US vs UK McDonald's | Food Wars

Harry Kersh: From calorie counts to portion sizes, we wanted to find out the biggest differences between McDonald's in the UK and the US. This is what a small drink is like in the UK. Joe Avella: This is a small US model. Harry: This is what a medium drink looks like. Joe: This is an American media. Harry: And this one is big. Joe: And this is a large from the US. Harry: So with our McNuggets in the UK, the default adult sizes on the menu are a box of six, a box of nine or a sharing box of 20.

Joe: Nuggets. You can get a box of four, or you can get a piece of six, or 10, 20, to "share." Or... ahh. 40. And according to the three McDonald's in the area, they don't have 20 or 40 boxes, they only make them in increments of 10, but this is on the menu. Harry: In the UK we have three sizes of crisps. These are our fries in the paper bag. Joe: Here are the small fish. Harry: These are our medium fries in the iconic carton. Joe: Here's the medium fry. Harry: And then these are our large fries. Joe: And here are the big shots.

Harry: So, we couldn't find the exact weight measurement for these fries online, so what we'll do is weigh them ourselves. Just out of curiosity, we'll bring back our trusty friend, the scale, and weigh the Big Mac and see if there's any difference in size. I'm not sure there is, but let's find out. Joe: Wait, wait, wait. Harry: So, although McDonald's fries may look and taste quite similar in the UK and the US, in the UK we only have three ingredients: oil, salt and potatoes. Joe: McDonald's fries in the United States have many more ingredients. These potato chips are made from potatoes, obviously; a vegetable oil, which has canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogen... hydrogenated... hydrogenated?

Producer: Hydrogenated. Joe: Ha! Thank you. Hydrogenated soybean oil, natural meat flavor, dextrose, sodium acid... phosphitate? Phosfifi...phos...phiupp...pyrophosphate, pyrophosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, used to maintain color. Are they a very different color to those in the UK? It's worth it? Can we do a side by side comparison? Are they a much brighter yellow color that we need to put sodium hydrogen pyrophosphate or whatever it's called in them? Salt, and I should mention that a natural meat flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as the starting ingredient and of course I have no idea what that means.

Harry: So the biggest caloric difference in a Big Mac actually comes from the sauce. In the US they have about 40 more calories than we do in the UK. We're not sure if this is because there is more sauce or because the ingredient list in the UK is a little simpler. Joe: Our sauce is made from soybean oil, sweet relish, which is made from diced pickles, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, distilled vinegar, salt, corn syrup, okay, two types of corn syrup, xanthan gum, wait. . Calcium chloride, spice extracts? Water. Alright, I've heard about that. Egg yolks, distilled vinegar, spices, onion powder, salt, propylene glycol alginate?

Garlic powder; vegetable protein, which has hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat; sugar; caramel color; turmeric; paprika extracts; and, of course, soybeans... lechithen. Leechithen. Lecithin. I don't know which one it is. Harry: So if you're trying to eat healthy at McDonald's, you might actually have to be careful with the drinks. Joe: That's nothing, guys. Our chocolate shake? 840 calories. That's as many calories as two cheeseburgers and one hamburger. Harry: So what does it all mean? If you walked into a McDonald's in the UK and ordered a large Big Mac meal with a shake, you would consume around 1,400 calories. Joe: And if in the United States you ate the Big Mac meal with a chocolate shake, the total here would be 1,870 calories.

So it's 1,870 calories, the daily calorie count for an American is 2,500, okay. So you have 630 left. A McNugget has 55 calories, right? Then you might as well have 11 more nuggets and voila, that's all you need for the day. Harry: Here's everything you can only get at a McDonald's in the UK. So, here we have the Veggie Deluxe Burger, which is a vegetarian burger served with a little mayonnaise and a little lettuce. Here we have Chicken Legend, which is a chicken burger, again served with mayonnaise and lettuce. Joe: Chicken Legend, I don't even know what that is. I'm not going to notice.

