cost you a large chunk of your dignity and possibly a few years of your life,” Japan Today wrote.
McDonald’s latest exercise in caloric excess in Japan is in stark contrast to what it’s attempting in the U.S.
The company has recently added a slew of healthy offerings, including a chicken McWrap to compete with Subway and draw in calorie-conscious millennials.
McDonald’s also released the Egg White Delight and added more smoothie flavors with fresh fruit.
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Regularly eating fast food can damage your liver in ways that are surprisingly similar to hepatitis, a new study shows.
The results were revealed on the television program, The Doctors, where it was found that even just a month of eating fast food can cause significant changes to your liver.
French fries in particular were dangerous because of the extra ingredients added.
“We know that they are adding salt, and cooking it in fat, but they’re also putting sugar on them too. Why sugar? Because it helps get them golden crispy,” said Dr. Drew Ordon, who appears on the show and is the author of the book Better in 7.
Foods like fried chicken and onion rings were especially bad for the liver.
“The amount of fat and saturated fats creates a condition called fatty liver,” Dr. Drew Ordon said.
He said the changes in liver enzymes are in line with the effects of hepatitis. That disease can ultimately cause liver failure.
The U.S. has 160,000 fast food restaurants serving an estimated 50 million customers every day.
Regularly eating fast food can damage your liver in ways that are surprisingly similar to hepatitis
“We’re all guilty, and every now and then you have to splurge, but the problem is that so many people are getting into eating fast food, especially kids, as their staple, and I think that’s the point,” Drew Ordon said.
Just ordering a salad won’t help as Drew Ordon warned that any item marked healthy or fresh at a fast food restaurant likely has added chemicals, as there aren’t clear regulations for those foods.
“Some places actually put propylene glycol on the salads, which is anti-freeze, the reason behind that is that it prevents wilting,” said Dr. Ordon.
“And although they say a little anti-freeze isn’t going to hurt you, obviously given a choice you don’t want to be eating anti-freeze.”
A new research claims the logos of companies like McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Burger King are “branded” on the youngsters’ brains.
MRI scans of children’s appetite and pleasure centres reveals they light up when they are shown advertising images of their favorite fast foods, according to scientists.
But when the logos were well-known brands but had nothing to do with food the same areas of the brain failed to respond.
They appear to have tapped into the “reward” areas of the brain which develop before youngsters learn self-control.
A new research claims the logos of companies like McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Burger King are “branded” on the youngsters' brains
Researcher at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Kansas Medical Center, divided 120 popular food and non-food brands, including McDonald’s and Rice Krispies, and BMW and FedEx, reported the Sunday Independent.
They used a magnetic resonance imaging scanner which monitored changes in the blood flow that increases when the brain becomes more active.
Analysis of the tests on children, aged 10 to 14, showed there was increased activity in parts of the brain in the “reward” centres and in driving and controlling appetite.
Study leader Dr. Amanda Bruce told the Independent: “Research has shown children are more likely to choose those foods with familiar logos.
“That is concerning because the majority of foods marketed to children are unhealthy.”
Last year, children aged six to 13, took part in research into the effect of exposure to TV ads for unhealthy food products.
The children were shown 10 advertisements for junk food and then asked to choose between three food options which were described as “high fat, high carbohydrate”, “high protein”, and “low energy”.
Options for high protein included items like roast chicken. The low energy ones included items like salad.
The children were then shown a series of ten advertisements for toys and presented with a similar questionnaire.
Results of the study suggest that children exposed to unhealthy food ads – as opposed to toy ads – are far more likely to show unhealthy eating preferences.
These effects were especially pronounced among study subjects who typically watched more than 21 hours of TV per week.
