This article is about eating at McDonalds. Please see the disclaimer at the end of the article marked with a “*”. Also, this article includes some clips from a movie with adult language. You’ve been warned.

It’s unofficial food week here at Lazy Man and Money. I noticed my new writers submitted articles about food. I might as well follow suit.

Last week, my wife and I were scrambling to get ready to go to an appointment when we realized that we hadn’t eaten lunch. Worse, we wouldn’t have an opportunity to eat lunch until nearly dinner.

I remembered that we had some “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” coupons from McDonalds recently. The coupon for the Quarter Pounder with Cheese (or Royale with Cheese depending where you live) caught my eye. Hitting the drive-thru seemed to be the obvious solution.

If I didn’t have a coupon and was in a similar situation, I’d go with the McDouble off the value menu. When McDonalds called it the Dollar Menu, it was a very good deal (again, considering the disclaimer below*) at around $0.25 per 100 calories. (This calculation will make more sense in a minute.)

I pull up to the drive-thru and order two Quarter Pounders mentioning the coupon. To my absolute shock, the burger is $3.99. I had expected it to be around $2.50… maybe $2.75.

Drive-thrus are incredibly convenient (especially with kids), but one of their problems is that there’s little time to look at the menu and order. Communication is difficult, so I resigned myself to going down the road I had planned.

Look at this table and see if you can find out why I wasn’t feeling good about the purchase:

If you said, “The Quarter Pounder with Cheese is nearly twice the price per calorie for essentially the same ingredients/nutrients”, my response would be, “check out the big brain on Brad.”

If this were the world of soda, the bigger product would only cost a few cents more and be a much value per ounce. Of course, that product is mostly water which makes that pricing model make sense. The Quarter Pounder is so oddly priced that you could buy two McDoubles, throw half of one in floor and squish it with your foot. You’d have almost the equivalent calories, fat, protein and save a dollar.

Fortunately, the coupon giving me two Quarter Pounders for the price of one, put the price per 100 calories in the same range as the McDouble with no couple.

Then again, consumers may not be smart enough to make this connection. After all look at how McDonalds sales earnings have been in the last quarter:

So what do you say? Do you order the Quarter Pounder at McDonalds? Let me know in the comments:

* Whenever, I write about McDonalds there are usually a few health nuts who fly off the handle screaming that McDonalds is unhealthy and doesn’t serve food that should be eaten. I generally agree with that. However, I’ve known quite a few dietitians and they claim that in moderation it isn’t terrible. I don’t choose McDonalds because it’s healthy, but because it is convenient, fast, and low-priced. And I always make up for it by eating 7 pounds of tofu injected with unicorn blood for my next meal.