Running late for a meeting in Connecticut, I pulled up to a drive through window at McDonald's and ordered an Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee. Nothing extraordinary about it except for a declaration printed on the bag ....
Here's the math with the assumption that an egg can be inspected in one second.
To inspect three billion eggs in one year would take three billion seconds. A quick search at WolframAlpha converts that number to a bit over 95 years. Assume the average worker puts in 250 days a year, it would take 138.7 man years to inspect that many eggs.
Does McDonald's really employ almost 139 "egg inspectors"? I put a call into their corporate office. Their response follows.
"All of the fresh Grade A eggs used for the Egg McMuffin sandwiches are inspected at the farm. Eggs are washed with warm water before being inspected both visually and electronically for any cracks and flaws. Checked eggs are then packed for shipment to the McDonald’s restaurants. So yes, every single egg is inspected before it makes the Egg McMuffin grade!"
So the promise that every egg is individually inspected is stretching the truth. And your average consumer would assume that the eggs are inspected by hand before they hit the griddle.
Can we please get back to Harry McCann's search for "Truth Well Told'?
"Great Breakfast Taste. We make sure of it. Every single egg we use throughout the year is individually inspected - all 3 billion of them."Now that's quite a statement that got me to thinking. How long does it take to inspect an egg? And how many people does it take to do so?
Here's the math with the assumption that an egg can be inspected in one second.
To inspect three billion eggs in one year would take three billion seconds. A quick search at WolframAlpha converts that number to a bit over 95 years. Assume the average worker puts in 250 days a year, it would take 138.7 man years to inspect that many eggs.
Does McDonald's really employ almost 139 "egg inspectors"? I put a call into their corporate office. Their response follows.
"All of the fresh Grade A eggs used for the Egg McMuffin sandwiches are inspected at the farm. Eggs are washed with warm water before being inspected both visually and electronically for any cracks and flaws. Checked eggs are then packed for shipment to the McDonald’s restaurants. So yes, every single egg is inspected before it makes the Egg McMuffin grade!"
So the promise that every egg is individually inspected is stretching the truth. And your average consumer would assume that the eggs are inspected by hand before they hit the griddle.
Can we please get back to Harry McCann's search for "Truth Well Told'?
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1 comment:
What's amazing about these kind of things is there is always more to them than you first expect. A whole lot more http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Focus_On_Shell_Eggs/index.asp
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