Within a few years, McNugget Mania took off and became a sales juggernaut, but not without criticism. There have even been some legal battles over its nutritional value, such as when two New York teens sued the company in 2002, charging that McNuggets had made them obese. (A federal judge threw out the case, but not before disparaging the McNugget as “a McFrankenstein creation.”)

The reboot of the Chicken McNugget is a mechanism by which McDonald’s is continuing its effort to present itself as a “modern progressive burger company.” Last year, the company announced the phasing out of chicken raised with antibiotics used in human medicine, said it would stop using palm oil linked to deforestation, and pledged to shift to cage-free eggs.

“What I think they’re trying to accomplish here is to move the needle slowly toward a better place and a better brand positioning for the consumer of the future,” said Darren Tristano, the executive vice president of the market-research firm Technomic, in a phone call last week.

Perhaps to prove its sincerity, McDonald’s tested the newest McNuggets at 140 stores in Washington and Oregon, including some locations in Portland, a craft-food capital. Tristano suggested that this test market was telling because the region’s consumers not only have “skepticism about the brand,” but “also heightened concerns about quality of ingredients.”

Facebook / Portland-area McDonald’s

Ironically, one of the new McNugget’s big selling points isn’t even new. As Crain’s pointed out, the promotional efforts in Oregon and Washington “spotlight that the new recipe does not include any artificial colors or flavors, even though the current McNugget recipe does not use such ingredients.”

Through its rebranding process, McDonald’s has still managed to sell plenty of Chicken McNuggets, particularly to lower- and middle-income consumers who are concerned more about price point than about the impeachability of the company’s food sourcing. Instead, this tentative new McNugget is an effort to reach a different crowd. “There’s a smaller amount of consumers who don’t eat them, but might be willing to if they raised the bar on quality,” said Tristano.

Chef Rene Arend, who was enlisted to create the first iteration of the McNugget, once offered another way of looking at the future of the foodstuff. When asked about his proudest accomplishment as a chef, Arend, who had prepared meals for English, Belgian, and Hollywood royalty, named his work with McDonald’s. “Those meals were once-in-a-lifetime dinners long since forgotten,” he told The Morning Call in 1984. “But Chicken McNuggets will go on long after I am gone.”

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.