Have you heard about MacDonalds' new fruit & nut salad?

[Lefty48197]

Apparently it's REALLY good, and it's REALLY healthy. It's got nuts in it, and it's got fruit, and it's got yogurt, everything you've ever wanted from MacDonalds. In fact, the fruit & nut salad is so good for you, that MacDonalds is pulling out all the stops to promote their newest product.
Well, either they're trying to promote the product to improve the health of American's, or they're trying to improve the health of their own corporate image as a purveyor of heart disease.
How wonderful that MacDonald's has taken the lead in trying to improve the health of Americans. YAY!
Now, instead of serving billions and billions of Quarter Pounders with Cheese, coupled with a super sized order of freedom fries, and a jumbo coke, they'll serve billions and billions of heart attacks, less a few thousand fruit and nut salads.
Losing out on the sales of a few thousand heart attacks, won't break MacDonald's financially. In fact, the phoney image of a corporation dedicated to healthy consumers, will probably more than make up for the profits lost by selling fruit & nut salads, instead of the cholesterol burgers.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on our friends at MacDonalds? Maybe I should look at the good in what they do?
For instance, I could mention that the average MacDonalds supersized lunch meal has about 2000 calories. Why, that's enough to feed a 160 pound human for an entire day! Just think of all the time and money savings when people start limiting themselves to one MacDonalds meal per day, and nothing else? All the time saved by not shopping? ...by not cooking, cleaning...
Of course, after you finish your supersized cardiac-meal, DO NOT have a fruit and salad dessert. You've already eaten your day's supply of calories, and the extra calories in the fruit & nut salad will make you fat.

[Skittles]

1. hey - offering any healthier alternative is a start

a big problem with fast food is they had NO healthier alternative - due to a really f***ed up schedule I find myself sometimes having to go the fast food route and I appreciate the fruit cups and salads they are offering.

I agree with you about portion sizes - they are absurd; it is up to the consumers to educate themselves about how much they are eating. MacDonal's does not hide its nutritional information - it's all online or on their restaurant walls or can be requested.

[rodeodance]

2. sounds yummy to my tummy.

[begin_within]

3. Wendy's also offers a variety of salads including a fruit combination.

[Skittles]

4. and they are pretty good

one of my favorite fast food meals is from Wendy's - small chili (no finger jokes please) and small fruit cup - tastes good and is low fat.

[HuckleB]

5. All I know is that I despise the nasal pollution of McD's.

That smell that emanates from those shops is just too disturbing. How does anyone go near a McDonald's without gagging?

[Cleita]

6. Isn't that what used to be called a Waldorf salad?

They substituted yogurt for mayonnaise. There's a lot of good combinations of healthier foods they could put on the menu.

[Lefty48197]

7. We need warning labels on fast food packaging

We have warning labels on cigarette packages, because use of the product will harm your health. Same with alcohol. Eating these fast food meals that contain an entire days worth of calories, and two entire days worth of fat are every bit as big a threat to the health of Americans as tobacco and alcohol.

[undergroundpanther]

8. It's okay I guess I wasen't impressed

The nuts are sugar encrusted.Because the nuts I got were rancid I think.
I think they keep the apples from going brown by soaking them in chemicals and sugar water.

I don't trust big corporations to do anything "healthy".

[HuckleB]

9. Free to Choose Obesity?

Free to Choose Obesity?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/08/opinion/08krugman.html?hp

"...

In public, the industry's companies proclaim themselves good guys, committed to healthier eating. Meanwhile, they outsource the campaigns against medical researchers and the dissemination of crude anti-anti-obesity propaganda to industry-financed advocacy groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom.

More broadly, the ideological landscape has changed drastically since the 1960's. (That change in the landscape also has a lot to do with corporate financing of advocacy groups, but that's a tale for another article.) In today's America, proposals to do something about rising obesity rates must contend with a public predisposed to believe that the market is always right and that the government always screws things up.

You can see these predispositions at work in an article printed last month in Amber Waves, a magazine published by the Department of Agriculture. The article is titled "Obesity Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences," suggesting that government efforts to combat obesity are likely to be counterproductive. But the authors don't actually provide any examples of how that might happen.

And the authors suggest, without quite asserting it, that because people freely choose obesity in a free market, it must be a good thing.

..."