Since the pandemic hit I have not had a McDonald’s. I think I last had one about 2 years ago and in all honesty I have not missed it. But a recent event meant that McDonald’s was on offer, and it was also the first time I have been able to try to famous McPlant burger.
This is a made with a Beyond Meat burger patty, vegan mayo and all your regular burger fixings: lettuce, tomato, vegan cheese, pickles and ketchup. And a bun…of course. Now Beyond Meat is normally very realistic and – for me anyway – can be a bit off putting for some people who don’t like the realistic meat textures or look of these types of patties. Now I have to say that again, this is a McDonald’s burger so I was expecting a pretty flat looking product. This is absolutely not the Beyond Meat burger patties that you can buy in the supermarket and were probably about less than half an inch thick. So just bear that in mind.
All in all this was your standard McDonald’s burger. I have to admit it did look a little sad and squished, but it did also taste like a meat McDonald’s burger. Now I haven’t actually had meat in about 14 years at this point, but we all know what McDonald’s tastes like and this McPlant, even though it is fully vegan, still had that McDonald’s meat burger feel to it which personally I found to be a bit odd. There isn’t much to say about this because it was, pretty simply, your standard takeaway burger. Good enough for the moment but no where near as good as what I could make at home.
The other issue I have with these burgers – and with most fast food offerings – is that they are super high in calories for very little substance. This burger with all of the fixings it comes with was 429 calories. Plus the large fries and the apple pie I also had with it, this meal was easily over 1000 calories. And yet no more than an hour later I was starving again. Now if I make a burger at home, it will at least fill me up for the rest of the day/evening and I won’t feel the need to snack, but with these types of fast food meals I am always starving hungry very soon after finishing the meal. This is obviously quite annoying.
While the cost of McDonald’s has definitely gone up over the years, a whole large meal is £5.49 which is actually a pretty cheap meal. Does it fill you up? Not even close. But for £5.50 what can you really expect? So it is still very good value for money because you do get a lot of food with a meal, but unfortunately it is not a nutritionally dense meal so you will probably end up buying more food shortly after. So in that case is it really good value?
Taylor Talks Vegan 