10 McDonald's Items You Might Want To Stop Ordering

If McDonald's is good at one thing, it's making people crave its food. It really doesn't take much besides catching a glimpse of the Golden Arches to convince anyone to make a quick drive-thru detour. And it's clearly doing something right, considering the chain serves up millions of customers every single day.

But after selling an astronomical amount of food for over half a century, McDonald's has certainly gotten an earload of consumer opinions. Some items on the menu have become legends. Others have become the subject of heated Reddit discussions. Sometimes the criticism is shrinking portions ("shrinkflation", if you will). Sometimes it's a lawsuit surrounding rib meat. Sometimes it's a nutrition label that will remind you to renew your health insurance. And occasionally, it's because a former McDonald's corporate chef is publicly telling customers to order something else. 

Of course, not everyone is going to agree with the complaints on this list. In fact, several of these items still have devoted fans. For the purpose of this article, though, we're letting the critics take the wheel. Here are 10 McDonald's menu items you might want to think twice before ordering.

Ah, the McDonald's Sausage Burrito. Seems harmless enough. What could really go wrong with a breakfast of sausage, eggs, cheese, peppers, and onions stuffed and wrapped inside a tortilla? Well, it turns out that for something so simple, people online have become pretty vocal about it. 

Customers have taken to Reddit to accuse the sausage burrito of slowly shrinking over the years, with one Redditor claiming their last burrito purchase was more tortilla than anything. Another posted a photo showing a minuscule burrito the size of a sauce packet, sparking more debates over whether McDonald's has been pulling the wool over our eyes when it comes to shrinking portion sizes. 

Then there's the wrapper situation. Many customers have complained that the wrapper sticks to the tortilla after it's been reheated. One Redditor wrote, "Recently, they're impossible to eat because the tortilla is fused to the wrapper." Another argued that between the sogginess of the burritos and the price increase, they're not even worth ordering anymore.

The McRib might be the only fast food sandwich that gives its fans major trust issues between the fake farewell tours and subsequent comebacks. It seems like every few years, McDonald's announces the sandwich is returning, and the crowds lose their minds. Then, just as quick as it came, it disappears again before making a reappearance a few seasons later. Tale as old as time. For all the hype, however, the McRib has been the center of an impressive amount of controversy over the years. 

One of the biggest hiccups was in 2014, when customers got wind that some McDonald's buns contained azodicarbonamide. For those not familiar with food science jargon, this additive is also used in non-food products like yoga mats. While the rubbery ingredient wasn't unique to McDonald's, that didn't stop the headlines from having a field day with the story. Once the phrase "yoga mat chemical" entered the chat, the sandwich found itself attached to a controversy that was difficult to shake, despite azodicarbonamide having since been removed from the McRib recipe.

The McRib landed itself in hot water again more recently when a class-action lawsuit alleged that the sandwich's name was misleading because the McRib is entirely lacking in, well, rib meat. While there's a big difference between lawsuit allegations and established facts, the case reignited public curiosity about what exactly goes into the sandwich and how it's made.

The Filet-O-Fish has been a staple on the McDonald's menu since the 1960s, which is pretty impressive in the fast food world. Plenty of other items have come and gone during this time, disappearing into the same void that swallowed up the Hula Burger, Onion Nuggets, and McDLT, the 1980s McDonald's menu item that basically came in its own styrofoam DIY kit. But the Filet-O-Fish? No, this one lives on. But despite its faithfulness, the critics have a few qualms. 

Probably the most common complaint is about the sandwich's freshness. Compared to Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, fries, and nuggets, there just isn't as much demand for the fish sandwich (except for during Lent, when McDonald's sells roughly 1.8 million Filet-O-Fish a day). This has led some customers online to speculate, with some former employee intel, that these sandwiches may spend longer waiting in warming cabinets before being ordered. 

Then there's the size-to-price ratio problem. The Filet-O-Fish isn't exactly the crowning achiever of portion size, being made up of just a fish patty, tartar sauce, and the famously odd half-slice of cheese. It's a relatively small sandwich that some say, despite its tastiness, is overpriced and underfilling, and would belong more on the value menu. Recent pricing trends haven't done McDonald's any favors when it comes to quieting these complaints either. According to data from FinanceBuzz, the average Filet-O-Fish price rose from $3.49 in 2014 to $5.49 in 2024, an increase of a whopping 57%. For comparison, during that same decade, overall U.S. inflation was about 31%. That's quite the jump for such a tiny sandwich. As one Redditor put it, "It's more of a 2-bite appetizer."

