McDonald’s Launches CosMc’s!

Possibly the least-healthy menu any fast food chain has ever created, with all the diabetes, heart disease, and obesity money can buy

If you’re concerned about nutrition, you probably avoid McDonald’s or similar fast food chains. And McDonald’s nutrition, while generally poor, isn’t quite as bad as other fast food competitors who offer gigantic triple bacon, butter-soaked, and multiple slices of plastic-cheese laden burgers along with massive milkshakes that weigh in with more calories than most people should consume in a day.

According to Statista, there are over 40,000 McDonald’s restaurants around the world. It’s difficult to determine current figures on exactly who eats at McDonald’s but since Morgan Spurlock’s enduringly popular 2004 film Super Size Me, many people know that the chain’s profit and menus depend on the people who eat there frequently. The fast food chain calls people who eat there at least once a week “heavy users.”

A group of overweight teens from the Bronx who suffered from heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure unsuccessfully sued McDonald’s in the early 2000s. The suit was dismissed by a New York court, which ruled that individuals, not a restaurant, were responsible for their dietary choices and corresponding health, or lack of it.

The lawsuit plaintiffs were teenagers. These kids were widely mocked in U.S. media, as were their parents.

McDonald’s loved this result, of course.

Flash forward 20 years and millions of people know more about nutrition than the average person in 2000. Many people are learning either on their own, or through health programs, that it’s difficult for anyone to be healthy if they consume typical McDonald’s meals every day.

And, today’s inflationary times have made McDonald’s dollar menu seem a lot more like the five-dollar menu.

I wondered how the fast food (and real estate) giant was going to respond to gradually changing food tastes.

The answer came last week in the form of CosMc’s — a dizzyingly retro-futuristic cross between the Jetsons, Heinz purple ketchup, and the 80th unnecessary remake of Willy Wonka and its massive chocolate overdose.

Augustus Gloog, where are you?

Pour Some Sugar On Me

As soon as I saw McDonald’s menu for CosMc’s, launching with a single location near Chicago but with planned expansion to ten different Midwest/Texas locations by the end of 2024 (but none on the coasts, hmn, because people are more into health there, right, McDo’s?) —

McDonald’s turbocharged — hypercharged — its competition with other fast food chains and their super-sized, mega-sweet menu offerings. The company’s PR push says CosMc’s is intended to compete with Starbucks, another mass chain that relies on addicted “heavy user” customers. Who else would pay $5.50 for a small latte with whole milk every day?

It’s difficult to get non-toxic, non-sweet beverages at Starbucks except for black coffee/plain espresso, and they also lack decent nutrition on most food items, but at least you can get a cup of coffee, a piece of fruit and possibly a vegetable and hummus tray at Starbucks in a pinch.

Ah, but McDo’s you have outdone yourself with CosMc’s. This isn’t just the most extreme psychedelic shroom’ dropping cannabis munchie menu I’ve ever seen, it panders to supposed “Pan-Latin” tastes of kids who grew up licking little plastic jugs of Pelon-Pelo-Rico (Google it). It also panders to every kid who grew up gobbling giant bags of Sour Patch Kids. The CosMc’s “market segment” is obviously young people who are “heavy tasters” — in other words, people for whom natural flavors don’t make sense, because they’ve consumed so many fake ones.

CosMc’s promotional menu images — courtesy McDonald’s Corporate

CosMc’s marketing says its drinks and foods are supposed to “cure the 3:00 p.m. slump.”

The 3:00 p.m. slump is a direct result of the consumption of 100 grams of sugar in addition to refined carbohydrates (like a donut and a Starbuck’s drink) between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.

How much is 100 grams of sugar? 25 teaspoons — or half a cup.

It’s equivalent to four Snickers bars. Two-and-a-half cans of Coke. Five Monster Energy drinks.

Our bodies are not evolved to be able to digest that much sugar. Today’s obesity epidemic and the onslaught of terrible metabolic illness is a direct result of consuming that much sugar, day in, day out, for years.

CosMc’s may have the least nutritious, most potentially deadly menu any fast food restaurant has ever created.

CosMc’s Nutrition: Deep Dive

We’re not going to get into the ingredients required to create the vast array of food simulacra on the CosMc’s menu but let’s just say that just glancing at it shows that the “Food Scientists” at McDonald’s Labs (graduates of McDonald’s University, surely) have outdone themselves in terms of creating brilliant colors, massive “innovative” tastes, and textures that imitate some strongly-flavored food derived from nature, rather than chemistry and engineering.