That can stay in the UK. Harry: We have a range of wraps that you can get in the UK. We have a summary of the day. Here we have the crispy fajita, which is some chicken, along with some vegetables and some spicy fajita sauce. Here we have some Veggie Dippers. They were actually introduced for part of Veganuary in 2020 in the UK, but they're stuck on the menu. So, they're Vegan Society approved and they're kind of like a fried bean burger. Joe: For example, choose something less appetizing to buy at McDonald's. Vegetarian pots. Harry: And finally we have some Mozzarella Dippers, which are actually kind of like mozzarella sticks.

Joe: Well, it sucks being in the UK, because everything you see here is just in the US, honey. Haha, USA only! So, I'm going to quickly talk about coffee drinks. Here in the US, we have the same coffee drinks as in the UK, but each coffee drink has an iced version and also a caramel and/or French vanilla and/or mocha version, depending on what you order . So we in the US of course have more variety. The Shamrock Shake. The Shamrock shake is like a vanilla mint shake. Strawberry ice cream. This has recently been discontinued in the UK.

Sorry guys. I still have it in the United States. My favorite when I was a kid, the Caramel Sundae. Fruit and yogurt parfait, maybe it's healthy, I have no idea, probably not. Those were the cold items I wanted to get out of the way as they slowly melted under these lights. I have much further to go. Harry, bear with me, friend. Crispy Buttermilk Chicken Sandwich. I think this was introduced when the chicken and sandwich

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were really heating up when Chick-fil-A started taking over. Let's see what's under the hood. Check it out. Watch this. Quarter Pounder with Deluxe Cheese.

This is your fancy cheesy quarter pounder. This is for Sunday dinner. When you have company. Oh, there is so much. Breakfast burrito with sausage. Even after a while, it still glows yellow. Now, these are the crispy buttermilk chicken tenders. These smell amazing. I want to bite them so badly. I just want to take a big bite. I want to talk about sauces real quick. Okay, I'm at McDonald's and I'm going to get one of everything. I heard from Harry and the team in the UK that some of these they don't have, including sweet and sour and honey mustard, what else don't you guys have?

I don't think you have a ranch or buffaloes. However, I must say that sauces are everything. Harry: We also have a couple of sauces that are exclusive to the UK. We have a sweet curry sauce and we also have a dipping sauce, which I didn't know existed until today. Joe: Oh yeah, donut sticks. These Donut Sticks also come with a chocolate sauce. Another thing I'm sure they don't have in the UK. I ho ho ho ho ho ho! Breakfast is served! Watch this. Oh yeah. Who's ready to start the day? It's McGriddle's talk. So, for those of you in the UK who don't know what a McGriddle is, America's McDonald's had this genius idea: What if we took breakfast sandwiches, replaced the buns, made them into pancakes, and somehow injected them with some kind of syrup?

Do they add flavor to the pancakes? And McGriddle was born. And I have to say, they are fantastic. This one here, the Bacon, Egg and Cheese McGriddle. This is the sausage. Yeah? Hello! Hey hey. This is the Sausage, Egg and Cheese McGriddle. American

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engineering at its finest. Check it out. In the UK, you call cookies biscuits. Not here. So in the UK, biscuits are biscuits, what we call cookies. In America, cookies are what we call...uh...I don't know what else you can call them. You bake them, they're from the south, they're dry and I don't know what they are.

Like McGriddles, we have a version of each breakfast sandwich that, instead of regular bread, is biscuits. Not cookies like the ones you have. These cookies. Harry: Joe, you were so close to the whole cookies and cookies thing. What you call cookies, we would actually call buns or scones, depending on where you are from, and the idea of ​​putting breakfast

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in between them is a little strange. These are usually reserved for cream and jam for afternoon tea. Joe: Last, and in my opinion, least important, is this. The Southwestern Grilled Chicken Salad. Producer: Yes. Joe: Oh ho ho ho ho.

Harry: Can I eat now? Yeah? Yeah? K, great. I don't care how many calories, it's really good. MMM.