MCDONALD’S BOASTS ABOUT NUTRITION (REALLY)

From “Fast Food Nation” to “Super Size Me,” McDonald’s has become the go-to villain in the United States’ obesity drama.
Not willing to become the de facto whipping boy, the company best known for its indulgent burgers and greasy fries has already added salads, fruits and other new menu options. Now, it’s defending the rest of its food lineup as well.
The “what we’re made of” campaign includes TV commercials, in-store promotions and a Web site boasting about its beef, chicken and other basic ingredients. In the coming weeks, the company also plans to add billboards and expand the Web site to include more information about cooking methods, suppliers and other practices. Molly Starmann, McDonald’s director of U.S. marketing, said the company hasn’t changed the farming or preparation methods that have drawn so much criticism. The point of the campaign, she said, is simply to provide more information about what the company already does.
“Our customers love the taste of our food and they just had some questions about how it’s created,” she said.
The most striking thing about the campaign is that it exposes what the company is up against. Click on lettuce, and McDonald’s will tell you that it washes its lettuce “at least twice.” Under eggs, it notes that they are delivered to stores twice a week.
Forget quality or taste -- if a company has to dispel the myth that it doesn’t follow basic hygiene practices, it’s obviously in for an uphill battle.
Still, some of McDonald’s attempts to inform are strikingly uninformative. Click on “potatoes,” and you’ll get a blurb about why fries have salt on them. That’s not exactly going to answer burning questions about food production, healthfulness and what exactly is meant by the ingredient “natural beef flavor (wheat and milk derivatives).” Under tomatoes, the company only discloses what kind it likes to use in salads.
Elsewhere on the site, McDonald’s lets you build a meal and see its nutritional value and ingredients. Nutrition information also can now be found on the back of the company’s tray liners and on other packaging.
McDonald’s deserves credit for having the guts to make such information easily accessible, even if eaters may well cringe at the high fat content – including trans fats - and unpronounceable ingredients.
For example, parents may not be too pleased to realize that six pieces of Chicken McNuggets contain 15 grams of fat and include the ingredient “dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.” The visual images conjured by the words “antifoaming” in food are plentiful, and none are pretty.
Click here to see the “what we’re made of” Web site. Click here to view one of the ads.