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As American as Apple Pie

About a year ago, I wrote: Standing at the McDonald's counter waiting for my "Adult Happy Meal," I'm not feeling terribly confident that it's going to make me happy. But it's the right thing to do, I keep telling myself. Still my gaze falls upon the display that always made me happiest as a child, but brings no joy now. That red metal box reading "Hot Apple Pies." Once upon a time a McDonalds Apple Pie was one hundred pennies worth of who's-your-daddy deep fried badness. And if the Hot Apple Pie was wrong, I didn't want to be right. Gooey and crispy, apple-y and cinnamony, and an 80% chance that you were going to burn the bejeebers out of your mouth. Screw the crappy plastic toy and the cardboard box that looked like a little house; all I wanted was a Hot Apple Pie. Some time in the early nineties, the Mac changed the recipe. Either in an effort to skew healthier, or to protect themselves from lawsuits springing from the molten lava filling, Hot Apple Pies were now baked instead of fried in the same bubbling grease cooking up the McNuggets and the Filet-O-Fish. The crispy little bubbles of guilty pleasure were now doughy strips of cardboard pastry. Except the dirty little secret is that the baked apple pie really isn't any better for you than the fried pie. It's still death in a cardboard box; it's just that now you won't enjoy it as much. A little research not only confirms my suspicions---it exceeds them! Earlier this week I found myself in a branch of Southwest-based burger chain Whataburger and found a treasure on their menu in the form of a Hot Apple Pie. I eagerly ordered the molten thing and immensely enjoyed it, much to the horror of my health-conscious friend. "Its...skin...is flaking off," he sputtered. I had to admit it did look a little like a third degree burn. Heavy laden with food guilt, I came home and consulted the Interweb to find out just how much damage I'd done to myself. My jaw dropped when my research revealed that the fried pie actually has fewer calories, and less total fat, trans fat, and carbohydrates than the wet cardboard-tasting baked pie!!! I feel betrayed. I almost expect to find Halliburton behind this somehow. I know there are plenty of crusades out there already, but I wonder how long it will be before people demand that McDonald's bring back the healthier Hot Apple Pie.