Elonka wrote:

McDonald's Corp. announced Tuesday that it will display nutrition information on the packaging for most of its menu items next year.

This is a good step, but I'd also like to see them do something like color-code items by sodium content, and percentage of calories from fat.

For me to believe that McDonald's was genuinely interested in promoting public health (as opposed to encouraging obesity as a way of increasing sales), I'd have to see them change the way they do promotions. For example, in the recent popular Monopoly "collect the stickers" promotion, it was a very limited subset of items that had the stickers - fried chicken strips, large french fries, hash browns, and drinks. They could have easily put the promotional stickers on small or medium-size food items, and on their salads, but they didn't. Instead, it appears that they are actively trying to encourage people to buy large portion high-fat foods. A large fries has about 500 calories in it. That's more calories than an entire bacon ranch salad with chicken!

I kind of disagree. I don't see where McDonalds ought to be required to encourage public health. Does anyone really not get that it's bad for you? They should be required to disclose enough information to let people decide for themselves, and not unfairly target children (that's not saying "not target children", there are ok and not ok ways to handle it).

I'm not talking about posting nutrition information... that is both correct and good. It should have been required of all major vendors many years ago. But the Monopoly thing? The prize pieces are on the items that maximize profits because they're trying to encourage you to spend more money... that's what businesses do.

Holding businesses accountable for misleading, false or purposefully harmful behavior is good, and I will never argue against it. Requiring them to go way out of their way for the miniscule percentage of the population that don't know a Number 1 is absolutely terrible for you, and an Upsized Number 1 is even worse, seems kind of silly.

RE: McDonald's Plans to Put Nutrition Information on Packages