A
few days ago, I had my first McGriddle. While I usually try to avoid McDonald's
meat products - that's the benevolent influence of my wife, who rightly insists
on eating humanely raised animal products - I was stuck in an airport and
couldn't bear the idea of another yogurt parfait. The "standard"
McGriddle consists of bacon, a brick of bright yellow egg and neon orange
American cheese served between two small pancakes that have been injected with
maple syrup (or some sort of maple simulacrum) so that they taste extremely
sweet and yet aren't sticky to hold. The top of the griddle pancake is embossed
with the McDonald's logo.Needless
to say, the McGriddle is eerily delicious. If the human tongue has a secret
password, then this sweet, salty and fatty breakfast sandwich is the code. The
problem of course, is that all the deliciousness comes with a steep caloric
cost: every McGriddle has 420 calories, 15 grams of sugar and 80 percent of the
recommended daily allowance of cholesterol. As Elizabeth Kolbert recently described in the New Yorker, this preference for
bacon wrapped in sweet pancakes is an unfortunate side-effect of human
evolution: