Happy Birthday Ms McRib!!!

**MoJoOkie** · 12-18-2012 08:04 AM

I'm glad that you were born.

Not Safe For Work:

**mexican/ninja** · 12-18-2012 08:08 AM

http://ts2.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.5002237543450937&pid=1.7&w=207&h=144&c=7&rs=1

**OUSchitzo** · 12-18-2012 08:11 AM

**KCRuf/Nek** · 12-18-2012 08:16 AM

**SoonerBounce** · 12-18-2012 08:24 AM

The big 5-0?

**VRO405** · 12-18-2012 08:36 AM

Happy Birthday Booski! Hope you have a great one!

**oorah_okie** · 12-18-2012 08:59 AM

**Jason** · 12-18-2012 09:02 AM

Happy birthday!

**Julz** · 12-18-2012 09:06 AM

Happy birthday!!!!!!!!!

**OUMallen** · 12-18-2012 09:08 AM

HBD GIRL!

**SoonerAmongThePack** · 12-18-2012 09:12 AM

Happy birthday

!

**macdaddybuff** · 12-18-2012 09:12 AM

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTCJcQ1FFN2vPSStj0_qAr-gYk6gu5YBmjArTto5Cf8rwknG0Ez4ftsXoX8oQ

**greensooner** · 12-18-2012 09:21 AM

Happy Bday

!!!

**Orange is ugly** · 12-18-2012 09:40 AM

Pics of Ms. Rib celebrating in her birthday suit or GTFO

**McRib** · 12-18-2012 09:44 AM

Thanks boys! You guys keep posting Blake Bell pics for me & I'll have carpal tunnel before the end of the day

Sorry Bouncy, I'm not 50… Yet :-)

(Hey bossman, can a girl get some extra likes for her birthday? I'm already out!)

**SirPrize** · 12-18-2012 09:46 AM

Happy Birfday, ****y-Pants.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/25368666.jpg

**SoonerWalkon** · 12-18-2012 09:47 AM

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RIB!

11 Amazing Facts about the McDonald's
The McDonald's

is back, hitting restaurants nationwide today. The legendary boneless pork sandwich, famously molded to resemble a rack of ribs, is both a feat of modern engineering and shrewd marketing.

It garners almost as much attention for its pseudo-meat shape as its impermanence on restaurant menus.

The barbecue-sauce-smothered sandwich was supposed to return at the end of October, but was pushed back to help boost end-of-the-year sales.

Better late than never.

1. The

came about because of a shortage of chickens.

In a 2009 interview with Maxim, Rene Arend, McDonald's first executive chef and inventor of the Chicken McNugget, explains that the McNugget was so popular when it was first introduced in 1979 that demand quickly outstripped chicken supply.

The legendary pork sandwich was developed out of necessity. Franchises that didn't have the Chicken McNugget needed a new hot-selling product — and that's when Arend scrambled back to the test kitchen.

2. The

was inspired by Southern BBQ.

Flickr/Southern Foodways AllianceRene Arend modeled the

after the barbecue-sauce-slathered pork sandwiches he ate during a visit to Charleston, South Carolina.

The decorated French-trained chef, who once whipped up fancy culinary creations for the Drake Hotel, is also credited with coming up the unique shape of the sandwich.

Although the

doesn't contain a single bone, Arend suggested the meat be patterned after a slab of ribs instead of the classic round patty.

3. The

is a product of "restructured meat technology."

Rene Arend came up with the idea and design of the

, but it's a professor from the University of Nebraska named Richard Mandigo who developed the "restructured meat product" that the

is actually made of.

According to an article from Chicago magazine, which cites a 1995 article by Mandigo, "restructured meat product" contains a mixture of tripe, heart, and scalded stomach, which is then mixed with salt and water to extract proteins from the muscle. The proteins bind all the pork trimmings together so that it can be re-molded into any specific shape — in this case, a fake slab of ribs.

