Fast food giant to launch nutrition-focused mobile phone app
AP NEW YORK
McDonald's Corp. is adding apples to all its Happy Meals and launching a nutrition-focused mobile phone app as part of a broader health push. The changes underscore how the US restaurant industry is reacting to the demands of customers and regulators who blame it for health ills ranging from childhood obesity to diabetes.
Among other changes in McDonald's new programme: McDonald's pledged to reduce sugars, saturated fats and calories through ``varied portion sizes, reformulations and innovations'' by 2020. It didn't give details. By 2015, it will reduce sodium by 15%.
McDonald's will introduce a new mobile app focused just on nutrition information.
McDonald's USA president Jan Fields and other executives will go on a ``listening tour'' in August to hear suggestions from parents and nutrition experts. The chain will also launch an forum for parents. McDonald's says the new directives are ``absolutely not'' related to impending regulations that will force the industry to curb the marketing of junk food to children and post nutrition information on menus.
Rather, the changes are a response to what customers were asking for, said Cindy Goody, McDonald's senior director of nutrition.
`We've been in the nutrition game for over 30 years in providing nutrition information to our customers,'' Goody said. The nutrition talk also has helped McDonald's grab business from other fast-food restaurants, even as the recession forced people to cut back on eating out.
McDonald's has worked to paint itself as a healthy, hip place to eat, offering wireless access in restaurants and introducing smoothies and oatmeal, moves that other fastfood companies are now trying to replicate.
For Happy Meals, US customers can already choose between apples or fries. But only about 11% of customers were ordering apples, the restaurant said.
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