McDonald’s Mission Statement: Promoting Healthy Fast Food Choices

New York City is trying to make happy meals a healthier option for children by requiring certain nutritional values be met with the "Health Happy Meals" bill. The new bill would require that meals offering a toy have no more than 500 calories, 600 milligrams of sodium, contain at least one serving of fruit, vegetables, or whole grains, and only so many calories may come from fats and sugar. Currently the only happy meal menu item McDonald's offers that meets the proposed guidelines is the Chicken McNugget meal, the other meals exceed both caloric and sodium restrictions. The bill is being introduced with the idea of incentivizing children to eat healthier, with recent New York City statistics showing that approximately half of elementary school children are overweight.

A similar bill was introduced in San Francisco in 2011, but McDonalds was able to avoid the restrictions by making the toy an optional part of the meal for an extra 10 cents. McDonalds has not commented if it will attempt a similar strategy to avoid the restrictions, nor does the bill specify any ways to prevent McDonalds from exploiting the same or similar loopholes (Smith).

The proposed bill is controversial to many people because of the extra burden that it would put on McDonalds, a burden that many people argue should be placed somewhere else. The question is whether or not McDonalds or any other fast food restaurant has a corporate responsibility to make their food healthier. When looking at McDonalds it is obvious right away that it is a corporate enterprise. While a corporate enterprise may have some responsibility to meet basic sustainability requirements, it is "managed to ultimately yield a profit" (Simpson 13).

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Furthermore, when we look at McDonald's mission statement and values, there is very little that can be attributed to providing healthy food. The key focus of their mission statement of their mission statement is to be their "customer's favorite place and way to eat and drink" and the goal of their values is "quality, service, cleanliness and value" (McDonalds).

While there may be some debate over how well a couple of those values are being met, there do not seem to be any claims of trying to produce the healthiest meal possible or even a remotely healthy meal for their customers that would make McDonald's responsible for their customer's unhealthy eating habits. If we look at McDonald's core competencies that set them apart from other restaurants we see a similar situation where the focus is fast, uniform, and cheap food.

These traits are what make so many customers choose McDonald's over a slower or more expensive restaurant. If the bill were passed the added restrictions on McDonald's menu could have large scale effects down the line of their supply chain as they scrambled to change their ingredients and processes that could make it more difficult for them to meet their core competencies and stay competitive in the market.

Personally I think that the government in New York City is overstepping its bounds by introducing this new bill. While I believe that a restaurant has some responsibilities to its customers on the standards of their food, they also have a responsibility to their stock holders to turn around the greatest profit possible.

After looking at their website, mission statement, and values, I do not think that McDonald's has made any claims on the content of their food that obligates them to make it healthier. They offer a menu with all caloric values and clearly states that they are going after value as it relates to cost and speed, not trying to make quality health food. The parents of the children have a much greater responsibility to teach them about eating healthy and provide those options than a corporation trying to satisfy shareholders.

Works Cited

1. McDonald's. McDonald's - The Leading Global Food Service Retailer. McDonald's, n.d. Web.
   26 Aug. 2014.
2. Simpson, Natalie, and Philip Hancock. Practical Operations Management. Naperville, Illinios:
   Hercher Publishing Incorporated, 2013. Print.
3. Smith, Aaron. "New York City Aims to Slim Down Happy Meals." CNN Money 22 Aug.
   2014 [New York]. Web. 26 Aug. 2014.

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