Food August 24, 2022

Dad shares hack for getting kids to eat homemade burgers using McDonald's wrappers

VIDEO: Dad's hack for getting kids to eat homemade 'McDonald's' burgers is genius

Parenting hacks that make life with kids a bit more manageable are abundant on TikTok and Instagram. Self-acclaimed "Best Dad CEO" Eddie Alvarez, for instance, has a hack that will dupe kids into eating homemade when they are craving fast food.

"One day I was home and my kids were driving me crazy saying they didn't want my homemade burgers because they like the McDonald's ones better," Alvarez told "Good Morning America." "It hit me that if I wrap them like they are McDonald's burgers they wouldn't even realize it."

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Alvarez shared a video making the hamburgers and sneakily wrapping them in the pale yellow parchment -- which he procured during a previous solo lunch trip to McDonald's -- to fool his kids into thinking the food was from the Golden Arches.

"It worked surprisingly well until they started asking for the happy meal toys," he said with a laugh.

The video has amassed more than 5.1 million views on TikTok and another 1.9 million on Instagram so far.

Alvarez, who first learned to cook from his mom, told "GMA" he cooks every night for his family and was always the one that would barbecue and cook in college.

He said his two sons, who are 5 and 3 years old, "normally order plain cheeseburger happy meals with chocolate milk."

As for other dad-approved parenting hacks, Alvarez suggests sneaking in healthy additions where kids won't notice.

"One of my favorite food hacks is putting spinach when I make them smoothies. You can't taste it at all just makes the smoothie green," he explained. "I call it the monster smoothie."