Watching McDonald's Ice Cream Being Made Is Totally Mesmerizing

Watching food being made can be an oddly satisfying endeavor. Not only can the process prove to be fascinating, but there is a level of mystique involved, especially when you're being treated to a rare glimpse of what happens behind the scenes. When it comes to the creation of your favorite McDonald's snacks, you wouldn't expect something as simple as how they make their ice cream would be so engaging. A TikTok video shared by @fetinet1 gives viewers an up-close view of exactly how McDonald's employees create their signature soft serve.

Right away, we see an employee hauling a large clear bag full of a creamy mixture. According to their website, McDonald's ice cream contains "milk, sugar, cream, corn syrup, natural flavor, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, guar gum, carrageenan," and "vitamin A palmitate," which, thanks to @fetinet1, we can see all blended in one large see-through bag. 

As the employee lifts the bag to the top of the ice cream maker, they deftly pour it into the upper canister. That's where you can get lost — the creamy mixture passes over an undulating plastic spinner that turns and cools the liquid so that it can soon turn into delicious vanilla ice cream. As the machine whirls and whirls, you can't help but feel a little hypnotized. However, not everyone who watched the video had the same reaction. Some of them got a little mad. 

Among the more than 14 thousand comments, some posters expressed utter outrage at the lack of hygiene involved. One person wrote, "No gloves while opening????" Another person, also noting the missing food handling safety gloves, mentioned, "Gloves tho pls??" 

However, this wasn't the only discrepancy folks seemed to notice. What at first may seem like just a frothy part of the creamy mixture bubbling at the top of the machine might be something entirely different, according to commenters on the video. "Your supposed to clean the foam out or else the ice cream goes bad," wrote one person. Another added, "Sorry to say but my family work in ice cream trucks and the foam around it is bacteria that's being collected from the piles 😳😬." Another noticed other areas of the machine that looked like they might have missed the last cleaning routine, saying, "I can't handle that little bit of crust on the outside of the top."

However, what most people seemed to focus on and poke fun at was the age-old problem that McDonald's ice cream machines always seem to be broken whenever you really want some ice cream. "Yall aint gonna make ice cream cause the machine broken," said a viewer. Another commented, "McDonald's ice cream 🍦 it's more rare than the McRib 🐷." Guess you can't please everyone.