Potential Effects of the Next 100 Billion Hamburgers

Sold by McDonald’s
Elsa H. Spencer, PhD, Erica Frank, MD, MPH, Nichole F. McIntosh, MD, MPH

Background: McDonald’s has sold ⬎100 billion beef-based hamburgers worldwide with a potentially
considerable health impact. This paper explores whether there would be any advantages if
the next 100 billion burgers were instead plant-based burgers.
Methods: Nutrient composition of the beef hamburger patty and the McVeggie burger patty were
obtained from the McDonald’s website; sales data were obtained from the McDonald’s
customer service.
Results: Consuming 100 billion McDonald’s beef burgers versus the same company’s McVeggie
burgers would provide, approximately, on average, an additional 550 million pounds of
saturated fat and 1.2 billion total pounds of fat, as well as 1 billion fewer pounds of fiber,
660 million fewer pounds of protein, and no difference in calories.
Conclusions: These data suggest that the McDonald’s new McVeggie burger represents a less harmful
fast-food choice than the beef burger.
(Am J Prev Med 2005;28(4):379 –381) © 2005 American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Introduction Methods

M
cDonald’s states that the company has sold
⬎100 billion hamburgers, and are continuing
to sell “more than 75 hamburgers per second,
of every minute, of every hour, of every day of the year.”1
The potentially considerable health impacts of this quan-
tity of beef were considered, at a time when soy-based
McVeggie burgers (and other veggie burgers) have mul-
tiple national and international outlets,2– 8 when the
American Cancer Society9 and World Health Organiza-
tion10 (among other health promotion organizations)
encourage limiting the amount of grilled/processed meat
consumed, and when consumer concerns persist regard-
ing “mad cow disease.”11,12 This paper does not aim to
document the health consequences of beef consumption
or of fast food, per se, but rather of one product whose
effect on health may be negative,10,13 and which has been
consumed ⬎100 billion times.14 Although McDonald’s is
only one source of beef consumption, it is the leading
worldwide hamburger retailer and food service retailer,15
and holds the leading share (42%) of the U.S. fast-food
market.16 About 8% of Americans eat at a McDonald’s on
an average day, and 96% of Americans eat a meal there at
least yearly.16 The hypothesis of this manuscript is that
there may be fewer health disadvantages if McDonald’s
next 100 billion cow-derived burgers would instead be 100
billion plant-based burgers.
From the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Erica Frank, MD,
MPH, Department of Family & Preventive Medicine, Emory Univer-
sity School of Medicine, 69 Jesse Hill Jr. Drive, Atlanta GA 30303-
3219. E-mail: efrank@emory.edu.
Nutrient composition of the beef hamburger and the McVeg-
gie burger patties were obtained from McDonald’s website17;
recent sales and price data were obtained from McDonald’s
customer service and electronic sources.
McDonald’s does not publish sales and profits of individual
items.18 Thus, it is not possible to estimate how many of
McDonald’s first 100 billion beef burgers sold were 1.6-oz
hamburgers, 3.2-oz Big Macs (introduced in 1968),19 4.0-oz
Quarter Pounders (introduced in 1973),19 or other sand-
wiches. This paper conservatively (given progressively larger
hamburger sizes)20 projected that the next 100 billion ham-
burger patties sold by McDonald’s would be a 2.4-oz simple
average of the 3.2-ounce Big Mac and the 1.6-ounce ham-
burger patties. (All burger weights reported herein are un-
cooked weights of U.S. burgers.) The Big Mac provides a
conservative burger weight estimate because it is the smallest
of the larger burgers that have been sold during McDonald’s
most sales-intensive years (since the 1980s).19 It was also
selected because (according to a survey of a 10% sample of
Atlanta-area McDonald’s) the Big Mac now dominates burger
sales, and it is reported to be the top seller worldwide.18
Values for the mean 2.4-oz composite burger weight were
conservatively computed by multiplying values for the
smaller, less calorically dense (1.6-oz) hamburger by 1.5, and
then multiplying by 100 billion (Table 1).
Results
If the next 100 billion beef patties were instead 100
billion McVeggie patties, McDonald’s customers would
consume an equivalent number of calories, but also
hundreds of millions more pounds of fiber and pro-

