Proof that the American concept of "portion size" is expanding.

Apparently, a one-quarter-pound beef patty, sandwiched in a four-inch-diameter bread product, and made at home,  qualifies as a "mini" hamburger.

I know where to get a mini hamburger, and a quarter-pounder is not mini. 

(By the way, I googled around to find the pre-cooked weight of a White Castle patty, and I got to this Wikianswers page where the first user wrote "0.70 ounces," and that had been (ostensibly) corrected by a second user who wrote "Actually, it is 2 ounces."  Well, 2 ounces (58 g) is the weight of the whole damn hamburger, cooked and with bun, and I think that's where the second user got that figure.  I added a note to Wikianswers.  Probably should have gone to the discussion page, but what the heck.)

Where was I?

Oh yes.  Maybe the recipe writer was influenced by Thomas' recent introduction of "Sandwich Size" English muffins.  What?  The old English muffins were too small for a sandwich?  (Astonishingly, there's no nutrition info on the website.  Losers.)  I've been making hamburgers on whole-grain English muffins for a long time -- it's easier to find whole-wheat English muffins than whole-wheat hamburger buns.

Comments

[Christy P]

Lucky you - I have a really hard time finding any english muffins that don't include high fructose corn syrup among the list of ingredients.

[bearing]

Well, whole-wheat doesn't imply corn-syrup-free.

BTW, Mark is suspicious of anti-corn-syrup people. Do you know something he doesn't? Is HF corn syrup really any worse than any other refined sugar? I have heard people say so, but never seen data.

[Christy P]

Nutritionally, I don't know if it is bad or not. My issue is that it is so ubiquitous and used IMHO in inappropriate places, like bread. On an environmental level, too, I think that the corn monoculture and industrialized agriculture that goes with it is a problem.

[bearing]

OK, I get it now. LMK if you find any substantiation on the "high fructose corn syrup is particularly bad for you" front, because I'm interested in it. Of course, given how ubiquitous it is, crusading to eliminate just HFCS from the family diet would probably go a long way towards dropping the total family refined-sugar intake altogether, which is good for everybody.

And yeah, I don't think I know of any WW English muffins that don't have HFCS, but avoiding non-whole-grain bread products is a higher priority for me than avoiding HFCS -- because the level of certainty of the statement "whole grains are nutritionally better than refined grains" is substantially greater than the level of certainty of "HFCS is particularly nutritionally bad as sugars go." I place nutrition at the top of my hierarchy of criteria when it comes to family meal planning... environment is after that...