@heyyitsm1a/TikTok
Melody Heald
IRL
Posted on Jan 30, 2023 Updated on Jan 30, 2023, 6:08 pm CST
A McDonald’s customer from Australia revealed in a viral TikTok how the fast-food restaurant gave her a regular Coke after she specifically requested a sugar-free version—she’s diabetic.
The video features user Mia (@heyyitsm1a) as she stands in her kitchen, removing the lid from her McDonald’s drink.
“OK, this is supposed to be a zero-sugar Coke from McDonald’s,” she says, placing a blood glucose monitor into her drink. After a few seconds, the monitor beeps, having measured the sugar in her drink. “I’m a Type 1 diabetic, so I got zero-sugar so my blood sugar doesn’t go crazy.”
The monitor counts down and the results show that the drink contains 33.3% sugar in her drink.
“Maccas, do better,” she concludes, using the Australian slang for McDonald’s.
Mia declined to comment regarding the video, though in a follow-up video, she clarified in a comment how McDonald’s didn’t give her a zero-sugar drink, but just a regular Coke. The original video racked up over 824,000 views as of Jan. 30. Since the comments were disabled in the original video, she posted two follow-up videos, explaining why.
In the first video, Mia addresses a comment in response to the original video. She starts off by saying she was “by no means at all trying to attack the person” who commented. She first shares how she has Diabetes Mellitus, aka Type 1 Diabetes, and was diagnosed at the age of four years old, despite being healthy and active. Throughout the video, she distinguishes the differences between Type 1 Diabetes and Type 2. She wraps up the video by telling people to essentially keep their thoughts to themselves.
The first follow-up video resonated with people, especially the ones with Type 1 diabetes.
“I have type 1 too and people look at me cause I’m small. I always have to say it’s not caused obesity or old age,” one viewer stated.
“As a type one diabetic, I get so frustrated about it. Especially with the frozen cokes because I literally can’t taste the difference,” a second shared.
“As a fellow type 1, thank you for addressing this! Constantly infuriating how many people are so convinced that they know better than us,” a third commented.
In the second video, Mia elaborated more on why she turned off the comments in her original video. “Turned off the comments on that vid cause you morons are just embarrassing yourselves [at this point],” she wrote via text overlay.
In a nutshell, there are huge differences between Type 1 Diabetes vs Type 2. Type 1 is autoimmune, i.e., triggered early in childhood, while Type 2 is often due to diet over the span of years.
“The main difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes is that type 1 diabetes is a genetic condition that often shows up early in life, and type 2 is mainly lifestyle-related and develops over time. With type 1 diabetes, your immune system is attacking and destroying the insulin-producing cells in your pancreas,” per Diabetes UK.
We’ve reached out to McDonald’s Australia via press email.
Melody Heald is a culture writer. Her work can be found in Glitter Magazine, BUST Magazine, and more.
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