The Case of the Missing Calories

Do lawsuits change the nutritional value of foods? For McDonald’s, the answer seems to be yes. Thanks to blogger Michele Simon, the public is now aware of some tricky misinformation from McDonald’s.

In a recent action, the consumer group the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) asked McDonald’s to stop using toys in their Happy Meals as a way of enticing children to eat unhealthy food and threatened to sue them if they would not end the practice. One statistic cited by CSPI was that none of the happy meals on the McDonald’s happy meal menu, even those with “apple dippers” and milk or apple juice, had less than 430 calories, the recommended caloric intake of one meal for a child 4-8 years old. According to McDonald’s own nutrition facts at the time, this was true.

But that was back on June 22. By June 25, three days after CSPI’s announcement, the new nutrition facts on McDonald’s website showed each of the meal combinations that contained McDonald’s “apple dippers” with 70 fewer calories, so that three of the 12 combinations would fall under 430 calories. McDonald’s offered no explanation of how their apple dippers suddenly lost 70 calories, but Simon wonders if they just opted to omit their sugary caramel dipping sauce that comes as a side to this “healthy” alternative to fries. This mysterious nutrition revision is just another question McDonald’s will have to answer about their marketing to children if CSPI continues with their litigation.

Post by John Skinner