Bigger than a regular cheeseburger and less complicated than a Big Mac, the Quarter Pounder is one of McDonald's staple offerings. In fact, what really earns it a special place on the menu is that McDonald's cooks the Quarter Pounder beef fresh rather than frozen. Now, while this is generally marketed as a selling point, it's also earned a reputation for leaving many customers convinced that their burgers are undercooked. It doesn't take much digging to find plenty of discussions online about the Quarter Pounder with pictures showing burgers with questionably pink centers. And for some, getting an undercooked burger is more common than not.

Of course, not all pink burgers signal danger. But, unfortunately for McDonald's, the Quarter Pounder found itself at the center of an E. coli outbreak investigation in 2024. While the true culprit ended up being the onions rather than the beef itself, the whole ordeal certainly did nothing to ease people's minds (or stomachs) about the Quarter Pounder.

Few fast food items carry the staying power of Chicken McNuggets, which are arguably the most popular excuse ever invented to consume more dipping sauce. Since their nationwide debut in the early 1980s, they've become a staple for kids and late-night munchers alike. However, that doesn't mean everyone thinks they've aged gracefully. 

One of the more common complaints you'll find online is about sizing. Some customers swear nuggets look significantly smaller than the ones they remember eating years ago. One Redditor even posted photo evidence of their order containing puny-sized nugs with only a few regular-sized ones thrown in. Some customers think McDonald's is sneaking in these smaller nuggets as a shrinkflation strategy, so the decrease in size is less noticeable over time (nice try, McDonald's, but you're not that slick). Of course, whether it's an actual case of shrinkflation or simply a case of childhood memories skewing reality is difficult to determine, even with the calories of a four-piece McNugget order suspiciously dropping from 190 calories in 2015 to 170 calories today. 

For many longtime McNugget lovers, however, the issue isn't size, it's the recipe. In 2003, McDonald's switched from using a blend of white and dark meat to an all white-meat formula in an attempt to roll out "healthier" nuggets. While consumers were in their peak "white meat equals healthy" way of thinking, diehard fans have spent the last two decades arguing that the old nuggets were far better. You don't have to sift through many online discussions to find customers describing the glory days when the dark meat nuggets were juicier, more flavorful, and better textured than today's nuggets.

Don't worry, we're not going down any rabbit holes of broken ice cream machine conspiracy theories. That would just be low-hanging fruit. No, the real reason the McFlurry makes the list has more to do with the missing part that makes this frozen dessert a McFlurry: the flurrying.

Remember McDonald's iconic hollow, square-handled McFlurry spoons? Well, turns out, despite our collective confusion, they weren't actually oddly-shaped straws. Rather, they were part of the mixing process, clicking into the mixing machine and acting as a paddle to make sure all your crunchy toppings were uniformly stirred into the ice cream. The spoon would then be detached from the machine and handed to you in your McFlurry cup.

Unfortunately, those spoons are a thing of the past. Nowadays, customers craving this nostalgic treat end up with a bunch of toppings just sitting on the surface of the ice cream. Not only is this a mess just waiting to happen, but it also robs the customer of the true McFlurry experience. By the time you make it through the toppings, all that's left is vanilla ice cream, which is just not how the McFlurry was meant to be enjoyed. As one Redditor put it, "At least brand it as something different. Don't sell the same thing when the experience is hugely different."

Everyone and their mom has heard of the Big Mac. It's made appearances in cult classics, political photo ops, economic textbooks, and has been fueling countless road trips since 1967. McDonald's built its reputation on burgers, and the Big Mac became the face of the whole operation. That's why it was such a shocker when one former McDonald's insider revealed that customers could do better.

Mike Haracz, a former corporate chef for McDonald's, publicly recommended skipping the Big Mac in favor of dressing up a McDouble with Big Mac-style toppings. According to Haracz, this alternative delivers the same flavor we all know and love while also being lighter on the wallet. This suggestion goes back to the common complaint of McDonald's price hikes. Many customers who once trusted the chain's pricing to the point that they didn't even bother checking the menu now find themselves doing math gymnastics while at the drive-thru speaker. Hell, even the CEO admitted prices have gotten out of control. 