4. The whole process from fresh pork to frozen

takes about 45 minutes.

Director of McDonald's U.S. supply chain Rob Cannell explained how regular pig gets transformed into the famed

in an interview with Maxim: "The

is made in large processing plants—lots of stainless steel, a number of production lines, and these long cryogenic freezers. The pork meat is chopped up, then seasoned, then formed into that shape that looks like a rib back. Then we flash-freeze it. The whole process from fresh pork to frozen

takes about 45 minutes."

5. The entire

sandwich contains about 70 ingredients — including a flour-bleaching agent used in yoga mats.

Flickr/Calgary ReviewsAs it appears out of the box, the

sandwich consists of just five basic components: a pork patty, barbecue sauce, pickle slices, onions, and a sesame bun.

But, as recently reported by Time magazine, a closer inspection of McDonald's own ingredient list reveals that the pork sandwich contains a total of 70 ingredients. This includes azodicarbonamide, a flour-bleaching agent often used in the production of foamed plastics.

The entire sandwich packs a whopping 500 calories, 26 grams of fat, 44 grams of carbs, and 980 milligrams of sodium.

6. The

debuted in 1981, disappeared in 1985, and has resurfaced from time-to-time since 1994.

Depending on where you read, McDonald's introduced the boneless pork sandwich sometime between 1981 and 1982. The fast-food concoction vanished in 1985, only to reappear as a limited-edition item in 1994.

The

has become something of a legend for its on-and-off appearances on McDonald's menus. The fleeting nature of the sandwich has generated a cult-like following.

7. Individual restaurants can actually order the ingredients for the

at any time.

The

pops up at McDonald's locations across the country sporadically. It's so random because the individual restaurants are able to offer the

whenever they feel like it. The practice has even inspired websites devoted to tracking

availability across the nation.

8. McDonald's keeps the

scarce because the sandwich's entire brand relies on it.

McDonald's has always known about its customers' weird obsession for the sandwich, and its marketing completely leverages the

's scarcity. Take its "Save The

" campaign in 2010, where it encouraged

fans to go online and sign a petition to keep the sandwich around for a while longer.

But a strategy like that only works with something that's as popular as the

is. If you make an unknown item scarce, nobody's going to care.

9. It'd be incredibly difficult for McDonald's to create more

-esque products, because that cult-like following is so hard to replicate.

lovers are fanatical, but it wouldn't be this way if the phenomenon hadn't had decades to marinate in the hearts and minds of its fans. A wholly devoted fanbase for a new product would take years to develop, and even then, there's no guarantee that it would work.

McDonald's struck gold with the

, and it doesn't want to do anything to affect its brand. Even now, by offering the

nationwide twice just a year apart, it's walking a fine line. At what point will consumers get sick of it?

10. There's also speculation that the

is really just a big commodity trade by McDonald's.

The Awl's Willey Staley argues that whenever the sandwich springs up, hog prices are almost always in a trough.

Here's more of his argument on why McDonald's behaves like a trader: "Fast food involves both hideously violent economies of scale and sad, sad end users who volunteer to be taken advantage of. What makes the

different from this everyday horror is that a) McDonald’s is huge to the point that it’s more useful to think of it as a company trading in commodities than it is to think of it as a chain of restaurants b) it is made of pork, which makes it a unique product in the QSR world and c) it is only available sometimes, but refuses to go away entirely."

11. Animal rights group sues

meat supplier over inhumane treatment of pigs.

Not everyone is ecstatic about the return of the

. Last November, the Humane Society of the United States filed a lawsuit against Smithfield Foods, the pork supplier of McDonald's

meat, claiming the meat distributor houses its pigs in unethical farm conditions.

A 2010 undercover investigation by the animal rights group shows pigs crammed into gestation crates covered in blood and baby pigs being tossed into carts like rag dolls (WARNING: the video contains some pretty graphic content).