Food Theory: Never Order McDonald's Medium Fries!

Theory: MatPat only created Food Theory so he could buy his lunch and file it as a business expense for the tax benefit

My professor had a friend at Georgia Tech who was getting his masters in operations research. For his masters thesis he decided he was going to find the optimal meal that you could get at McDonalds, with optimal meaning that you could meet your base nutritional needs for the day at the lowest cost possible. Hilariously after months of work he completed his model and ran it only to find that hundreds of ketchup packets was the “optimal solution” due to it having all the essential nutrients and being free

I had a friend who worked at a McDonald's, and everytime I'd order the 10 piece large meal, he would "accidentally" put 11 nuggets in my box, and always shoved extra fries in there, and once even poured fries in the bag.

Im a former McDonald’s employee, I can’t speak for other McDonald’s over the world, but I’ve worked in two different locations, my brother my mom and my uncle as well, and we were all encouraged to under fill all Fry variants as much as possible, except if an official would stop by to check…. I didn’t listen to those directions usually cause I didn’t feel like it was fair, but it did get me in trouble a lot with the managers…

I can only imagine what an average dude in Matpat's town thinks of him. On Monday, he walks into the movie theater and watches every showing of the same movie. And he takes notes while watching. On Tuesday, he plays video games all day, and seems to repeat the same action over and over again, taking notes every time. On Wednesday, he orders 1 of every kind of french fry order, and conts every last fry in each one, all while taking notes. On Thursday, he strands himself on a deserted island and takes notes on how best to survive in terms of murdering companions.

I'm just saying, small theorys should be called bite-sized

From working at Arby's, I did notice a few times that if I had enough to fill a medium to the max, I could fill a large. Whenever I saw that I felt bad so I stuffed a couple springs in there.

I finally finished this episode right as you're leaving. Goodbye MatPat.

As a former McDonalds employee I can tell you that we're told to underfill the fries so that they can make more money off of people, I've actually gotten yelled at in the past for filling them too much, but I didn't care and always filled them up with as many fries as I could when my managers weren't looking to give the customers what they were actually paying for.

I'd just like to point out that Matpat has literally found a way to make middle school science projects profitable. Bravo good sir. Bravo!

Dipping your fries in your shake makes perfect sense. Sweet and salty has always been a well known combination. It's why adding salt to chocolate or caramel works so well.

Five Guys is an unneeded test tbh. That fry sizing doesn’t depend on the size of the fries but instead the lack of size of the rest of your order so it has more room in the bag when dumped.

“So the only thing stopping me is my concern for my own wellbeing.” So... literally nothing at all.

"as I got older I got smarter and also poorer" Millennials summed up in one sentence

I love these videos- I am constantly telling my family about your channels and the conclusions you reach. Thanks mat

At Arby's, when I worked there the fry scooper wouldnt fit in the container when fully loaded, so you had to pick up less. And when rushed you didn't have time to do multiple scoops

McDonald’s: Sees that they are using more fries because of the paper bags Also McDonalds: Changes small fry to cardboard box a week later

MatPat: Has food theory Me: Patiently waiting for the episode where he tests how mush diet coke can one consume in a day without puking (or some other damage)

im pretty sure the large being less than the meduim was just a user malfunction

Worked at Arby's myself for a while, even as a manager, and can confirm that a large and medium curly fry are the same. If someone mixed up these two, a fairly common mistake, you could pour one into the other and it'll still be full. I can't however say if this was intentional or not.