40 Years of Big Mac: Ack!

Just as I turned another year older last month, it was announced that McDonald's Big Mac sandwich officially turned 40 years old. I was a bit young to remember its birth, but thanks to the commercial jingle, I can recite its contents: "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame-seed bun." And I will admit that in my pre-veg teen years, I ate a few. Maybe a dozen. But I certainly don't miss them: I'm a Boca Mama big-time now.

So I won't be sending the Mac a birthday card. And even though you could probably fit 40 candles on the thing, lighting them might ignite all that grease and cinge the ceiling, so I'll skip the party, too.

Apparently the biggest Big Mac fans are in Pennsylvania. There is now a Big Mac museum restaurant in North Huntingdon, PA, opened by the former franchise owner who claims to have invented the sandwich in 1967. It contains memorabilia and the world's biggest Big Mac statue (which, if it were real, would contain enough fat and cholesterol to kill an entire small country).

I don't think a Big Mac museum would be complete without a gate at the entrance that measures your body fat index. Perhaps it could be like the limbo game, only horizontal instead of vertical: if your waist touches the sides of the entryway, you need to visit the McSalad museum instead.

McDonald's claims to sell 550 million – yes, million – Big Macs a year in the U.S. (Utterly Stupid). How many cows is that?

I think I'll just mark the moment by donating a few copies of "Super Size Me" to local libraries. And place a bet on whether the day will come when the burger outlives its customers.