A loopy lady in Japan decided to make a video about what it looks like to eat 10,00 calories of Japanese McDonald’s Food. We don’t know how long she took to eat it all, but we did detect cuts in the 6:06 clip, so we assume she took breaks. Still, I wondered what 10,000 calories of our McFood looks like…
The loopy lady, you’ll note, was eating common Japanese McDonald’s menu items, only some of which will be familiar to North Americans or Europeans. I looked at the spread she paid out before her and thought, “That can’t be 10,000 calories. There’s just not enough food there. Not even of McDonald’s so-oft-calorie-shamed food.” So I consulted the official McDonald’s Canada Nutrition Centre listing of the nutrition facts for all its menu items and discovered the following…
It takes the following to make up 10,000 calories of McDonald’s foods:
- 19 Big Macs or Quarter Pounders with Cheese
- 19 Large OREO McFlurries
- 18 Large Fries or Chocolate Shakes
- 33 Large Cokes
- 35 Egg McMuffins
- 37 Apple Pies
- 62 Hash Browns
But U.S. McDonald’s Nutrition facts tell a different, slightly heavier tale. Yup. More calories south of the Border. Don’t ask me why.
The lady is loopy in more ways than one…
So, I still maintained that the food the lady says she ate did not come close to piling up 10,000 calories. Unless, that is, Japanese McFoods are mug higher in calories than their Western counterparts. So I looked, wishing I could read Japanese…
And I found the following (in English):
A Japanese Big Mac is 560 calories, while a U.S. Big Mac is 530 calories and a Canadian Big Mac clocks in at 520 calories. Other foods, in similar serving sizes, clock in at similarly higher calorie counts. That’s not a huge difference. I mean, it would still take 18 Japanese Big Macs to load up 10,000 calories… Or:
- 18 Japanese Large Fries
- 19 Large Japanese McFlurries (That’s two small ones; they don’t seem to have a large. And the lady was eating small ones!
- 34 Japanese Large Cokes
Get the idea?
So, the lady’s menu comprised:
- 5 Big Macs – specifically, the (limited-time?) Japanese ‘Kalbi’ Big Mac
- 20 Chocolate Pies (we presume, about as calorie-laden as the Western Apple Pie, above)
- 3 Tiramisu McFlurries (we presume, about as calorie-laden as the OREO McFlurry, which topped the Western McFlurry calorie charts)
- 3 Large Fries
- 3 Large Cokes
That’s a total of: 11,622 Japanese Menu Calories.
So! I was taken in by the relatively compact array of Pies in the lady’s McBuffet array! They’re packed with calories and, in fact, made up just 22 calories less than half the total I calculated. Due to differences in some menu items, my total came out somewhat higher than the lady’s own total of 10,642. I think that’s because the Kalbi Big Mac may be slightly less-calorie-pumped than the regular one. I couldn’t find a calorie count for it on the reliable websites I consulted – supporting my suspicion that it’s one of those limited-time promo-burgers. No specific mention, either, at any of my sources, of the Tiramisu McFlurry.
Anyway…
I now maintain that the lady cheated by including so many small-mass, high-calorie Pies in her 10,000 menu. She should have tilted the mix a little more toward the Burgers and Fries and devoured the pile in a single video take, to be realistic. But, then, what’s realistic about eating 10,000 calories of McFood at a sitting, anyhow?
Whatever flips yer Burger, I guess…
~ Maggie J.