Why You Won't Find Milkshakes On A McDonald's Menu

People are often fearful that fast food franchises aren't selling what they say they're selling. Even apart from the sundry rumors about Arby's selling dehydrated horse meat (which it debunked by airing a thirteen-hour commercial showing meat cooked in real time, as one does), there's the occasional whisper campaign about KFC switching to its current name from "Kentucky Fried Chicken" because they are no longer legally allowed to call what they serve chicken. (This is also untrue, for the record.) So when you see that McDonald's stubbornly refers to their milkshakes as "shakes," some of the more paranoid among us might start to worry. What horrible lactose-adjacent monstrosity has McDonald's foisted upon us? Don't worry — the reason behind it is fairly innocuous, and has to do with state regulations.

Although the Golden Arches has used a standardized mix, courtesy of Cumberland Dairy, since the early 1970s, nothing in the ingredient lists suggests that anything unseemly is going on. The ingredients for a vanilla shake from McDonald's are just ice cream, syrup, and whipped cream, with no toxic waste, human growth hormone, or Soylent Green to be found. While it's true that McDonald's once served "milkshakes" — with a "milk" — and now serve "shakes", it's less to do with a change in recipe and more to do with a labyrinth of regulations.

You may know that McDonald's soft serve cannot legally be called "ice cream," due to containing less than the minimum required amount of butterfat. (Don't worry too much — it's in good company with Dairy Queen.) Similar rules govern what can or cannot be called a milkshake, and they differ from state to state. If McDonald's had to abide by each state's regulations, they might have to call their milkshakes completely different things in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. (Massachusetts calls what the rest of the country knows as milkshakes "frappes"; their milkshakes are just milk and syrup.)

Just as it does with soft serve, McDonald's decided to keep things simple and call its milkshakes (or dairy shakes, or frappes, or whatever the heck else you want to call them) just "shakes." This is actually fairly common with fast food franchises when it comes to their frozen treats: Dairy Queen has Blizzards, for instance, while Wendy's has Frostys, which allows them to set the regulations aside. That way, it can focus on more important matters, like bringing back Chicken Selects and making sure the McFlurry machines are working.