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Why is Christian Science in our name?
Why is Christian Science in our name?
Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.
The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.
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Secret menus are hardly new – almost every restaurant has one in some form, a privilege of regular patrons and passed around by word of mouth. But thanks to a confluence of the Internet and savvy marketing, secret menus at major chain restaurants have become not so secret in recent years. Here are 10 fast food offerings you won’t see on the menu board, from a Crunchberry Frappuccino to a quesadilla from…Chick-fil-A?
1. Monster Mac (McDonald's)
Keith Srakocic/AP/File
A McDonald's Big Mac sandwich is displayed in front of a drink at McDonald's in North Huntingdon, Pa. The "Monster Mac" is a Big Mac with eight patties – the middle bun is optional.
By Schuyler VelascoStaff writer
You many think that the regular old Big Mac is the pinnacle of hamburger decadence. You are wrong. The "Monster Mac" is precisely what it sounds like: a hulking version of the flagship McDonald’s sandwich, with eight patties, globs of cheese, special sauce, lettuces, pickles, and onions (that extra piece of bread on the menu-sanctioned Big Mac will be included upon request).
Burgers of the ‘Monster Mac’ variety aren’t limited to McDonald’s; several major burger chains have secret versions of their own. Burger King has the “Suicide Burger, with four beef patties, four slices of cheese, bacon, and special sauce. Wendy’s offers the “Grand Slam,” also with four patties. But the top dog in the grotesquely large secret burger game is In-N-Out. The California-based chain will grant burger requests of just about any size. Seriously: According to In-N-Out legend, a group of friends in Las Vegas successfully ordered a burger with 100 patties in 2004.
Restaurant chains deal with the secrecy issue in different ways. In-N-Out and Panera actively promote their secret menus on the web. McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks, meanwhile, have publicly denied the existence of any published secret menus while softly encouraging customers to go ahead and order away. “While we can confirm that our menu items are highly customizable, the “secret menu” will remain as such and brand prefers to continue rewarding its guests who exercise their right to HAVE IT YOUR WAY®,” a Burger King representative wrote ABC News last year.
"Customers have come up with their own McDonald's items," spokeswoman Danya Proud told USA Today. But whether or not restaurants will sell them that way is "decided on a restaurant-by-restaurant basis."
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Mark Sappenfield
Editor
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
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Mark Sappenfield
Editor
Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.
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