Fast food

Friday

Sean Nottoli

How I lost 50lbs eating at McDonald’s

Eating regularly at McDonald’s over the past nine months, I have managed to lose 50lbs and ten inches off my waist, and I’m still counting. Yes, you read that correctly. Like many Americans, I have been trying to lose weight to no avail. I completely changed my diet, eating only vegetables, apples and microwavable, low-calorie, diet meals. And again, like many Americans, after months and years of discipline, restricting my portion sizes and eating like a rabbit, the scales wouldn’t budge. I had made so little progress that I had given up trying. Dieting is expensive and time-consuming and I didn’t realistically have the time or the money to do it, especially if I wasn’t seeing results. I work very odd hours and don’t have time to meal prep or cook. So I gave up trying.

Friday

Neal Pollack

Will one rotten rebrand spoil Cracker Barrel?

No one thinks the Cracker Barrel rebrand is a particularly good idea. The entire charm of Cracker Barrel lay in the farmhouse attic vibe, the nana’s candy dish assortment in the gift shop and the menu, which served up the best chicken and dumplings or biscuits and gravy and sweet tea possible from a fast-casual chain with horrible wooden chairs. Still, the melodrama surrounding this story, the rising and falling stock prices, the online mocking and gloating, seems a little overblown. Not everything has to be political. Cracker Barrel certainly doesn’t. For those of you who’ve been wandering around the fields with a bucket on your head this week, Cracker Barrel has streamlined.

Cracker Barrel

Sunday

Juan P. Villasmil

The brilliance of Trump’s McDonald’s stunt

Former president Donald Trump spent his Sunday afternoon sporting an apron standing in the drive-thru window of a McDonald’s in Featersville-Trevose, Pennsylvania. From the window, the candidate handed out some fries and fielded some questions in what made for a masterful PR stunt. Oh and it was also Vice President Kamala Harris’s birthday. “Happy birthday Kamala! She’s turning sixty. I think I’ll get her some flowers. Maybe I’ll get her some fries... I’ll get her a McDonald’s hamburger. Happy birthday Kamala,” the former president riffed from inside the fast-food restaurant.  https://twitter.

donald trump mcdonald's

Tuesday

Christopher Sandford

The man in the White Castle

The world’s first fast-food restaurant chain. The first to sell over a billion hamburgers, to invent the carry-out and to offer discount coupons in the newspapers. Jewel of the American Midwest. Celebrating its centenary. Better burgers than McDonald’s, according to Consumer Reports. Still run as a family business. Some 377 US locations, and growing. Obsessively loved by some, faintly ludicrous to others with its trademark enamel-glazed, faux-brick architecture and miniature square patties, White Castle is the Rodney Dangerfield of greasy spoons. It gets no respect.

white castle

Tuesday

Will Lloyd

Let them eat Big Macs – why Trump gets America

INT – APARTMENT – AFTERNOON JESSICA (Harvard ’09, JP Morgan ’10 to ’12, Obama White House Staffer ’13 to ’16) is returning to her Georgetown apartment after her morning Tibetan throat singing class. There is a yoga mat under her arm. She shares the apartment, and a lovingly open relationship with ZAK (Columbia ’10, Senior Green Urban Planning Correspondent at Vox.com, Fellow of the Aspen Institute for Ideas ’14 to ’17), who is blogging at their Hygge-influenced open-plan kitchen. JESSICA looks visibly disturbed. ZAKHoney, what is it, is everything OK?JESSICAIt’s… It’s…ZAKDon’t worry about the Whole Foods delivery. It came just after you left.

big macs donald trump