Note from Connie: Get ready for a SUGAR SHOCKER! As if people don’t drink enough soda as it is! This development is scary. Jennifer Moore fills you in on this jaw-dropping, sugary news.
Remember after Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary "Super Size Me" was released — in which the filmmaker ate McDonald’s three meals a day and got super-sized portions of everything he could, the fast food giant ultimately (whether coincidental or not) dropped some super sized items from the menu?
Well, Andrew Martin of the New York Times reports that super size is back, in the form of a 42-ounce soft drink.
The marketing folks at McDonald’s have given the mega drink a new name — "the Hugo."
The new drink is inexpensive — 89 cents in some markets, according to Martin, and only 69 cents in Berkeley, California, according to renowned nutritionist Marion Nestle’s blog What to Eat.
At the moment, the Hugo is a summer promotion that isn’t on sale everywhere. But since a McDonald’s spokesperson told Martin that the Hugo is selling well, I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to keep selling it after summer is over, and in more markets.
Interestingly, John Glass, an analyst at the investment bank CIBC World Markets,
told Martin that the healthier items on McDonald’s menu, which are credited for McDonald’s improving sales in the last few years,
aren’t selling nearly as well as the not-so-healthy stuff.
“Double cheeseburgers always outsold salads 10 to 1,” Glass said.
So that means there’s plenty of incentive for McDonald’s to keep peddling gobs of sugar in the form of a 42-ounce soda.
It
really is astounding how much McDonald’s increased portion sizes
over the years. In 1955, Martin writes, the biggest soda a person could
get was 7 ounces. Now the smallest soda on the menu is the 12-ounce drink for kids, which is more than twice the size of the biggest one in 1955.
The Hugo is a whopping six times bigger than the 7-ounce drink McDonald’s used to sell!
And the folks at McDonald’s wonder why some health experts think they’re one of the driving forces behind the obesity epidemic??
The amount of sugar a person would consume if he or she drank a
McDonald’s Hugo-sized portion is truly mind-boggling. My goodness, the
small Coca-Cola Classic is sugary enough, with 41 grams of sugar to go
along with its 150 calories, according to Nutritiondata.com.
The large, 32-ounce cup is even more incredible — it contains a
mind-boggling 85 grams of sugar and 310 calories Forty-two ounces of
Coke — the amount a person would have if he or she filled a Hugo
container to the brim — has a whopping 113 grams of sugar and 410
calories. Yikes!
I guess it’s no surprise that McDonald’s unleashed the Hugo on the world, but it’s very disappointing nonetheless.
Jennifer Moore for the SUGAR SHOCK! Blog