Dad Shares Food Hack for 'When Your Kids Say They Want McDonald's'

A savvy dad has shared his clever hack for what to do "when your kids say that they want McDonald's" for dinner.

In a clip viewed over 5 million times on TikTok, a frugal father posting under the handle BestDad_CEO, real name Eddie Alvarez, showed followers what he does when his children are craving a trip to the Golden Arches.

But while his unique approach has won plaudits in some quarters, others have accused Alvarez of pandering to his kids with his attempt at creative parenting.

For generations of kids, the sight of a McDonald's sign out of the car window has generally been followed by a plea of "Mom can we stop at McDonald's?"

The request has generally been met with the same reply too: "We've got food at home."

However, despite generations of rejection, it would appear that the fast food giant still has a hold over youngsters, with a Stanford University study highlighting how pre-school children had a noted preference for food from the Golden Arches.

A test group of young kids were asked to sample two identical foods from McDonald's. One featured the fast food restaurant's familiar branding while the other was served in unmarked packaging.

What they found was that the children consistently rated the McDonald's branded food as tasting nicer.

"Kids don't just ask for food from McDonald's," said Thomas Robinson, MD, director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children's and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at the School of Medicine. "They actually believe that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald's tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget."

That was pretty much the thinking behind Alvarez's video.

He told Newsweek: "My kids always say they only like McDonald's burgers so I wanted to see if I could trick them into thinking it was McDonald's by camouflaging my home burger."

As the video shows, the street smart dad simply cooked up some beef patties at home and, once the food was ready, proceeded to cover the burgers in McDonald's branded wrapping paper before serving it to his two boys.

The resulting food got the thumbs up from Alvarez's sons and likely saved their dad time and money in the process.

"I got McDonald's for myself one day and just asked for extra cheeseburger wrappers. They gave me about 10 of them," Alvarez said. "At first my kid said the burger looked different. I told him McDonald's changed their recipe and they are now bigger burgers."

To some watching the clip online, Alvarez's efforts were nothing short of remarkable.

Shafa4u wrote, "Love this idea," with Jessica Orea135 commenting, "you're a genius."

Of course, not everyone was quite so taken by Alvarez's efforts. IrishAussie felt, "That's a lot of work," with Kodack wondering, "Wouldn't it be a lot easier and cheaper to just go to McDonald's?"

Ernesto Garcia, meanwhile, asked: "Why not just learn to tell the kids no?"

Alvarez, however, defended his approach.

"Being a parent is tough, especially when you have had a long day at work and don't want to argue with the kids. There's nothing wrong with sometimes just giving the kids what they want so you don't have to listen to them complain," he said.

"Also when you have two little kids and you're home on a Saturday and don't want to go anywhere, there's nothing wrong with throwing some burgers on the grill and just chilling at home instead of putting the kids in the car seats and driving to McDonald's."