By Deirdre Spilman
Opinion Assignment Editor
Even if you live under a hunk of obsidian you know that eating food from McDonald’s is not the most health-conscious decision that someone can make.
The food is full of fat and sodium and slathered with grease. When eating McDonald’s, it is understood that you are probably consuming more calories than necessary, but it is difficult to know exactly how much more.
Until now.
This past Wednesday McDonald’s revamped its restaurants with new menus listing the amount of calories on every item to make it easier to see what you are eating, according to a Sept. 14 Washington Post article. This is a long-overdue, yet welcome change. Now customers can decide whether or not they are eating more calories than necessary and choose to order something a bit lighter.
The United States is the fattest country in the world with an obesity rate of 33.8 percent, according to a Feb. 22 Huffington Post article. Realizing how grossly filled with calories McDonald’s food is will hopefully serve as the wake-up call that this country is in such desperate need of.
Everybody has a distinct number of calories they should consume every day based on their height, weight and amount of daily exercise. For example, normal adult women ages 19-30 should consume somewhere from 2,000 to 2,400 calories a day according to livestrong.com. This means if you start your day with the Big McDonald’s Breakfast that contains 1,050 calories, you don’t have room for much more.
However, if you start your day off with a bowl of blueberry banana nut oatmeal, containing only 290 calories, you will have many more calories to spare when it comes to the next meal.
Maybe these new menus will finally knock some sense into the people who continually eat this junk. Sure, it tastes good and is OK to eat once in a while, but eating in moderation is not really how Americans operate.
In 2011, McDonald’s made $34.2 billion in sales according to a July 12 Business Insider article. With this and the fact there are over 14 thousand establishments in the U.S., it’s no surprise McDonald’s is the most popular fast-food chain in America.
This is why the menu reform initiative is so inspiring. They took the initiative with the menu reform. Its changes will be seen by the largest population of fast-food restaurant patrons. This will hopefully set an example for the other giants of the fast-food industry to provide the information that their customers deserve.
This helpful tweak to the McDonald’s menus could revolutionize the way Americans choose to eat, and maybe even knock us down from the less-than coveted spot of most obese country in the world.
