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(He violated the order by acquiring oversize buns for his oversize burgers.) At his Uniontown, Pa., franchise, he spent weeks formulating the special sauce. He could proceed, he was finally told, but only if he used ingredients already on the menu. They worried about the sandwich’s high price – 45 cents, twice the price of a cheeseburger. He thought that only a new item would do the job, but he said he faced resistance from a “very cautious” McDonald’s bureaucracy that did not wish to tamper with the success of the simple lineup of burgers, shakes and fries. “Burgernomics,” as the British publication dubbed it, has become a wry, easily digestible and much-cited measurement of currency values.ĭelligatti conceived the burger in a simple effort to grow business at his franchises in the western Pennsylvania. The Economist magazine began printing its annual “Big Mac Index” three decades ago, tracking the cost of the burger across the globe. The Big Mac has become a Rorschach test in an all-consuming debate: Is it an emblem of life-affirming plenty? A comforting embrace of fat and salt? A waist-expanding public health hazard at 540 calories – or more? Is it American cultural imperialism in sandwich form?įrom any perspective, Delligatti’s legacy amounted to much more than a meal. It’s become a synonym – the prototype, an American icon – for junk food.” Marion Nestle, a New York University nutrition and public health professor, wrote in an email: “The Big Mac has had an enormous influence on American – and international – eating patterns, not all to the good alas. (A follow-up spot featured people struggling to master the tongue-twister.) The inescapable jingle mirrored the essential excess of the Big Mac itself, making one word of its ingredients – “twoallbeefpattiesspecialsauce- lettucecheesepicklesonionsona-sesameseedbun” – and daring people to pronounce it. President Bill Clinton, the onetime burger devourer in chief, was known to indulge his “Big Mac Attack,” as one memorable advertising campaign described such cravings.ĭelligatti’s creation, a sensation from the start, was the subject of a legendary advertising campaign in 1974. The Big Mac has been called the “Elvis of sandwiches,” the “Paul Bunyan of hamburgers.” It’s the solid-food equivalent of Coca-Cola, a totem of consistency instantly recognizable from western Pennsylvania to India, where cows are considered sacred by the nation’s Hindu population and where the Big Mac is made with mutton or chicken and called the Maharaja Mac. 28 at 98, created the sandwich in 1967 at a McDonald’s franchise near Pittsburgh, it has been the flagship item of the global fast-food chain, selling more than a half-billion servings annually in the United States alone. Neither the humpbacked 747 nor the cherry-red public buses that crisscross London surpass the Big Mac as the world’s most famous double-decker.