This burger comes with one pound of meat.
Most have heard of the Wisconsin man who ate a Big Mac every day over the course of 50 years but these types of “accomplishments” are usually best kept exclusively for the Guinness Book of World Records — Don Gorske entered it after reaching a grand total of 32,000 consumed burgers.
For most people, there is a limit to how much beef they can or want to consume at a time. That’s why the newest challenge from McDonald’s (MCD) – Get McDonald’s Corporation Report is unlikely to take off.
How Many Four-Patty Burgers Can You Eat?
McDonald’s Japan has long been known to have more “out-there” menu items than its home base in the United States. It recently launched the fried chicken patty in between two fried buns made of rice called the Rice Chicken Tatsuta and the Triple Samurai Mac with three beef patties.
If those sound far too filling already, the new menu item can almost be seen as a satire of what people from other countries think American food is like.
McDonald’s Japan
The Maximum Cho One-Pound Beef Burger features four beef patties that weigh a collective 1.1 pounds or 499 grams. “Cho” is the word for “super” in Japanese so the sandwich name should be read as a take on “supersizing.”
Other than the size, this is a fairly standard burger — four patties, four slices of cheese and four slices of bacon are placed between two sesame seed buns alongside lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and pickles.
But McDonald’s Japan is not stopping at having such a ridiculously caloric menu item on the menu. Local news outlets also reported that, over the course of four days in July, a number of restaurants in the country will also be holding an all you can eat challenge in which customers will get refills of as many of this burger as they can eat in under 45 minutes.
Dubbed the Cho One-Pound Beef Burger Challenge, the eating event will be held at six McDonald’s restaurants across Japan and cost 2,900 yen (roughly $22 USD).
Those who participate will have to eat the burger with a medium fries and soft drink. Once they finish, they will be brought the same items as many times as they can finish within 45 minutes.
McDonald’s Japan
Marketing Trick? Or Is Someone Actually Eating This?
The burger will also be available for standalone purchase across Japan between July 8 and 28.
As this burger already pushes the limits of what the average human can consume at a single mealtime, the challenge appears to be more marketing than actual menu experimentation.
This “just how big is this burger?!” style of promotion often achieves the desired goal of getting online attention and people into restaurants if only to see if what they saw online is really real.
The 45-minute timeframe of the promotion means that very few will likely be able to consume more than two four-patty burgers at most but, with the size of the burger being presented as exceptional, the media and internet attention around it is enough to make it worth it for the fast food chain.
“These are part of a long tradition of companies creating new, slightly outrageous, fast food and snack food combinations — more cheese, more meat, more layers,” food historian Ashley Rose Young told BBC in 2019.
