A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage
November 18th, 2011I have a special relationship with the McRib sandwich. Long ago, I had a friend who used to eat those things and the smell of them turned my stomach. He found my revulsion hilarious and he would taunt me by offering me some of the McRib, or blowing the putrid fumes my way. One time, he pulled back the soggy bun to reveal a gruesome, Giger-esque, horror within. Rubbery, gray-green-pink, form pressed “rib” with brown slime sauce…
And that’s when it hit me:
“You’re eating a slab of pig snouts and sphincters,” I said.
And then he’d load the thing up with fries, plop the bun back on top and just go to town on that mess.
Mmm mmm good.
I don’t know what percentage of the McRib “meat” component is comprised of pig snouts and sphincters, if any, (the article mentions pork offal slurry, which is close enough for me), but the image of that bread being pulled back, and the smell… *shiver* *goose bumps* The sick feeling is with me even now, decades later. It comes to me anytime I see a reference to McDonald’s. Whether my epiphany about the “true” nature of the McRib sandwich is real or not, I can assure you, it’s real to me.
The Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange, 1971 Warner Bros.
I should be thankful for the experience. It put me off McDonald’s for good.
Via: The Awl:
The physical attributes of the sandwich only add to the visceral revulsion some have to the product—the same product that others will drive hundreds of miles to savor. But many people, myself included, believe that all these things—the actual presumably entirely organic matter that goes into making the McRib—are somewhat secondary to the McRib’s existence. This is where we enter the land of conjectures, conspiracy theories and dark, ribby murmurings. The McRib’s unique aspects and impermanence, many of us believe, make it seem a likely candidate for being a sort of arbitrage strategy on McDonald’s part. Calling a fast food sandwich an arbitrage strategy is perhaps a bit of a reach—but consider how massive the chain’s market influence is, and it becomes a bit more reasonable.
Arbitrage is a risk-free way of making money by exploiting the difference between the price of a given good on two different markets—it’s the proverbial free lunch you were told doesn’t exist. In this equation, the undervalued good in question is hog meat, and McDonald’s exploits the value differential between pork’s cash price on the commodities market and in the Quick-Service Restaurant market. If you ignore the fact that this is, by definition, not arbitrage because the McRib is a value-added product, and that there is risk all over the place, this can lead to some interesting conclusions. (If you don’t want to do something so reckless, then stop here.)
The theory that the McRib’s elusiveness is a direct result of the vagaries of the cash price for hog meat in the States is simple: in this thinking, the product is only introduced when pork prices are low enough to ensure McDonald’s can turn a profit on the product.
Related:
McDonald’s Food Doesn’t Break Down Over Time?
Deconstructing The McRib’s Cult-Like Allure
Research Credit: BW
apparently its still a permanent menu item in germany, something about the popularity of pork or lack therof in competing markets,also this choice quote from wiki.
“Despite its name, it is primarily composed of pork shoulder meat, according to McDonalds.[1] According to Chicago Magazine, the patty is also composed of restructured meat products such as tripe, heart, and stomach and blended with salt and water to extract salt-soluble proteins, which act as a “glue” that helps bind the reshaped meat together.[2] The McRib has 70 ingredients. Thirty-four of those ingredients are contained in the bun, including azodicarbonamide—a flour bleaching agent that is also used in the manufacturing of foamed plastics such as gym mats and the soles of shoes.[3][4]”
this one is going in w/ my zaniest conspiracy theories of all time for competition purposes only, along w/ government AIDs, paul/faul, and of course popular media plausible deniability. the mcrib arbitrage conspiracy, lol.
When I was about 10 (1979), the UK comic 2000AD ran a Judge Dredd story in which the good Judge must travel the radioactive wasteland of the MidWest on a mission. There, he finds Ronald McDonald in a war with the Burger King. This image of the Clown was seared into my young head, immunising me from the awful frankenfood.
http://tcj.com/journalista/index.php?s=goria&paged=37
Lawsuits ensued, and in reprints the Clown & King have been redrawn with generic villains. Too late!
Later, on a visit to Dublin circa 1981, my first actual encounter with the place. The only surviving memory of their “food” is having the roof of my mouth scalded by their bloody apple pie.
Radioactive Clown, and scalded mouth = McD.
Memories.