McDonald's bid to sugar its image will do it a fat lot of good
The milkshakes contain pig fat and whale blubber. The burgers are padded with worm meat. Traces of bird feather have been found in the ice cream. The french fries are manufactured from wood pulp. The apple pies are filled with potato. . .
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When it comes to urban myths,
few companies suffer as much as McDonald's. The stories have become so pervasive that this autumn, to correct misconceptions, the fast food chain invited customers across Europe to look round its kitchens.
As soon as I read about this Open Doors programme, I popped over to a nearby branch, hoping to be shown around. The man behind the counter blinked back at me as if I had just tried to order a terrine of foie gras. Eventually he referred me to the supervisor, who referred me to the assistant manager, who referred me to the manager. I half expected to be referred, in turn, to Ronald McDonald himself but, after a pause, I got an answer: I couldn't have a tour because Open Doors ran for one weekend only in specific restaurants.
Back at work, I called the McDonald's press office and the nice voice on the other end of the line confirmed what the manager had said. Nevertheless, the nice voice added, McDonald's would be happy to arrange a one-off Open Doors tour for me - maybe I could combine it with a visit to the Food Animal Initiative, a McDonald's-sponsored farming project in Oxford that is committed to developing commercially viable farming practices that promote animal welfare?
I agreed and this time last week I was standing in a cowshed with a senior McDonald's executive, a McDonald's press officer, a farmer and 20-odd cows, pretending I knew lots about animals when in fact I would struggle to tell the difference between a haddock and a goose. I was doing fine until I found myself asking the farmer: "Are all cows female?"
Once he had recovered from wetting himself, he explained the difference between heifers, bulls and steers and took me on a tour of the FAI's piggeries and brooding houses. I was so struck by the cuteness of the two-week-old chicks that when we later arrived at a nearby McDonald's for lunch, I made a point of ordering a Chicken Toasted Deli Sandwich.
There followed a kitchen tour during which I tried to tackle some of the urbans myths I had come across, inquiring, for instance, whether it was true that McDonald's purchased supplies from a company named 100% Beef so that it could stick rubbish into burgers while still claiming it used 100% beef.
The young assistant manager endured my queries with the stoicism of a London traffic warden and tried to disprove as many of the stories as he could - at one point opening up the McFlurry machine to show that no feathers were added during mixing. I left feeling satisfied that all the tales were untrue. However, I still wasn't quite . . . lovin' it.
Before I explain why, I should say that even though I was once rejected for a job there, and even though, as a good Sikh boy, I have never let a McHolycow burger cross my lips, I'm not one to sneer at McDonald's. I like the food and thought Super Size Me, the film in which Morgan Spurlock tries to survive on nothing but McDonald's for a month, was ridiculous. Obviously, eating too much of any type of food is going to turn your liver into paté.
The problem is that I am in the minority. Most people seem to be willing to believe the worst about McDonald's. While researching this piece a journalist friend of mine told me that he knew for a fact - a fact! - that McDonald's cheeseburgers would be legally classified as confectionery, due to their extreme sugar content, if they didn't have pickle in them.
If this is what supposedly informed people think about McDonald's, who knows what nonsense the general public believe. Unfortunately, the efforts the company is making to tackle such misconceptions are entirely insufficient. Open Doors is a case in point. Anybody waiting to be served can see what happens behind a McDonald's counter and the restrictions placed on the timing and location of tours mean that in reality McDonald's doors are no more open than those of MI5.
Similarly, while McDonald's $177,000-a-year (￡100,000-a-year) sponsorship of the FAI research project is laudable, it will hardly persuade critics that all the animals that end up between their burger buns - some 17,200 British and Irish farmers supplied McDonald's with ingredients in the UK last year - have been well treated. And while it is great to see McDonald's serving salads and fruit, the fact remains that the majority of people who visit McDonald's go to eat burgers and fries - and these burgers and fries contain a lot of fat and salt.
Indeed, it seems to me that if the fast food chain really wants to avoid patty meltdown in difficult markets such as the UK - where attacks from politicians and health lobbyists have led to the company losing one-quarter of its sales over the past five years - it needs to be much bolder.
Any Open Doors campaign needs to be genuinely open. Any attempt to promote animal welfare needs to be applied - and be seen to be applied - across the entire supply chain. Meanwhile, the burgers and fries need to become healthier, not just served alongside healthy options. Until McDonald's injects more bravery, more time and more money into its counter-offensive I fear its sales, at least in the UK, will continue to turn into pig fat and whale blubber.
