Atotal breach of crust

Served piping hot in a cardboard sleeve, apple pie was the first dessert to hit McDonald’s menu in the late 1960s. It has taken different forms over the years: sliced or diced apples, plain- or latticetopped, fried or baked, and filled with cherries, sweet potatoes or s’mores. But it’s McDonald’s latest attempt to create a “healthier” version of the pastry that has provoked the ire of many apple pie aficionados in the U.S.

The most significant change in the ingredient listing is the swap of one form of sugar for another – high fructose corn syrup and brown sugar were dropped in favour of apple juice concentrate and invert syrup (a mixture of glucose and fructose) – and the elimination of a handful of ingredients including sorbitol, dextrose and soy lecithin.

“The body really cannot tell the difference between the source of the sugar,” says Toronto-based registered dietitian Amanda Li. “For instance, when you breakdown high fructose corn syrup it ends up being glucose and fructose molecules, which is the same as when you breakdown invert sugar or apple juice concentrate.”

As people are wont to do when their sense of culinary nostalgia is rocked to the core, they took their displeasure with the new recipe to social media. Some attempted to incite mass unrest: “we should be rioting in the streets.” While others aired a deep distrust of the food system, declaring the “FrankenStrudel” to be “yet another example of big business sticking it to the common man!!”

The revamped dessert has the markings of a more healthful choice, but is it actually better for you? According to McDonald’s spokesperson Tiffany Briggs the new baked apple pie “is made with fewer ingredients such as sugar.” As Foodbeast points out, according to the company’s nutrition summaries, the overhauled recipe contains more sugar than the previous one – three grams more (16 grams versus 13 grams).

The old apple pie came in at 248 calories, according to Foodbeast, which is very similar to the new version at 240 calories. The amount of total carbohydrates is also almost identical: 32 grams in the old and 35 grams in the new. Total fat fell from 13 grams to 11 grams (16 per cent daily value based on a 2,000 calorie diet) in the latest iteration.

“Bottom-line, I guess the new version is ‘better’ since now it actually lives (up) to the name ‘baked apple pie’ and has 10 calories less than the original recipe,” says Li. “Though, the caloric difference isn’t enough to justify eating more than one pie!”

In terms of taste, it doesn’t look good for the modern makeover either. The Takeout reports that the crust is “dry and chalky” and the filling “lacked the gooey, gelatinous texture of our youth.”