Gary Younge (Guardian Utd): McDonald's grabs a piece of the apple pie

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday March 23

McDonald's grabs a piece of the apple pie
In an effort to escape its junk-food image, McDonald's, the company that built its success on fries and burgers, now buys more apples than any restaurant chain in the US. This also gives it enormous power over growers - which could lead to fewer varieties and fewer small producers.
By Gary Younge

Turn your back on the rack of leaflets, printed on acid-free recycled paper and entitled Taste, Choice and Balanced Eating, in the McDonald's restaurant in Yakima, Washington state, and you can take your pick from the menu of items that cost a dollar or less. Right at the bottom, underneath the double cheeseburger, the sundae, three cookies and two pies, come the 99-cent Apple Dippers - around 10 cold, crisp and slightly watery peeled apple slices, packaged in plastic with a small carton of sickly-sweet caramel dip that contains twice as many calories from fat as the slices themselves, as well as disodium phosphate, potassium sorbate and caramel colour.

To the consumer, the difference between a packet of Apple Dippers and, say, the M&M McFlurry is little more than a few calories. As the picture of Ronald McDonald jogging on the packet suggests, it might also mark a subtle shift in the eating habits of an increasingly obese nation. But to the apple-growers of Yakima and elsewhere in Washington state - the most extensive apple-producing region in the US - it could mean a whole lot more.

McDonald's, which launched the Apple Dippers last year, now buys more apples than any other restaurant chain in the United States. And if the product, not to mention a forthcoming McDonald's apple salad, takes off, it has the potential to transform an entire agricultural industry. The chain's influence could alter for ever the method and scale of production, the varieties of apple produced, and the rights of the thousands of workers who pick them, and not necessarily for the better.

"McDonald's makes a huge impact, not because they are deliberately out to screw the food system, but because they are so massive, and because they demand a uniform product," says Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, a damning critique of the industry.

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