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McDonalds To Provide Fat Transparency
It's welcome news that McDonald's are going to start putting nutritional information about their foods on the packaging itself instead of just making it available in an online nutrition counter or (sometimes) on leaflets in store. McDonald's has been going healthy (well, healthier) for some time now and one look at their website will show you they're focusing more on deli sandwiches and other healthier options in an effort to keep up with changing trends, but does this really mean much?
Follow up:
Having gained something of a belly since moving out of my parent's house 2 and a half years ago (largely I blame the dubious numbers of ready meals), I've started to find myself checking the nutritional information on food at Tesco, and it's sometimes quite scary. A frozen pizza (a potential lunch or dinner), for example, can easily contain half your daily fat and all your salt. In short, I'm a pig!
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes...
To me it seems this nutritional information may be part of an effort to influence and/or reinforce the trend towards healthier food (and no doubt an attempt to stave off potential lawsuits from overweight Americans blaming McDonald's for their lack of selfcontrol and resultant obesity).
A Big Mac™ and large fries contains over 40g of fat (nearly half a man's GDA of 95g) while a Big Mac and medium fries contains half the daily intake for a woman. I don't know about you but if I get fast food it's usually for lunch, not dinner. Actually, scratch that stuff about McDonald's going healthy, I've just discovered that their "Crispy Chicken Caesar Salad with Low Fat Newmans Own Light Caesar Dressing and Croutons" (bit of a mouthful, no?) contains the same fat as a Big Mac™ at about 23g and 5.5g of salt (the government reckon 6g is enough for a day). This is all after they've changed to a low fat dressing too!
Some other interesting ones:
Sausage & Egg McMuffin: 24.40g fat just for breakfast!
Ham & Cheese Deli Sandwich: 3.5g salt (Roast Beef & Cheese: 3.3g)
Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese: 26.70g fat, 2.75g salt
So will it make much difference? Well not to me, because I prefer Burger King anyway, but in general, I know if I had it sitting staring at me from the packet I'd probably feel more guilty about my cheeseburger. In fact I've just discovered there's a whopping 51g of fat :o in my favourite burger, the XL Bacon Double Cheeseburger. I think next time I'll just have to stick to a plain old regular Bacon Double Cheeseburger
I think for my own sake I should start keeping a count of the nutritional value of everything I eat - for a week maybe - and report on the results here (it'll only motivate me to make a change if I've something to get embarrassed about!). Watch out for that one