One of America's fast-food supersleuths, Carlo Gesualdo, has broke open a secret about McDonalds: the McChicken Value Meal is a scam! At the franchise he visited in Edmond, Oklahoma, a McChicken Value Meal costs $4.09, but the sandwich, drink, and fries—the same items in said Value Meal—cost only $3.49 total. In other words, the Value Meal costs 60¢ more than the individual components!

This is a HUGE boon to the enterprising: just buy up as many McChicken value meal components at the earliest opportunity, then package and sell your own assembled McChicken Value Meals for $3.99—reaping a profit of a dime fifty cents per sale. That's PURE PROFIT.

You can thank us later, when you dive onto your dime fifty cent piece-covered bed.

(Photo: Neil Cummings)

Carrie McLaren & Jason Torchinsky are coeditors of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. In previous lives, they worked together on the hopelessly obscure and now defunct Stay Free! magazine .