BLOWING BROCCOLI-FLAVORED BUBBLES
Fast Food, Chewing Gum, and Vegetables—What Could Go Wrong?
In Roald Dahl’s classic novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, five children are invited to a once-in-a-lifetime tour of a legendary candy factory operated by the enigmatic Willy Wonka. One of these lucky children is Violet Beauregarde, who holds the world record for the longest amount of time spent chewing one piece of gum (“over three months solid”). Beauregarde ultimately fails to make her way through to the end of the tour, falling prey to an experimental gum that aims to replicate the experience of a three-course dinner. When she gets to the dessert phase of the gum, her body begins transforming into a blueberry, and Violet turns, well, violet.
While bubble gum that replaces full meals is a work of fiction reserved for Wonka’s factory, real food that mimicked the flavor of bubble gum was once very real—and as the McDonald’s corporation can confirm, it wasn’t a good idea. In 2014, the popular burger franchise took note of one thing Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory lacked: broccoli. While this was for good reason (kids generally don’t like broccoli), McDonald’s decided that it was important to add healthy food choices to its menu—and if there’s one thing everyone can agree upon, it’s that broccoli is good for you (okay, it may make some people a bit gassy when eaten in larger quantities). While this addition to a cheeseburger Happy Meal would be great both for kids and their parents, convincing the kids to actually eat it would be another story.
To solve this anticipated problem, McDonald’s borrowed an idea from the dental and pharmaceutical communities: They tried to make bubblegum-flavored broccoli. If it works for toothpaste and amoxicillin, why not broccoli too? The food scientists at the burger franchise got to work attempting to create a product that merged the nutrition of vegetables with the kid-friendly taste of artificial colors and flavors.
Not surprisingly, this experiment didn’t work. The science itself was sound: Team McDonald’s was able to get broccoli to taste a lot like bubble gum. But the experience of eating the product wasn’t what the team had hoped for. As McDonald’s then-CEO Don Thompson would explain at a gathering of venture capitalists, when testing the product it was found that kids hated the bubble gum broccoli about as much as they hated regular broccoli. According to Business Insider, “kids were confused by the taste”—the sweet experience didn’t match what their brains anticipated.
In short, you shouldn’t expect to see broccoli on the kids’ menu at McDonald’s any time soon. However, as the company is happy to point out, you will find a number of other vegetable options. As Thompson also noted, McDonald’s “sells the most salads of any American restaurant chain.”