The fast food scenario has undergone major changes in recent times with key market players like McDonald’s scrabbling to draw more customers by offering healthier food. Because the fast food behemoth has made them completely free of artificial preservatives.
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McDonald’s Corp. has announced a number of menu changes in its 14,000 restaurants in the United States, including the removal of artificial preservatives from Chicken McNuggets, pork sausage patties and omelet-style and scrambled eggs.
The overhaul includes replacing high-fructose corn syrup in sandwich buns with sugar, as well as eliminating artificial preservatives from McNuggets and some breakfast items.
One of the ways to get more customers, Andres said Monday, is to talk more openly about foods in an effort to change consumer attitudes toward McDonald’s. McDonald’s previous year returned to its original Egg McMuffin recipe, which calls for butter instead of liquid margarine because many consumers didn’t understand exactly what liquid margarine is, the company said. This means they will no longer contain sodium phosphates, citric acid, safflower oil and chicken skin.
Other chains, including Panera Bread, Papa John’s, and Taco Bell, are cutting artificial ingredients, which have been linked to a host of health problems.
In particular, these ingredients have been targeted by various groups – including consumer advocacy and regulatory organizations – that have begun to question whether their presence in McDonald’s menu might actually cause a number of unsafe health risks, according to nonprofit E.W.G.
“We’re following the customer”, said Marion Gross, McDonald’s supply chain senior vice president. “As a leader, we have an obligation to make big changes that impact the industry”. Now, every chicken item McDonald’s serves is made from chicken not treated with antibiotics important to human medicine; although the company noted that farmers still use ionophores, a class of antibiotics that are not prescribed to people, to maintain healthy chicken flocks.
She said that it’s getting easier to persuade suppliers like Tyson Foods to change their practices, however. Chik-fil-A, which has the most sales of any chicken chain, has pledged to stop supplying its restaurants with poultry raised on antibiotics by 2019. It also plans to remove high-fructose corn syrup from the burger buns.
McDonald’s return last September to its original Egg McMuffin recipe with butter instead of liquid margarine increased sales by double digits.
McDonald’s continues to innovate its menu with local and regional launches, such as its Gilroy garlic fries in the San Francisco Bay area.
That salad switch, for one, was not all that hard to pull off as lettuce only takes 60 to 90 days to grow, said Ali Leon, VP-Ready Pac Foods, one of McDonald’s produce suppliers.
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Last year, Consumers Union joined NRDC, PIRG and eighty other public interest groups to call on YUM!
