What was claimed
McDonald’s has changed its wrappers to blue and white to show support for Israel.
Our verdict
McDonald’s US said the packaging has been used for multiple years and comes in other colours.
Blue and white McDonald’s food wrappers not connected to current Israel-Gaza conflict
30 October 2023
A viral video claims McDonald’s has changed its packaging to show support for Israel during its current conflict with Gaza. But the fast food chain has said this is not true and the wrappers have been used for several years.
The video is filmed by a customer reportedly in Chicago who receives her order in a white wrapper that has blue stripes and an ‘M’ outlined in blue. She asks two staff members why the packaging resembles the Israeli flag and one responds that the wrapping is not new while another says it has been introduced recently.
The woman says: “This is the colour of their [Israel] flag [...] This is a big company, it should not be changing the wrapping [...] I’m just really upset that I got my order and I got this flag.”
More than 9,000 people have reacted to a Facebook post sharing this video with the caption: ”McDonald’s changed wrapping to sport Israel [sic]”. It has also been shared on other social media platforms including X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
However, McDonald’s US denies changing its packaging to show support for Israel. It told Full Fact that the packaging is a generic wrapper that has been used in some restaurants for special orders, limited-edition products, or temporary shortages of designated wrappers for multiple years.
According to McDonald’s US, these generic wrappers come in a variety of different colours– including blue, green, purple and yellow–and none of the colours are intended to make a political statement.
Full Fact has found other photos showing blue McDonald’s packaging that predate the Israel-Gaza conflict, although none were exactly the same wrapping as in the video.
Full Fact asked McDonald’s US for photos of the wrappers in different colours or that predate the recent conflict in Israel and Gaza, but we had not received a response by the time of publication.
The blue and white wrapper shown in the video is not used in the UK.
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McDonald’s in the Middle East
McDonald’s uses a franchise model meaning its restaurants around the world are owned independently and make their own operational decisions.
According to a post on X, McDonald’s Israel has been offering discounts to Israeli soldiers in uniform, security and rescue forces, residents of surrounding areas and hospitals (translated using Google). McDonald’s branches operating in other Middle Eastern countries, including Pakistan, Kuwait, UAE and Oman, have donated to relief efforts for people in the Gaza Strip.
Misinformation can spread quickly during significant global events and be difficult to contain. We’ve written about multiple different claims relating to the conflict in Israel and the Gaza Strip, including altered audio added to CNN footage, mistranslated subtitles on old videos of politicians, a fake US government memo, and misleading videos that predate recent events or come from different places.
It’s important to consider whether information is true before sharing it online, for example by checking whether it has been reported by official sources. You can read more about how to fact check videos from the conflict in our guide here.
Image courtesy of Cruiser
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because McDonald’s US said the packaging has been used for several years and comes in other colours.