The Restructuring of McDonald's

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I saw this article in The New York Times about McDonald's aiming to change it's menu and marketing and advertising campaigns to promote healthier eating. This includes no longer marketing less healthy options to children and adding fruits and vegetables to their menu. These plans are to be enacted in 20 of the company's largest markets which accounts for 85% of their overall sales, but will take at least 3 years to be put into place for half of those restaurants, with the remainder not having changes made until 2020. These changes are being made in response to contemporary tastes for healthier foods, criticism over the nutritional and caloric content of McDonald's food, and the growing obesity issue in America.

While  I do think that it is a good idea that McDonald's is trying to add healthier options to their menu and promote a healthier lifestyle, I think that the team restructuring McDonald's is missing the point. Consumers still have access to sugary sodas in extremely large sizes as well as to their burgers and fries that have bad nutritional value. McDonald's may be adding seemingly healthy food to choose from but they aren't actually fixing the problem with their food. The burgers and fries that they sell that are high in fat content, sugar, and calories, which are probably the most frequently ordered items on the menu, aren't being modified to be healthier. Additionally, I had remembered hearing reports that the salads from McDonald's actually weren't that healthy and found this article that claims that having a chicken caesar salad with dressing and croutons is actually more fatty than a burger and fries. This then raises the question if these new "healthy" options are actually healthy. In order to actually make McDonald's an establishment that promotes healthy living and sells healthy food, the entire menu has to be restructured. Simply adding things that seem to be healthy isn't going to change anything.