McDonald's Fan-Favorite McRib Has A Ridiculous Number Of Ingredients

There are several iconic McDonald's menu items, one being the decadent McRib. The McRib first debuted on the McDonald's menu in 1981. However, today, it's largely a seasonal item. If you want to try this tasty meal, you'll be treated to a sandwich bun stuffed with a variety of ingredients, including onions, dill pickles, and a piece of tender pork slathered in barbecue sauce.

While these are certainly the core ingredients in this sandwich, it turns out the McRib is packed with far more components than just these. McRib sandwiches actually have a whopping 70 ingredients, some more surprising than others.

If that sounds pretty hard to believe, there's a lot more you should know about the McRib, especially if you're planning on ordering it while it's back in stores this fall. Here's what to know about the ingredients that make up the McRib, along with other key nutritional information.

Although the McDonald's website claims a McRib consists of only five ingredients, it turns out that this sandwich has a whole lot more jam-packed into it. And, unfortunately for McDonald's fans, many of these ingredients aren't very good for you.

Let's start with the bun. Close to half of the ingredients that go into a McRib can be found in the bun, which contains stomach-churning ingredients such as soil fertilizer salts, trans fats, and flour-bleaching agents. Worse yet, Yahoo Finance tells us that the bleaching agents are used for making plastic materials such as yoga mats — yuck!

Next up are the ribs themselves. The ribs aren't actually real pork ribs but are instead just ground up and emulsified pork meat, largely coming from the pig's shoulders and possibly the rectum. The ribs contain multiple preservatives, dextrose, and liquid smoke to make it taste as if it's been on the grill. Then, the patty is shaped to look like ribs, soaked in McDonald's barbecue sauce, and packed into your sandwich.

Although the lengthy ingredients list on a McRib sounds like the worst thing about the sandwich, it turns out that there are other concerning nutritional information you might want to know about. The first thing to be aware of is that this sandwich contains a whopping 520 calories. While that might not sound too crazy, by the time you've paired it with a large fry and a sugary soda, you could easily be looking at more than 800 calories.

On top of that, the McRib sandwich contains 9 grams of saturated fats and 13 grams of sugar. That's a total of almost 50% of your daily fat intake and ¼ to ⅓ of your recommended daily intake of sugar, as per the American Heart Association. In other words, this sandwich won't just be eating into your daily calorie allowance, you'll also have to watch how much fat and sugar you eat the rest of the day, too.