Heart Foundation tick on some McDonald's meals

Posted by kathryn in Health News

Big news from the fast food industry today, nine McDonald’s meals have been accredited with a Heart Foundation tick. What can be going on?

The Heart Foundation’s Tick is a guide to helping people make healthier food choices. It’s mostly found on processed and take-away foods, offering an independent assessment on which are the healthier options in that food category .

Tick programme guidelines

Over the last year Macca’s have been working with the Heart Foundation to improve the nutritional value of their foods, in order to comply with the Tick programme. In the accredited meals they’ve lowered salt and saturated fat levels, as well as converting to virtually trans fat free cooking oils.

All of the accredited McDonald’s meals had to comply with the following guidelines:

• less than 2% saturated fat
• virtually no trans fats
• minimum of one serving of vegies per meal
• the meal must not provide more than one-third of an adult’s daily kilojoule requirement

This of course means the traditional McDonald’s meal had to be changed – the accredited meals don’t include fries, they can’t be super-sized and they don’t include soft drinks. The meals are also quite specific and there’s no room for substitution or changes.

The Tick approved McDonald’s meals

There are nine meals that have the Heart Foundation’s Tick:

• Herb-Fusion warm chicken salad, Berrynice yoghurt crunch and a bottle of water
• Lean beef burger, garden salad and a medium orange juice
• 3 chicken McNuggets, garden salad and a medium orange juice
• 6 chicken McNuggets, garden salad and a medium orange juice
• Hamburger, garden salad and a medium orange juice
• Tandoori chicken Deli-Choices roll, Berrynice yoghurt crunch and a medium orange juice
• Thai chicken Deli-Choices roll, a bottle of water and an apple
• Filet-O-Fish, garden salad and a medium orange juice
• McChicken, garden salad and a bottle of water

To comply with the Tick all salads are served with either Italian or chilli and lime dressing, while the chicken nuggets are served with ketchup, sweet and sour or sweet Thai chilli sauce.

The benefits of these meals

In Australia, McDonald’s serves up one million meals per day, so it’s feeding a lot of people. The real benefits of these Tick approved meals can be seen when you start comparing them to traditional McDonald’s meals.

• the McChicken burger with salad and water has 50% fewer kilojoules and 50% less saturated fat when compared to the same burger plus fries and a coke
• the McNuggets with salad and orange juice have 65% fewer kilojoules and almost 70% less saturated fat than nuggets with barbecue sauce, fries and a coke. You’re also losing salt and picking up vegetable servings.
• the lean beef burger meal has 2,311 fewer kilojoules, 8.4g less of fat and 355mg less salt than a Big Mac, regular fries and coke.

These are big, big savings.

So is McDonald’s now healthy?

This is a tricky one. In my fantasy world everybody cooks from scratch, they use fresh ingredients, everyone eats their full five servings of vegetables each day, they shun fast food and enjoy a glass of wine in moderation only.

However, back in the real world, I realise very few people actually eat this way. At the moment, here in Australia, fast food is a frequent meal in a lot of peoples’ weekly diets. Until this changes, making fast food better is making individual’s nutritional intake better.

So yes, I think this development by McDonald’s and the Heart Foundation is a good thing, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to change my personal eating habits and I’m not going to rush out and start eating McDonald’s. I’m also going to continue to encourage my clients to eat less fast food, to cook for themselves and to take control over what they eat.

NB: Full disclosure

In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that a very close friend of mine works at the Heart Foundation and has been involved in this project. I don’t think this has biased me for or against the issue of putting the Tick on McDonald’s meals (and we certainly have a robust enough relationship that I wouldn’t have a problem disagreeing with her). However our friendship does mean I’m more aware of the Heart Foundation’s work and also of their aims and goals, than I may otherwise have been.

Technorati tags: mcdonald’s, heart foundation, fast food

06 February, 2007