Recent reports indicate McDonalds is making efforts to make their Happy Meals healthier by eliminating both cheeseburgers and chocolate milk as menu options.  In reaching this decision, McDonalds said it will “reinforce responsible marketing to children.”  (CNN Money).

In a ridiculous move, the American Heart Association championed the move and encouraged other fast food restaurants to follow McDonalds lead.

Upon reading all of this, my first reaction was, “Do they all realize this is McDonalds we are talking about?”

My next reaction was all of this hullabaloo over a piece of cheese?

If you go to McDonalds’ Nutritional Page, you will see the slice of cheese adds 50 calories and three grams of fat.  Conversely, it also reduces the amount of Vitamin A and calcium in the meal.

Now, the cheeseburger does have 100 more calories than the McNuggets but just one fewer gram of fat.  By the way, McNuggets are an absolute zero nutritionally as they have no Vitamin A or calcium and just two grams a piece of Vitamin C and iron.  Those McNuggets may not be made of pink slime, but given their lack of anything of nutritional value, it is hard to imagine they are made out of anything resembling chicken.

By the way, that is the nutritional information before you consider using a sugar laced dipping sauce.  Seeing the combination of the two, it makes you question what the hysteria is over a slice of cheese.

The disparity between the chocolate milk and the juice box leads to the same shrug as to why you are making an issue over fewer calories and nutrients.

More to the point, this is a Happy Meal.  No parent is under any delusions this is remotely healthy.  That is the case even with the apple slices that never brown or the yogurt which is really nothing more than creamed sugar with a slightly sour taste to it. Seriously, have you ever seen an apple not brown?  Why would anything think it’s healthy?

Overall, McDonalds is supposed to be nothing more than an occasional treat and not the basis of a daily diet.  We all know this.  That includes McDonalds and the American Heart Association who are all grandstanding on a slice of cheese.

It’s idiotic, and it’s a falsehood.

Really, if you are that concerned over a slice of cheese or chocolate milk, you would not be going to McDonalds in the first place.