Am J Prev Med 2005;28(4) 0749-3797/05/$–see front matter 379

© 2005 American Journal of Preventive Medicine • Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2005.01.009
Table 1. Comparison of McDonald’s beef and McVeggie patties
100,000,000,000
McDonald’s average
2.4-ounce beef patties
Total fat (in billions of pounds)a 2.32
Saturated fat (in millions of pounds)a 992.25
Fiber (in billions of pounds)a 0 1.10
Protein (in billions of pounds)a 2.65
Calories (in trillions) 15.00
a
1 lb⫽454g.
tein, hundreds of millions fewer pounds of saturated
fat, and ⬎1 billion fewer pounds of total fat (Table 1).
It is also useful to compare these burger options on
individual patty and sandwich scales. When comparing
the 1.6-oz McDonald’s beef patty (100 calories, 7 g fat,
3 g saturated fat, 0 g fiber, and 8 g protein) to the
3.2-ounce McVeggie patty (150 calories, 5 g fat, 1 g
saturated fat, 5 g fiber, and 15 g protein), the McVeggie
burger patty has 50% more calories but also one third
the saturated fat and twice as much protein.17 When
comparing the 3.2-oz Big Mac patties (190 calories, 14 g
fat, 6 g saturated fat, 0 g fiber, and 16 g protein)17 to
the McVeggie patty, the McVeggie patty has 20% fewer
calories, one third the fat, one sixth the saturated fat,
and nearly the same amount of protein. Additionally,
the beef patties have no fiber.
Conclusions
What might be the health consequences of the next 100
billion beef burgers that McDonald’s and others may
sell? Such calorically dense, fiber-poor, and highly
accessible fast foods have been linked to the obesity
epidemic in the United States.21 Hamburger/cheese-
burger consumption has increased as a percent of total
calories over the last 20 years,22 and contributes sub-
stantially in energy23 and fat23 to the U.S. epidemic24 –26
and global pandemic27,28 of obesity. McDonald’s is an
especially important source of beef burgers because the
company is an industry leader with ⬎30,000 restaurants
in 119 countries.29 Red meat consumption has been
linked to colon cancer,10,30,31 diabetes,32 and over-
weight/higher body mass indices.33,34 Obesity has been
linked to a host of health problems including arthri-
tis,25 cancer,35 cardiovascular disease,36 diabetes,25,32
high cholesterol,25 and hypertension.25 Further, subse-
quent burgers are likely to be bigger than the first
100 billion burgers (even in a post-“supersized” era for
McDonald’s),37 as portion sizes at restaurants, espe-
cially fast-food restaurants (including McDonald’s),38
increased in the last decades of the 20th century.20 The
saturated-fat–rich and fiber-poor beef burger is a nutri-
tionally suboptimal choice, both for those individuals
who might consume hundreds of such burgers over a
380 American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 28, Number 4
100,000,000,000 Difference between
McDonald’s beef and McVeggie
McVeggie patties patties
1.10 1.22
441.00 551.25
⫺1.10
3.31 ⫺0.66
15.00 0
lifetime, and for a population that cumulatively will
consume hundreds of billions of burgers.
There is evidence that plant foods such as the McVeg-
gie burger may be less harmful to the health of consumers
than beef burgers. Soy protein, the primary constituent of
the McVeggie burger, can reduce cardiovascular disease
risk (e.g., by lowering the total to high-density lipid
cholesterol ratio).39 – 41 The U.S. Food and Drug Admin-
istration has therefore approved soy protein claims for
lowering Americans’ cholesterol.42 Furthermore, the
American Dietetic Association,43 the American Heart
Association,44 and the American Cancer Society45 have
endorsed plant-based diets to help prevent disease and
satisfy nutrition requirements.
The McVeggie patty and other veggie burgers represent
a less-troubling fast-food burger alternative, given the
currently limited fast-food choices available to individuals
concerned about their health (and the environment).46
These results may encourage policymakers to recom-
mend choosing plant-based patties as a less-unhealthy
substitute for fast-food beef patties.
We wish to acknowledge McDonald’s domestic and interna-
tional customer service representatives for sales data, as well
as Jennifer Carrera for her statistical contributions.
No financial conflict of interest was reported by the authors
of this paper.
What This Study Adds . . .
Eating large quantities of meat has substantial
negative effects on health, and McDonald’s has
sold more than 100 billion hamburgers.
Compared with McDonald’s plant-based burg-
ers, these cow burgers provided approximately
550 million additional pounds of saturated fat, 1.2
billion total pounds of fat, 1 billion fewer pounds
of fiber, 660 million fewer pounds of protein, and
no caloric difference.
These data suggest that McDonald’s McVeggie
burger is a less-harmful fast-food choice than their
beef burger.
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