Embedded Files
All project files can be found at the following GitHub repo:
All project files can be found at the following GitHub repo:
Introduction
Introduction
This project was made in collobration with Nevin Sangha and Shaan Gehlot.
We have chosen to create a dashboard to present the nutrition data of the McDonald's menu. The reason for our interest in this topic has many facets. When many people think of McDonalds, they think of a widely available fast food chain that serves unhealthy food that tastes good. We believe McDonalds also markets towards a more value-based menu. McDonalds is often associated with various value-based promotions such as their “Dollar Drink Days'' every summer. Hardly anyone thinks of McDonalds as being a health-conscious chain, especially with media such as Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me''. However, this documentary is over 15 years old at this point and it had us wondering, has McDonalds made any changes to the menu for the better? The data set we found is from 2017 and we set out to see what can be deemed healthy enough to be eaten by people who care about their fitness, specifically those who wish to maximize protein. These people are the intended audience for our dashboard. It is not unlikely for people to find themselves in a situation where they need something to eat and all that is open nearby is a McDonalds. Our dashboard aims to highlight the menu items that will appeal to people who like to control their macronutrient intakes.
Data
Data
The majority of our data is taken from the online repository Kaggle. (Link: https://www.kaggle.com/mcdonalds/nutrition-facts). The dataset consists of a nutritional analysis of every item on the McDonald’s menu. These items are then subdivided into categories such as ‘Coffee & Tea’, ‘Breakfast’, ‘Smoothies & Shakes’, ‘Chicken & Fish’, and ‘Beverages’. The other 23 variables included in the base data are standard nutritional facts for each menu item such as calories, protein, total fat, and carbohydrates, among several others.
As part of the data preparation, we needed to manually find the CAD prices of each menu item on CostFinderCanada and merge them into the base dataset as a new variable. Using information from the USDA nutrition information center we derived 2 more variables for “calories from protein” and “calories from carbohydrates”.
In our data preparation in Tableau, we also made the decision to filter out all drink items, from the categories, such as: ‘Beverages’, ‘Coffee & Tea’, and ‘Smoothies & Shakes’. We decided to just focus on meal and food items for this visualization and analysis.
Tableau Dashboard
Tableau Dashboard
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
Based on the data presented in the dashboard, the category which provides the greatest protein value per dollar is Beef & Pork and the least is Snacks & Slides. Out of the top 10 protein per dollar menu items, 6 fall within Beef & Pork, and the most valuable menu item overall is the Bacon McDouble with 11.79 grams of protein for a single dollar. Additionally, the menu items that have the highest percentage of protein calories from total calories generally fall between the $6-8 price range. Through our analysis, we discovered that any version of the Premium Chicken McWrap provides the greatest price flexibility while maximizing protein calories per order. Each Premium Chicken McWrap is priced at $5.79 and provides on average 27 grams of protein with a protein calorie percentage of 64%.
The salad category has the largest range of the protein calories to total calorie ratio while the smallest range is beef and pork. This means almost any beef and pork option will provide you with a relatively standard amount of protein. However, if protein maximization is your goal then you should be looking to the top twenty-five percent of the boxplot. As said previously, salad has the highest range of protein percentage, topping out at the highest with about 51%. The two highest salads are those with grilled chicken options, which makes sense considering it is a grilled option as opposed to fried crispy chicken. Based on these charts, and Macronutrients we recommend a protein base percentage of twenty-five percent plus, to keep your diet well rounded at McDonalds.
The macronutrient breakdown of the McDonald's menu is heavily skewed towards fats in almost every item. This is quite problematic for those who are conscious of their cholesterol when breaking down the menu to the different types of fat used (saturated, trans-fat, etc.). An example of such would be the 40-piece chicken nuggets where 1060 of the total 1880 calories are contributed by fat. That means that roughly 56% of calories from the highest calorie item come from fat. This item is a chicken item as well which would logically indicate a protein-dense meal when in reality only 18.5% of the total calories are made from protein calories. While this item has strong raw protein figures at 87g, we cannot recommend purchasing this item because of how calorie-heavy and fat-dense it is.
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