When I was a kid, maybe around the time I was reading How to Eat Fried Worms, there was an urban legend circulating: McDonald’s hamburgers were made with ground worms, meaning, of course, earthworms. Circulating since at least 1978, the rumor originally started about Wendy’s but was switched to McDonald’s, since the chain was so much larger. Related rumors suggest that McDonald’s burger patties are made with mealworms. The claim went so far as to say that not only did they use worms in their burgers, but that they were legally allowed to call the patties 100% beef. This rumor is, of course, false.
More recently, in 2012, a Russian woman claimed that her McDonald’s hamburger was full of worms. 1Chaykovskaya, Evgeniya. “McDonald’s Denies Worms in Their Hamburgers.” The Moscow News. N.p., 24 July 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. This was never substantiated and, of course, the urban legend about ground worm burgers is just a myth.
McDonald’s has been subject to many such rumors, not only about worms. Another stated that the chain used cow eyeballs in their burgers. Such legends play on the image of fast food as garbage that is destructive to our bodies. Worms are a symbol of both waste and inner rot, a perfect metaphor for the perception that fast food franchises knowingly sell us dangerous food. 2De, Vos Gail. Tales, Rumors, and Gossip: Exploring Contemporary Folk Literature in Grades 7-12. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1996.
A ground worm burger would not cause such controversy everywhere in the world. McDonald’s in some countries might be able to develop just such a burger! (Additional sources: 3Edwards, C. A., P. J. Bohlen, and C. A. Edwards. Biology and Ecology of Earthworms. London: Chapman & Hall, 1996 4Woodward, Susan L., and Joyce Ann. Quinn. Encyclopedia of Invasive Species: From Africanized Honey Bees to Zebra Mussels. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011. 5Kahn, Cynthia M. The Merck Manual / Merial Manual for Pet Health. Whithouse Station, NJ: Merck, 2007.)
Legends of the McWorm Burger forced McDonald’s to print full-page ads in newspapers on the West Coast, where the legend was most active.
Worms are More Expensive Than Beef
If you’ve ever bought a small bucket of nightcrawlers for bait, though, you’d know that beef is a whole lot cheaper and McDonald’s would not make money off a worm burger. The same thing goes for mealworms. A burger made with mealworms would be much too expensive. The economics just don’t work. Beef is cheaper than worms!
Even Ray Kroc himself weighed-in on the now urban legend:
“We couldn’t afford to grind worms into our meat. Hamburger costs a dollar and a half a pound, and night crawlers six dollars.”
A Wormburger Would be a Great Source of Protein
Worms, subject to some safety precautions, are a great source of food for humans. Earthworms, pound for pound, are packed with protein, at 82% of the body weight of the worm. However, they can harbor parasites, bacteria, and pesticides from the soil they consume so the soil must first be removed from the gut of the worm and it must be thoroughly cooked.
Mealworms are a particularly good choice for food, though, although they are not actually worms. Instead, the mealworm is the larval form of a darkling beetle. There can be microbes larvae but they have been shown to not be harmful to humans. Mealworms are consumed in Asia and Europe and are very nutritious. They can even be eaten live by humans or pets, or they can be roasted, fried, or processed into flours. Dried mealworms are 53% protein and 28% fat while live mealworms are 20% protein and 13% fat. However, generally, mealworms cost around three times as much as ground beef.
Sources