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Have big Macs changed? I'm a vegetarian so I hadn't had one in like 5 years. Wife was out of town so I grabbed one for myself and it tested... Artificial. Like I know there's a lot of crap and preservatives in them but there's always been, maybe they just taste so different now cause I'm not used to them.
Big Macs, long ago, were much bigger. The bun and patty circumference were those of the Quarter Pounder (although the patty thickness was still along the lines of the regular hamburger patty). At some point, McDonald's reduced the size of the Big Mac to match the circumference of the regular hamburger. This allowed them to not have to supply special Big Mac patties, as they could then use the same patties from the hamburger. I suspect that "Supersize Me" movie had something to do with it, too.
Anyway, this changed the bun:other ingredients ratio, making the sandwich more bread-centric than before. I believe this is what makes the flavor more "neutral." Occasionally, they'll bring back the Grand Mac, which is a Big Mac using the large bun, and two Quarter Pounder patties. This sandwich is closer to the original, but it's more meat-centric - more than the modern Big Mac and the original Big Mac. It's closer to the original, but still not the same.
All good points, but another big contributor here is flame retardants and packaging additives. Also, heating things in plastic containers. These come into play at various stages of ingredient prep/storage/shipping and during final prep, packaging and delivery to the consumer.
The boxes and paper used to wrap your burgers, fries, nuggets, various sandwiches, pizza, most food, are loaded with those PFAS chemicals and others designed to prevent fires near the grills and ovens, as well as help them stand up to grease, etc.
There's also several recent studies about micro/nano-plastics resulting from microwaving/heating in plastic containers.
More and more, anywhere you eat, the flavors of the packaging has become more and more pronounced over the years, in many cases over riding the flavors of the foods themselves. Surely, none of it is good for you.
It seems more and more difficult to avoid unless you're preparing food from unprocessed ingredients at home. There's just too much pressure at restaurants to deliver quickly. Especially, at your drive thru friendly establishments such as McD's etc.
Speaking of packaging --
If you're old enough, you remember when McDonald's served its larger sandwiches in styrofoam clamshell containers. I believe they also used styrofoam cups for drinks. They switched to paper packaging for sandwiches, and solid plastic for drink cups, when there was public concern about CFCs and the ozone layer. (Tangent: the entire world came together to ban CFCs, which fixed the ozone hole.) CFCs were a common substance used to "blow" plastic into styrofoam.
But McDonald's clamshell packaging never used CFCs.
Makes a lot of sense. I don't know a lot about packaging over the years. But, a lot of it seemed more neutral in flavor, from what I can remember. Hard to tell how accurate memory is though.
Honestly, I didn't even really recognize it until they brought out the Grand Mac and I tried one. "Ohhh that's the Big Mac I remember!"
This is a common misconception due to the fact that the bun for the Big Mac was a lot bigger back in the day. In fact, Big Macs were made with the smaller hamburger patties well before Supersize Me. I worked there in the late 90s and we used the smaller hamburger patties back then. My mom worked there when I was a kid in the early 80s and they were using the smaller patties then, too. In my lifetime, I've never seen a Big Mac made with anything other than the small hamburger patties. And just to check myself, when looking online, I can't find any references to the burger patties being bigger going all the way back to its launch in 1967, while some sources state that the burger has been mostly unchanged, aside from the bun size and the recipe for the Mac sauce, for its entire existence.