Man works out whether it’s better to buy medium or large McDonald’s fries
A man has become the hero we need but do not deserve by answering the question: Is it better money-wise to buy medium or large McDonald’s fries?
Jim, otherwise known as ‘Everyone’s Favourite Jim’, presented his ‘Mcdonald’s Fries Theorum’ on Twitter on Wednesday.
His wife had told him that she only orders medium fries as a larger portion doesn’t ‘actually have any more chips in them’, so you aren’t getting a good deal.
Saying that he’s swamped with work, the graphic designer decided to put his wife’s theory to the test – complete with spreadsheets and kitchen scales.
Jim first weighed a medium and large portion of chips in the McDonald’s packaging – the larger fries weighed 20g heavier than the 116g medium ones.
‘FALSE: There are more fries in a large. Job done,’ Jim said.
But Jim stressed that this is with the weight of the larger box. ‘So I zero out the scales with a bowl and weigh the chips,’ he added.
The medium fries weighed 109g, while the larger portion landed at 127g.
‘Which interestingly (excuse my fast and loose usage of “interestingly”) means that the large has 2g of extra cardboard,’ he added, showing a photo of nine chips laid out in size order on the scales.
‘A large has 116% of the fries of a medium, but, at £2.29 vs £1.79, is 128% of the price.
‘Surely, then, there is a point where it’s cheaper to buy more medium portions than large portions. Turns out, there is. And it’s not as many as you might think…’
With the power of maths, Jim managed to work out the exact moment when buying medium fries actually gets you more bang for your buck.
‘If you buy five portions of medium fries, it’s cheaper than four portions of large fries by 21p and you get 37g more fries!’ he said.
‘This works up to seven mediums vs six larges where you get one gram extra of fries for £1.21 less! After that, it gets cheaper but you do get fewer fries.’
In other words, if you have a hankering for around half to three-quarters of a kg of McDonald’s fries, get medium portions. The more you know.
Jim added: ‘So there you have it. I suspect there is much more important maths yet to be done, but it will have to be by smarter people.
‘If you also have an inquiring mind, do some tests yourself and report back with your results. Now, back to work.’
Though, given how long this took, we imagine most people’s fries have gone cold by now.
‘Important research,’ said one user. ‘Big Fry is having us on!’
Another added: ‘This is the kind of investigative journalism I need in my life. Keep up the fantastic work.’
A third person said: ‘Your wife’s hypothesis aligns with my theory on second-class post.
‘It’s more expensive to have equipment to separate first and second class than it is to treat all posts equally, so it makes no business sense to process them differently.’
More research into Jim’s ‘Mcdonald’s Fries Theorum’ might be needed, however, as Vaughn Highfield pointed out.
‘This is great, BUT given how manual it is filling fries boxes I think you’d need to repeat this to a point where you can average gains across fries size to say that you consistently get Xg more in a large,’ he said.
Digital artist and Twitch streamer Dyl added: ‘As someone who worked on fries quite often, we just throw chips in until it looks full.
‘There is no thought process.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.