For some critics, the Big Mac has become a symbol of this shift. The burger's famous middle bun helped make it iconic, but not everyone is convinced it actually contributes much beyond bread overload. Some customers argue that they'd much rather have more beef than an extra bun, especially if it means saving a couple of extra bucks.

Launching a new chicken product in today's fast food world is, no doubt, a daunting move. Every chain already seems to offer its own version of chicken strips, tenders, nuggets, bites, fingers, or whatever other marketing department-approved name of the year. Customers have options, and they have opinions. So when McDonald's rolled out the red carpet for the McCrispy Strips, customers immediately started measuring them against the competition. And unfortunately for McDonald's, some of the early reviews weren't exactly glowing.

"Gas station chicken strips that have been sitting under the warmer for an hour," one Redditor said, describing the menu item. Another wrote that the texture reminded them of calamari. Calamari? Great. Chicken strips? Hell yeah. Calamari-like chicken strips? Absolutely not. This texture complaint seems fairly common across the board. Customers expecting a crisp exterior and juicy interior find themselves biting into chicken so dry and chewy that one Redditor suggested, "They should be called McRubbery strips."

What usually comes to mind when ordering a McDonald's Frappé? Sugar? Caffeine? Whether or not to order the caramel or mocha flavor? Whatever it is, we can almost guarantee you're not thinking about roaches. Unfortunately, though, for patrons of one Florida McDonald's, having to specify "hold the roaches" when ordering their Frappé was a shocking (and gross) reality. 

During a 2023 health inspection, roaches were found inside the location's Frappé machine, causing the restaurant to shut down temporarily. While we wish this were a one-off event, another McDonald's location in Ohio received a violation in 2019 after dead cockroaches were found underneath the Frappé station coolers. To make it worse, the managers of the location allegedly knew about these issues, according to an employee. It wasn't until this worker went rogue and reported the issue to the health department that anything was done. Yikes. Now, a couple of gross inspections doesn't mean this applies to all McDonald's restaurants. But sanitation lore has a way of staining a reputation, especially when other former employees post similar stories to Reddit, and you realize creepy crawlies might be more common at food establishments than we'd ever like to think.

Nightmares aside, the Frappé itself has some issues when it comes to what's actually in (or not in) the cup. Basically a dessert, a large is loaded with 650 calories and 84 grams of sugar. But hey, as long as you're getting your caffeine fix, this can be excused, right? Well, that's the thing. It's not really clear how much caffeine these sugar bombs actually deliver. According to the McDonald's website, the Frappé contains a "hint of coffee" ... whatever that means.

It's no secret that anyone keeping track of calories or blood pressure could probably find better options than McDonald's. But some menu items, like the Big Breakfast with Hotcakes, teeter on the verge of needing to come with their own warning label. 

Basically resembling a platter thrown together by someone who asked for every available breakfast option on the menu, the product comes with scrambled eggs, a biscuit, sausage, hash browns, hotcakes, butter, and syrup. As the name implies, nobody is ordering the Big Breakfast expecting something light. People order it for a hefty meal, but the nutrition facts reveal just how heavy we're talking here.

Weighing in at around 1,340 calories, 158 grams of carbohydrates, 63 grams of fat, and 2,070 milligrams of sodium, the Big Breakfast alone should be enough to warrant an appointment with the cardiologist. Unless you're bulking in the gym, this is a substantial chunk of an entire day's recommended calories before the clock even strikes noon.

When making this list, I spent an admittedly unhealthy amount of time reading through Reddit threads, customer complaints, nutrition charts, employee gossip, and news reports covering McDonald's menu items. Given the repeated complaints popping up across different threads, it was obvious which criticisms were isolated incidents and which had become a trend.

I also dug through lawsuit allegations, ingredient controversies, sanitation inspections, and product changes, along with inside scoops from the former McDonald's corporate chef, Mike Haracz, and nutrition experts. And then, of course, there were the rabbit holes of E. coli outbreaks, yoga mat chemicals, and whether a McFlurry is still a McFlurry if nobody flurries it (hint: it's not).

Obviously, not everyone's gonna hate on these featured items like the experts of Reddit. Many of the products are still some of McDonald's most popular foods. But for this article, I let criticism outweigh any praise. After all, nobody wants to read an article about McDonald's items to avoid that's nothing but a list of glowing reviews.