For decades, savvy shoppers have been unearthing tips, tricks and loopholes to try and get their purchases even cheaper, and one of the most commonly ‘hacked’ sectors has to be the fast food industry, with dozens of easy ways to bag freebies or cheaper receipts.
For example, when we visited all four Manchester city centre McDonald’s branches - each owned by franchisee Roger Khoryati - one of them was cheaper than the others.
Others have shared some of their ordering hacks to save money at the fast food chain, including one TikToker who shared how to get eight chicken nuggets for less than the price of six.
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However, some of these tricks are more effective than others while some turn out to be a total myth. One such conspiracy that’s long been the topic of debate among friends and family is that a large McDonald’s drink holds the same volume as a medium - just in a bigger cup.
There’s a similar theory on the fries, too, which hypothetically would make McDonald’s medium value meals exactly the same as large value meals - the latter just 72p more expensive.
So, I headed to my local Drive Thru to find out and put the argument to bed once and for all.
At the Drive Thru, I ordered a medium six chicken McNugget meal, followed by a large, both with Coca-Cola and ketchup. It’s a classic combo, albeit a little unadventurous.
Of course, the immediate difference between the two is the price. The medium meal totalled £5.71, while the large came in at £6.43.
After being handed my brown paper bag through the window, slotting the drinks into my car cup holders, I checked the bag to ensure the chips were both properly stood up to avoid any spillages before carefully making my way home with the precious cargo, avoiding the potholes.
I unpacked the bag onto my kitchen table, and looking at the boxes, it is easy to see why people believe there’s the same volume of fries in a large than a medium, because there really doesn’t seem to be that much in it - the same goes for the drinks, with neither being filled right to the top of the cup.
Getting the obvious out of the way, both meals come with the exact same number of nuggets, so there are no discrepancies there - but when it came to the fries and Coca-Cola, I needed to crack out the scales.
I started off my weighing both sets of fries in their original packaging, the medium coming in at 137g, and the large at 177g - a 40g difference. However, I worried that the cardboard may have affected the results, so I used the same bowl, zeroed the scales, and weighed again, this time the medium weighed 128g and the large 167g, suggesting the medium cardboard weighed 9g and the large 11g - just 2g difference between them, which is essentially, a single fry.
But then I went a step further - I counted them all. Each and every chip. It’s worth noting that there had been around five bag chips that I eliminated from the test seeing as they could have come from either box, but my calculations saw 68 fries in the medium, and 97 in the large, which, with the addition of those lost to the paper bag, would round up to 70 and 100 fries in the medium and large portions respectively.
Concluding my fry calculations, there were around 40g fewer fries in the medium portion, which looks like the picture below - approximately 24 chips.
Now, onto the drinks. I pulled out the largest glasses available in my kitchen, and was pretty surprised to see that the medium almost filled it to the very top. I has suspicions that the large might have the same amount of liquid inside, but upon pouring, I had to locate a third matching glass to pour the remaining pop into.
In their original cardboard cups, the medium drink weighed 493g compared to the 582g large, but having zeroed the glasses, the medium liquid weighed 439g to the large 533g - a 94g difference. And when you look at that in the glass, it’s about five sips.
This may seem like a rather tedious task for me to undertake, however, as the cost of living crisis continues to bite across the UK - every penny counts, right? That means that the difference between a medium and large McDonald’s meal, based on this order, is 72p, 24 chips and five sips of Coca-Cola.
It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth the extra cash, but it finally confirms that the idea that medium and large meals are the same is a complete myth.
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