The 3 Stages of Every McDonalds

Things go from bad, to good, to worse.

Stage I: The Urge

It might present as a guilty craving, but a Mcdonald's tends to be a dietary manifestation of a problem. In times of need, an edible thought bubble appears above our head - and Oh boy does the idea of a Mcdonald's taste scrum-dismally-umptious. 

Pushing through those chip-fat-fogged doors is a quiet admission. Something’s wrong. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be charging towards cartoon food as an actual, three-dimensional adult, would you? 

A McDonald’s customer’s body isn’t calling out for any meal so much as implicated in the smuggling of nutrition. Nothing bogged down with flavour. Some coulis-spattered morsel just won’t do. Neither will fast food with any condescending pretence of healthy eating. Looking at you, Subway.

We want a meal our parents’ parents’ parents’ couldn’t even recognise as a source of energy. Grub that is brazenly terrible for us. A short-lived gut-hug so comfortingly consistent and reliably awful it can’t fail you – because, in eating it, you’ve already failed yourself.

Stage II: The Processing

Looking lovingly down, the appearance of a Mcdonald's doesn’t register. If we ever took the time to say Grace, we might see it for the rubbery squeaky toy it is. 

The memory foam bread hosting the cookie-cutter beef-discus. That meat functioning inside a living cow stretches the imagination to the point of tearing it. OK, the fries are a crunchy delight - but even they have a freaky pliability to them. This helps when jamming bundles through our food-slit, but is still a bit suspect. All that washed down with the disinfective powers of Coca-cola. A meal that could journey through a digestive tract unfazed and intact - without so much as ruffling its salad. 

All mandatory snobbery aside, McDonald’s is wonderful, though, isn’t it? Can we admit that together? I mean, Jesus, they feed 1% of the world’s population each day. Yet only a translucent-pickle-thin-slice of us ever fess up to lovin’ it. Seventy-six-milli’ fed dicks on your measly 5 thou’, Jesus. 

Dissecting a Mcdonald's in the cold, natural light of day isn’t fair. Nobody is complaining while processing one. Even if you wanted to, there’s no real window between drinking fries and breathing. 

A McMeal offers the filling heft of savoury with the sugary buzz of dessert. Everything about it is easy. The only utensils needed are at the business end of our dumb, fat wrists.

The flavour doesn’t ask anything of you. Each bite is a no-nonsense jangling of all the base pleasure receptors in the pallet. A taste that is completely consistent with our expectations. All the E numbers dance on the brain’s reward centres, with the easy joy of a kid on a novelty-sized keyboard. Life’s service is pretty unreliable, but you’ll never be let down by a Mcdonald's. 

For as long as it lasts, to the chip, Mcdonald's is a thing of straightforward beauty.  

Stage III: The Repercussions

B-Uh-rp-oh. After exactly a quarter burp’s satisfaction, the internal organs form a disorderly queue to voice their complaints. The heart and stomach, understandably, the most aggrieved of the bunch.

Now, what’s that noise? The distant rumble of long-term health consequences chugging down the track towards you. Evolution hasn’t prepared our bellies for an incoming Mac-attack. Let’s hope it never feels obliged to. 

Meanwhile, the ketchup and mayo are launching a colour-coordinated assault on the blood cells - thickening the plasma into a cellular hollandaise sauce. Every laboured pump of your pulmonary artery, a fat-handed thud on a sauce dispenser. THUD…… THUD……. THUD. 

Time to create some distance from the table, and halt. No - take a seated stand against the queasiness. Rejig your spine. Adjust to a position where your organs aren’t lazily rutting against each other for dominance. Only this feat of chair aerobics proves too advanced. So you sit, stooped and panting, like a fleshy pensioner during the 3^rd scheduled sit-down of their weekly shop. 

The mainlined sugared salt spikes your energy system on the trajectory of the M ™. The head is pulsing with regret and brewing retro whiteheads. The brain is just able to gather your thoughts into an easily digestible - Why? 

Why? Why, indeed. The weight of the trial in your body has smothered the root cause. The body is subjected to the dizzying heights of Christmas afternoon drowsiness, only with none of the seasonal goodwill to counterbalance it. In reality, it’s a Tuesday evening, at a motorway services, and your girlfriend isn’t coming back.

Dining on Mcdonald's falls somewhere between a treat and punishment. A pat on the back and a punch in the gut administered by the same hand, the one that feeds you.