Less Soda Being Chosen With McDonald’s Happy Meals

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Children have been drinking less soda and eating more fruit and yogurt at McDonald’s restaurants, the company and a partner said in their first report on the fast-food giant’s efforts to offer healthier options for its Happy Meals.

The report was issued Thursday by McDonald’s Corp. and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a nonprofit group founded by the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association to reduce childhood obesity.

The partners announced in 2013 that McDonald’s would stop promoting soft drinks as a Happy Meal option on its menu boards, and that it would emphasize nutrition on its food packaging for children in 20 major markets that represent more than 85% of McDonald’s sales.

The report said that since sodas were removed from the Happy Meal section of the menu boards in the U.S., 46% of Happy Meal customers have chosen milk and juice, up from 37% before. Meanwhile,

The percentage of those choosing soda for Happy Meals fell to 48% from 56%.

Children also have been opting for yogurt and clementine oranges since those items have been offered.

The report focused only on the U.S. and Italy.

The results are promising, nutrition experts say, given customers’ general reluctance to select healthier options even when they are promoted.

Before McDonald’s automatically included apple slices in its Happy Meals in 2011, it had offered them for many years as a substitute for fries, but parents rarely chose them.

When McDonald’s tested a Happy Meal version that didn’t contain fries, parents complained.

Some studies have shown that when calorie information is displayed on menu boards, people pick lower-calorie options initially, only to revert back to buying their old, higher-calorie favorites.

“In less than a year period, to see a shift away from soda is encouraging,” said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group that has been pushing McDonald’s and other restaurant chains to improve the nutritional value of kids’ meals.

“Given that for decades restaurants have been promoting soda on kids’ menus, it’s going to take time to get into a new mind-set. Taking soda off the menu is a really important step.”

Ms. Wootan said Restaurant Brands International Inc.s Burger King, Wendy’s Co. and American Dairy Queen Corp. followed McDonald’s lead in removing soda from kids’ menus, but that most chain restaurants still feature soda on those menus.

Last year McDonald’s didn’t fulfill its commitment to offer a side salad, fruit or vegetable as a substitute for fries in its value meals in the U.S., though it began doing so this year. Just 2% of McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. offered side salads in value meals last year, but by early this year, 83% did.

Changing adults’ ordering habits is going to be harder. Despite McDonald’s efforts to add entree-size salads to the menu in recent years, they have never been a big seller, make up just 2% to 3% of U.S. sales.

“Fast-food companies have spent so much money promoting fries that we’ve become conditioned to think that when we go to a fast-food restaurant, whatever meal we get should include an order of fries,” Ms. Wootan said, adding that it will take years of aggressive marketing and compelling menu items to steer customers away from fries.

 

 

Children have been opting for yogurt and clementines in Happy Meals.
ENLARGE

Children have been opting for yogurt and clementines in Happy Meals.


Photo:

SETH PERLMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

Write to Julie Jargon at [email protected]


Source: Wall Street Journal Health