Life without McDouble

Jeffrey Tucker

I'm thrilled when McDonald's hamburgers get the attention they deserve. That's what happened last year when Stephen Dubner, co-author of "Freakonomics," made the provocative claim that they are the cheapest and most nutritious food in the history of mankind.

The fact that we dare to reject this statement actually shows how spoiled we are. In nature, getting food is the biggest challenge. You can find shelter that lasts a long time. Clothing made from animal skins may be scarce, but once produced, it also lasts a long time.

The problem with food is that you have to get it every day. And without the necessary tools, you can only eat things that are still or move very slowly. Once you learn to kill, preserving the meat is also not easy, which is why salt has been one of the most valuable commodities in history.

The fact that almost everyone has easy access to food these days is one of humanity's greatest triumphs. As Dubner points out, a McDouble delivers 390 calories and 29 grams of protein, spread across the meat and cheese. In short, a hamburger provides a person with half a day's worth of nutrients, all for a little over a dollar.

The fact that McDonald's can do this and make a profit from it is remarkable. Their profit margin is said to be around 6 percent—it's an extremely tough business, as any franchise owner will tell you—and many of their most popular products don't make any money.

The McDouble's mass of shoppers are subsidized by customers who buy the more upscale items, like the bacon club sandwich, or the super-expensive menus. The promotions are designed to lure you in the door in the hope that you'll splurge a little every now and then.

Dubner's thesis has gained renewed attention in the week since my own "love affair" with McDonald's was renewed in Las Vegas this summer. This is a place that digs into your pocket at every turn. Which is fine, since every penny spent in Vegas—except for the high taxes and ridiculous wages won by unions—is given voluntarily by the customers. And yet there's a greed in the air that seems inescapable.

After a number of days where I felt almost robbed paying for food and drinks, I finally found a McDonald's. The prices were not "Vegas prices." The one-dollar menu was still there. The coffee tasted good and was cheap, which is an incredible relief in a city where each cup costs over $5. The snacks are great and filling. If you're a fan of "healthy food," opt for the salads, whose prices can't be beat.

There were a dozen or so restaurants in one food court I went to, but McDonald's consistently had the longest line. It makes perfect sense. Think about the ingredients in a Big Mac or a club sandwich, and you'll be amazed. The meat itself is a marvel. Meat wasn't available to the masses until the invention of canning in the mid-twentieth century; storing and transporting it was a huge challenge.

There's a reason your knees don't meet under the desk at the antique store, and it's because of the increase in our height due to meat consumption that we've witnessed since World War II.

This is why the knightly armor in the museum looks like it belonged to a member of the Lollipop Guild [1]– again because we have access to meat, and these hardy men of the Middle Ages had to survive on what grew around them.

There's a reason why the average Japanese person is about 9 cm taller than the average height 50 years ago, and it's the huge change in food intake, thanks to the availability of meat and cheese.

There's also bread (if you take it for granted, try growing your own wheat), lettuce (again, only refrigeration has made it accessible to a greater number of people), cheese (raising cows is incredibly expensive), bacon (the food of the gods, thanks to the pig), pickles (their production time is lengthy), and various sauces that are made with ingredients from all over the world.

Somehow they manage to pack all of this for you into a little package that costs a dollar.

But let's focus for a moment on the most underrated ingredient in ketchup and the burger itself: the tomato. Of course, it's always been available to us, right? Anyone can grow tomatoes in a pot in their backyard. It wasn't until the sixteenth century that Europe first experienced the mass distribution of tomatoes. Spanish explorers brought the fruit from Latin America. Before that, there was no such thing as a tomato in the Italian diet.

Trade spread tomatoes around the world for the first time during the Renaissance. Without trade, without the movement made possible by technology and capital investment, we wouldn't know what a tomato tastes like.

This fact never occurred to me until I read “ A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World,” by William Bernstein (2008). It turns out that commodities like coffee, beef, and potatoes, as well as almost everything in your refrigerator, exist thanks to trade, technology, and, therefore, the existence of free enterprise.

I was once giving a lecture to a group of students about the problems that arise from nature, from trying to survive solely on the resources around you, while battling its tendency to destroy creatures that don't fight back. I asked the students what humanity invented about 150,000 years ago because of mass deprivation and increasing food shortages.

The answer I was looking for was this: they invented private property to allow them to domesticate animals and to enclose the spaces for growing crops. But the first answer the audience offered me was: they created a government. My mouth dropped open in astonishment. But after a moment the student started laughing, and everyone around him joined in.

Why the laughter? Because creating a government—allowing a small group of people to control a geographic area through a monopoly on weapons and allowing them to rob and kill as they see fit—does absolutely nothing to solve the problem humanity has faced. Even answering it in this way illustrates the absurdity of the situation. Our problems as a species are solved when we figure out how to get what we need and want. Governments, for their part, only redistribute what already exists.

Governments come and go, but the achievements of commerce and private enterprise endure for generations and even become permanent features of the world. Once a good is shipped, once a technology is invented, it becomes part of the capital stock of civilization and we can enjoy it from here on out.

The fact that we are born now and live now to enjoy the benefits of thousands of years of effort, things like tomatoes, beef, cheese, bread, and the ability to pack all of this into a tiny package and make it available for about a dollar in almost any city in the world, and that we can enjoy it without any effort on our part, is a gigantic privilege, granted to us by the power of chance or providence (depending on your religious beliefs). By whatever force you explain your good fortune, you must perceive it as such.

The McDouble does not occur in nature. That we mock it, belittle it, despise it, and even condemn the company that provides it to us is a wonderful privilege of the ungrateful. The knowledgeable and understanding do not need to eat at McDonald's, of course. But everyone should at least see in their restaurants a symbol of what the human species can achieve when given the time and freedom to make great things happen and to overcome the harsh nature under whose rule we have not been subject for only a very small part of human history.

I just ask that we think seriously about this before we act mockingly.

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