They’re even, similarly to the Marvel and DC Comic universes, referring to regular McDonald’s foods like Egg McMuffins, as “from the McDonald’s Universe.”

The crossovers between all of these junk products are truly mindboggling. Who is expected to visit CosMc’s? An MCU addict who plays Grand Theft Auto, drinks only the largest, sweetest Starbucks frozen beverages, and eats Double Quarter Pounders with extra Hickory BBQ sauce? Or no — the Dorito Crunchwrap Enchirito enthusiasts, along with the “Stuffed Crust” Domino people …

Watch any football game these days and every commercial seems to be aimed at this type of person. But is there really any such person any more? Or do these businesses just believe there is, because they have trapped people — in airports, on the job, in areas where there are no alternatives —

So here are the “greatest (awful) nutrition hits” on the CosMc’s nutrition informational menu, translated and compared to real food:

Large, non-carbonated drinks with more than 100 grams of sugar: Berry Hibiscus Sour-ade, Island Pick-Me-Up Punch, Sour Tango Lemonade, Tropical Spiceade (that’s the Pelon Pelo Rico flavor profile or “chile con limon”)

There is also a Chai Frappe Burst with more than 100 grams of sugar.

For reference, every single one of these beverages has 40% or more sugar than a regular McDonald’s “Universe” McFlurry with either M & Ms or Oreos.

How about regular soda? Those are on the menu at CosMc’s. If you chose any of them, including the large sizes, you’d be getting 40% fewer calories than the specially-designed “pick me up” large non-carbonated drinks.

In terms of fat, healthy fat is good, but there isn’t any to be found in CosMc’s sandwiches. A bacon McMuffin with Egg has 880 mg of sodium and 22 grams of fat. “But only 9 grams are saturated fat,” McDonalds will say. Yeah, and the rest comes out of Dr. McFranken’s lab in that bun and compressed egg patty and bacon circle. The Spicy Queso Sandwich looked pretty bad, and its nutrition matches, with over 1,200 mg of sodium and 40 grams of fat. “But only 16 grams of saturated fat!”

Don’t eat stuff like that. The avocado tomatillo sandwich is almost as bad nutritionally. Eat a d**m avocado. Put it on whole grain and I do not mean “Orowheat” actual whole grain bread or better yet, eat the d**m avocado and a piece of fruit and drink some tea.

What are these “McPops,” I wondered. Like mini custard filled donuts, right?

Cookie Butter McPops: McDonald’s corporate website

There appear to be three McPops in a serving and they have about the same nutritional profile as a small donut. They come in hazelnut, apple cinnamon, and cookie butter flavors and they would absolutely be a “do not eat” item, not based only on calorie count (ranging from 300 to 390), fat content (ranging from 8 to 25 grams), and sugar content (ranging from 14 to 18 grams) but based on their very nature, because that is all they are. They are stuffed tiny balls of sugar, refined carb (“enriched flour”), fat (hydrogenated vegetable goo), and various chemical flavorings meant to simulate a small donut filled with flavored shmoo. Go to the donut shop and get a jelly donut made by a human filled with actual custard or fruit. If that’s what you want. Don’t eat it every day.

CosMc’s offers water, unsweetened black and green tea, and regular milk.

Does McDo’s Care If Customers Live or Die? (no)

I wondered, McDonald’s isn’t stupid. They can tell that people are turning away from their foods and that only a certain segment of people still regularly eat and want fast food. This group of people falls into three categories: people who eat fast food because their choices are limited, those who eat fast food because they prefer it due to its strong addictive potential, and those few who still don’t know how bad it is for them.

I thought, McDonalds isn’t the highest-calorie fast food and their small items aren’t that bad for people eaten every once in a while. Maybe —

Bzzzt! Wrong! They are going for the group of young and younger people who are in group two: those who eat fast food because they prefer it due to its strong addictive nature. And they’ve turbocharged all the elements that make fast food so addictive, and so very, over the long term, devastating to health and wellbeing.

Massive amounts of sugar, massive amounts of artificial tastes and super-strong flavor — CosMc’s is SuperSizing its addictive potential and aiming it straight at groups of young customers who will end up unbelievably ill within just a few short years if they eat it the way the young people who filed that long-ago McDonald’s lawsuit did: for at least two meals a day.

And they will blame the young people as well, and encourage people mocking them as they addict a whole new generation of customers with their next concept and evolution.