McDonald's

According to You Want Any Fruit With That Big Mac? By MELANIE WARNER:

• McDonald's now buys more fresh apples than any other restaurant or food service operation.
• McDonald's is also among the top five food-service buyers of grape tomatoes and spring mix lettuce - a combination of greens like arugula, radicchio and frisée.
• McDonald's need for a reliable supply of fresh fruits and vegetables that meet its exacting specifications may aid the development of highly mechanized, consistent, efficient and low-cost produce businesses.
• The double cheeseburger is still the most beloved single item (ugh).
  
• McDonald's does not want to sell something that people may have readily available at home, so they can't just sell fresh fruit.
  
• A lot of McDonald's customers say in focus groups that they want healthy food, but less than 10 percent actually buy their salads.
• Because McDonald's insists that all new products get a clear thumbs-up from more than 70 percent of its test customers, apples without caramel dipping sauce did not make the cut, although it "has nine grams of sugar, one-quarter of the total recommended daily limit under new guidelines of the Department of Agriculture".
• In the premium salads, cheap and reliable iceberg and romaine account for 90 percent of the lettuce in the salad; the 10 percent smattering of spring mix is intended to make the salads more attractive to the eye as well as the palate.
• The carrots in the salads "are sliced so thin that customers are lucky if they end up eating one-quarter of a small carrot, but the delicate slices don't fall to a puddle at the bottom of the bowl".
• Fruits and vegetables are much more expensive and complicated to ship and store than meat and potatoes.
• McDonald's could be the company that changes agriculture toward a more organic and sustainable model. (One guy thinks so, anyway)
  

On the occasional times I eat hamburgers, it's almost always Burger King.