McDonald's execs in Australia admit its food is unhealthy. Specifically: "We need to find ways to evolve our core menu where you don't have to sacrifice taste for health," says Catriona Nobel, McDonald's ceo in Australia.
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald quotes Noble as saying, "When you look at our core menu, the things that people love about McDonald's, I still think that we need to find ways to evolve our core menu where you don't have to sacrifice taste for health." She said it's possible a lighter Big Mac could be developed a few years from now. Meantime, Mickey D is testing an "Oven Baked" for the next three months. If it's a hit in South Australia, it could be expanded.
That menu, pictured above, looks pretty disgusting. The Oven Baked menu, launched this month in 44 restaurants in the state of South Australia, includes entrées, breakfast items and desserts not seen at McDonald's elsewhere:
- Oven-baked Texas Chicken Skewers are sold as single skewers as a snack, in groups of three as an entree, or as part of an Extra Value Meal of three skewers with fries and a soft drink. The kebabs also can be added to the McDonald's Dinner Box deal. According to sources, the skewers are priced at $1.95 each or three for $4.95.
- A Chicken Parmigiana Burger (an oven-baked marinated chicken patty) sold a la carte or as part of an Extra Value Meal.
- That same oven-baked chicken patty is used for a Chicken Parmigiana Wrap or a half patty for a Parmigiana Snack Wrap .
- Star-shaped baked fish called, appropriately, Fish Bakes are sold in six-piece-packs like McNuggets with tartar sauce or in three- or six-piece Happy Meals.
- Baked breakfast items Maple McGriddles or Blueberry McGriddles (different from the U.S. version), both with Hotcake Syrup, are available separately or in a value meal with hash browns and coffee.
- A baked dessert called Baked Choc Pot, a molten lava cake, is accompanied by soft serve.
Are you still with me? A nutritionist named Rosemary Stanton told the Sydney Morning Herald said McDonald's should have to increase the salad and reduce the size of the meat and cheese in its Big Mac, change the sauce and replace the bun with a crustier one, meaning the burger would take longer to eat and consumers would feel sated without having to buy more. But she acknowledged that "won't appeal to them [McDonald's].''
For her part, corporate exec Noble said the introduction of a "Big Mac Light" was probably two to three years off, ''because to make those kinds of changes with the scale of our business is massive''. The development of the company's Angus beef burgers took three years from first concept to sale.
A Big Mac has 493 calories and 26.9 grams of fat, almost a quarter of the average daily adult energy intake and almost half the saturated fat intake.
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