The True Cost of Eating the Big Mac

For those with a penchant for economics, the concept of purchasing power parity and the big mac index is probably like motherhood and apple pie.  For the rest of us, we’ll leave it at that and get on with what I found to be a really interesting article I came across in the Economist (yes, I’m a closet economist).  UBS published an interesting study that looked at how long the average worker had to work in 73 countries to make enough money to buy a Big Mac.  I would say it’s not a surprise to most of us that Chicago (along with Tokyo and Toronto) was at the top of the list with 12 mins.  Compare that to Nairobi where the average worker had to slog it out for over 2 and half hours to savor that special sauce laden patty of bovine perfection.

What happens when you factor the time to burn that Big Mac off?

A typical Big Mac boasts about 480-500 calories.  Using the workout editor on FiVi.com, I wanted to highlight what you would have to add to those 12 minutes to burn off those calories.  Assuming you were a 175 lb male, it would require you:

walk briskly for 110 minutes

jog for 32 minutes

run up stairs for 22 minutes

swim for 60 minutes

irish folk dance for 80 minutes

Of course, everyone knows that you can’t have a Big Mac without super sizing your meal to include a large fries and gallon of coke.  So just take my numbers and multiply them by 3….and then enroll in a celtic dance school.

In the meantime, if you’d like to see the original article click here