McDonald’s breakfast menu: heaven or hell?

Feb 15, 2012

Darcy Ropchan
Gateway Staff

A good breakfast is the foundation of a great day. You need to have a solid morning meal to ensure you are ready for everything life could throw at you. But who has time for that in today’s busy world of sleeping in late and not studying? Thankfully for slackers everywhere, McDonald’s has taken care of your breakfast needs. It’s not as healthy as porridge, but it tastes 10 times better and it’s the cheapest, most available breakfast food there is. If Ronald McDonald says I should eat it then it’s good enough for me.

If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to wake up before 10:30 a.m., you’ve most likely experienced the splendour that is breakfast at the Mac Shack. They’ve got eggs, hash browns and breakfast burritos. I’m pretty sure that covers all the major food groups. How could you hate something that makes you feel so good? That would be like hating fun.

Eating breakfast at McDonald’s is the ultimate hangover cure. It’s a miracle food that will fix your stomach pains. Nothing makes you feel better after a night of tequila shots and beer chasers than gobbling down a hot Egg McMuffin and some greasy hash browns. It doesn’t matter what state of inebriation you’re in, it always goes down smooth. Any food you can still eat while fighting your gag reflex must be good.

Another reason to love breakfast at Ronald’s house is that they’re always improving. Good isn’t good enough for these guys.

Take the Egg McMuffin for example. It’s pretty much a hamburger with an English muffin, eggs and sausage. Not even God himself could create anything more beautiful. But then McDonald’s decides to inject their classic breakfast sandwich with some extremism by putting maple syrup inside the muffin and calling it a McGriddle. No one knows how they do it, but it doesn’t matter. One bite and you’ll forget whatever’ gettting you down. If love had a taste, it would taste like a McGriddle.

People may be wondering why you wouldn’t just go to Denny’s for breakfast over McDonald’s? That’s a stupid question. Where else are you going to get a complete and balanced breakfast for under $10? You’re not going to find that at Denny’s.

And how can you beat McDonald’s ambiance? You can buy your food and coffee and sit in the corner reading your newspaper without having to deal with pushy waitresses. There may be more screaming children at McDonald’s, but the food more than makes up for that.

Whatever your favourite breakfast food is, McDonald’s has it. It may not be the most calorie-wise option out there, but who cares?

Nick Ong
Gateway Staff

I sometimes feel that the McDonald’s breakfast was created to replace the daily penitence some of us seem to require. Lacking scourges and whips to cleanse our sins, modern society chooses instead to gnaw its way through the dry, rubbery crust of a McMuffin, forcing all that chalky dryness down with coffee so hot and diluted they could have brewed it in Beelzebub’s colon. Eating cardboard doused with ketchup tastes better and has fewer calories. Knowing that corporate McDonald’s forces this ritual upon us daily is enough to make anyone scream to the heavens, “y u no serve Big Macs at this hour, McD’s?”

Having suffered with the rest of you, I have come to the only possible conclusion: McDonald’s breakfast operation is a front run directly from hell to recruit broken souls. Yes, the tawdry red, yellow and oh-so-shiny fluorescent double-arches lure the tired, drunk and unwary masses into a corporate Ry’leh, a Temple of Doom to harvest their souls after they graze at the feeding trough.

Here is my infallible reasoning. First, they put the least edible food they make on their breakfast menu. One reason that people still go to McDonald’s in the morning is that they’re too tired or too drunk to care, but this alone doesn’t explain why most of these items are so calorie-laden.

The seemingly healthier Sausage and Egg McMuffin tops a Quarter Pounder by 30 calories.

But wait, there’s more.

Consider the $5 you fork out every morning for that awful slop that McDonald’s calls breakfast and what you get out of it. Now compare this to what $5 can get you at the same establishment several hours later. Comparing the two, it’s obvious that you’ll get more bang for your buck after the breakfast deadline. If you think like I do, you will find this to be a bit too coincidental. By giving us the most unpalatable and most unhealthy food they can during the hours when we are least likely to care what we eat or how much we pay for it, they have broken our spirits, our arteries and our wallets in a single stroke.

Now that I have freed your mind from McDonald’s breakfasts, here’s what you should do: drop that McMuffin. Throw off the oppressive shackles put upon your breakfasting hours. Rejoice. Then, stop by Tim Hortons, and try their breakfast sandwiches. Seriously, they are pretty damn good.

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