It has become increasingly noticeable that fast food chains have been making an effort to provide nutritional information and healthier alternatives to their normal quick-meal menus.
The big push toward “healthier” fast food began in 2011, when the FDA unveiled a mandate that required fast food restaurants to provide calorie counts on their menus, but have the menus really gotten any healthier?
A recent study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine shows that it may not be the case. The study compared the menus of fast food restaurants 14 years ago, in 1997 and 1998, to the same restaurants in the present day. It focused on eight popular chain restaurants: McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Arby’s, Wendy’s, Jack in the Box and Dairy Queen. The study stated that among the eight, “the restaurant with the greatest improvements in the nutritional quality of menu offerings from 1997/1998 to 2009/2010 was KFC … followed by Jack in the Box.”
The study found that the health aspect of fast food products have not changed as much as they could and states that “fast-food restaurants have an opportunity to contribute to a healthy diet for Americans by improving the nutritional quality of their menus.”
Though this study shows fast food chains have not made much improvement health-wise, the widespread addition of health-conscious alternatives to various fast food menus makes them seem as if they have improved somewhat dramatically. Many chains have begun to list the nutritional facts of all their menu items in full on their websites, rather than just listing the calorie count.
McDonald’s, one of the most popular fast food chains in the world, is probably best known for their crispy and deliciously salty french fries. In 2011, McDonald’s announced they began cutting the amount of fries in their Happy Meals by half and offering apple slices as an alternative in an attempt to offer parents a healthier, but still fast, choice for their children.
Even with these moves toward healthier meals, fast food restaurants may not have become any more appealing to the health-conscious public than they were otherwise.
Alexsis Winterhalter is one University of Oregon student who tries to avoid fast food — only eating it if she’s on a long road trip or needs a meal on the go. And even when she does get it, Winterhalter tries to choose healthier options, if they are available.
“I always get chicken instead of a hamburger,” she said. “I still get fries, even though they are unhealthy. But I try not to eat a lot of them or any other fast foods.”
Fast food restaurants still have a long way to go in regards to providing healthy and quick meals to the public. The findings of this most recent study provide some hope that “healthy fast food” is possible but that chains still have a lot of work to do.