I honestly don't think most Americans who eat Big Mac's (or any other fast food) on any kind of regular basis give a rip about what's in them. They're hungry, they want food that tastes good (or at least tastes good to them - not to people who are used to eating more wholesome food), and they want it quickly so they can get on with whatever is more important in their life.

The nutrition data and ingredients are really only posted to appease the ones who are concerned about nutritional values and what's actually in the food they eat, and based on the sheer volume of sales in the fast food industry, most people don't really care.



Slightly off topic, but it illustrates what I'm talking about -

I lurk on a few Aldi Aisle of Shame FB pages. They don't just discuss the Aisle of Shame items (the random household/decorative/garden/holiday items that Aldi has in the middle aisles), they also post a lot about the food. There are some who will post photos of what they bought with a caption along the lines of "guess how much I spent for all this?"

There will always be a few who will criticize what that person bought - "I see a lot of snacks, where's the meat?", or "You could have saved a lot of money by buying the ingredients to make that from scratch instead of buying the ready-made version", and "That contains GMO ingredients", etc.

But most posters on those pages just see a lot of food for the amount of money the poster spent. They will argue back and forth about "don't criticize them for just trying to feed their family without going into debt", "don't expect them to have time to cook from scratch after working all day". There are only a few taking it upon themselves to point out that what they're serving their family is basically junk food. The few who point that out may argue that point over and over - but they don't really get anywhere with it - mainly because the ones who are feeding their family UPFs really are just trying to feed their families the best they can afford/the way they ate as kids/or just fit a home made meal (more accurately a home-heated meal) into their day. They consider it cooking a meal if they dirtied up a couple of cooking pots by heating a bag of pre-fab frozen meatballs in a jar of highly sweetened tomato sauce, and boiling some pasta to go with it.

When we look around us in the grocery store, we see very few people who are loading their carts with whole, minimally processed foods. We see mostly UPFs.

Yes, it really is very discouraging to know this is how they're eating, but it is the reality - they don't know the difference, don't have an interest in the difference, or don't have enough hours left in the day to do differently/better.