FERN’s Friday Feed: McDonald’s backs off healthier foods; fashionable butter; and how to cook opossum

McDonald’s says it’s done with its hipster experimental phase – nobody was coming in for the healthy fare anyway. After spending serious money on the largest public survey in company history, officials learned that the iconic chain’s slumping sales weren’t due to customers opting for turkey sandwiches at Panera or sustainably-raised burritos at Chipotle. Instead, the company lost 500 million meals to customers going to other fast-food restaurants. So McDonald’s announced that it will double down on its old standards, instead of trying to lure millennials with kale salads (which, incidentally, had more fat, salt and calories than a Big Mac).

Want to know how to cook opossum? Let Foxfire be your guide.

NPR

Way before Brooklyn chefs were bragging about their scrapple and homemade pickles, the folks of Appalachia were cooking opossum (boil until tender, then roast with sweet potatoes) and braising wild greens. In 1966, students at a Georgia high school set out to interview old timers, turning those interviews into a magazine and then a series of books called Foxfire, after the name of a local type of “bioluminescence caused by fungi on decaying wood,” says NPR. The Foxfire books have lived on as an encyclopedia of country skills, but the teacher who led the project pleaded guilty to child molestation in 1992.

Butter: It’s as fickle as New York fashion

The Washington Post

In the early 1900s, Americans ate more than 18 pounds of butter per person every year. But a milk shortage during World War II nudged margarine, which had been invented in 1869, onto the American plate. And with the help of some savvy PR, by the 1950s butter was out and margarine was very much in. Over the last decade or so, however, the vilification of trans fats spurred a butter revival. Now, as fat makes a comeback and sugar is ousted, Americans are eating more butter than they have in 40 years, some 5.6 pounds a year per person. But nutritionists warn that it’s too simplistic to say one food is the root of all dietary evil and another is our culinary salvation. “We seem to be in a cycle lasting decades of seeking sequential scapegoats,” says David L. Katz, founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. “Right now there’s a cottage industry in implying that the one thing wrong with our diets is sugar. . . . That doesn’t exonerate pepperoni pizza.”

LA is la la for food-delivery apps

The Los Angeles Times

Restaurant owners in Los Angeles say food delivery apps like DoorDash, Caviar and UberEats make it possible to serve more customers without having to open new brick-and-mortar space or hire delivery people. “For many Los Angeles restaurants, app-enabled food delivery services have gone from being an afterthought to a core part of their business, with restaurateurs realizing that smartphone apps don’t cause a drop-off in dine-in customers, but instead help grow a new customer base,” says the Times. In the words of one 26-year-old fan of the delivery apps: “It’s about maximizing the ease and speed at which I can eat. It’s essentially made me a far lazier person.”

School lunch could determine how healthy kids are for the rest of their lives

CNN