参观麦当劳厨房
奶
昔里含有猪油和鲸脂。汉堡中夹的是虫肉。冰淇淋里发现了羽毛。炸薯条是木浆做的。苹果派里塞的是土豆。
当提到城市里的荒诞传闻时，麦当劳(McDonald)所遭受的痛苦几乎比任何企业都多。这些传闻如此普遍，因此今年秋天，麦当劳快餐连锁店邀请欧洲各地顾客参观其厨房，以纠正这些误解。
我一读到这则“敞开大门项目”(Open Doors)，就去了附近的一家麦当劳，希望能够参观一下。站在柜台后的男店员惊讶地看着我，就像我要点一大盘鹅肝酱似的。最后他让我去找员工组长，员工组长又让我去找副经理，副经理则让我去找经理。我大概已料到这番推诿，也许还要找麦当劳叔叔呢。但过了一会儿，我得到了答复：我不能进厨房参观，因为“敞开大门项目”只在一个周末于指定餐厅进行。
回到办公室，我给麦当劳新闻处打了个电话，电话那头甜美的声音证实了刚才经理的话。不过，这个甜美的声音补充说，麦当劳将非常乐意为我特别安排一次“敞开大门”之行――或许我还可以顺道参观位于牛津的“食用动物计划”(Food Animal Initiative)？这是麦当劳赞助的养殖项目，致力于开发商业上切实可行，并可提高动物福利的养殖技术。
我同意这个提议。两周前的这个时候，我站在了牛棚里，和我一起的还有麦当劳一名高管、一名新闻官、一名农场主和20几头牛。我装作对动物知之甚多，而事实上连黑线鳕和鹅的区别都说不出。我还装得不错，直到我问农场主：“所有的牛都是母的吗？”
他笑得眼泪都出来了，笑完之后他解释了小母牛、公牛和肉用阉牛的区别，又带我参观了食用动物计划的猪舍和孵化室。两周大的小鸡让我觉得非常可爱，后来我们去附近的麦当劳吃午饭时，我还特意点了一份烤鸡肉三明治(Chicken Toasted Deli Sandwich)。
之后我们参观了厨房，期间我试图打探一些曾听过的荒诞传闻，比如我问道，麦当劳是不是真的从名为“100%牛肉”的公司购买牛肉，这样就算把垃圾塞进汉堡，却仍然可以声称使用100%的牛肉？
年轻的副经理像伦敦的交警一样，心平气和地回答我的疑问，并尽可能多地反证那些传闻，他还打开了做冰炫风(McFlurry)的机器，证明搅拌的时候没有把羽毛加进去。在得知所有的传闻都是假的之后，我满意地离开了。但我还是不怎么……“就喜欢”麦当劳。
在我解释原因之前，我要说，尽管我曾在麦当劳应聘工作被拒，尽管我是个虔诚的锡克教徒，从不吃夹有神圣牛肉的汉堡，但我并没有嘲笑麦当劳。我喜欢麦当劳的食物，但我觉得电影《超码的我》(Super Size Me)十分荒谬。影片中摩根?斯普尔洛克(Morgan Spurlock)试图连吃一个月麦当劳，而不吃其它食物。显然，过多食用任何一种食物，都会使肝脏变成肥肝酱。
问题在于我是少数派。似乎多数人都愿意相信有关麦当劳的最坏传闻。我在为这篇文章搜集材料时，我的一位记者朋友告诉我，他知道一个真实情况，一个真实的情况！――要不是麦当劳吉士汉堡里面有腌菜，这种汉堡将在法律上被归类为甜食，因为它们含糖量极高。
这位朋友应该是个消息灵通人士，如果连他们对麦当劳的看法都是这样，那谁知道公众会相信什么样的胡说八道呢。
不幸的是，麦当劳为消除这种误解所做的努力完全不够。“敞开大门项目”就是一个佐证。任何等待用餐的人都能看到麦当劳柜台后的情况，而限制参观的时间和地点意味着，麦当劳的厨房大门实际上不比军情五处(MI5)的大门敞开得大。
类似地，虽然麦当劳每年都拿出17.7万美元，资助食用动物计划的研究项目，这值得称赞，但它却难以说服批评人士相信，那些最终夹在汉堡包里的动物都得到了善待。去年在英国，约有1.72万名英国和爱尔兰农场主向麦当劳供应原料。尽管很高兴看到麦当劳开始提供沙拉和水果了，但事实上大多数人还是去麦当劳吃汉堡和炸薯条，而这两样都含有大量脂肪和盐。
事实上在我看来，在英国等难对付的的市场，如果这家快餐连锁店要避免彻底垮台，那它的胆子还需要更大。在英国，政客和健康游说人士的攻击，已致使麦当劳过去5年的销售下跌了四分之一。
任何“敞开大门”活动都必须是真心实意的开放。任何提高动物福利的努力，都必须贯彻到整个供应链，而且要被人看到。同时，汉堡和炸薯条必须变得更健康，而不仅是与健康食品一起提供给顾客。在麦当劳拿出更多勇气、时间和金钱来进行反击之前，恐怕其销售，至少在英国的销售，将继续被别人说成是靠猪油和鲸脂等原料取得的。
