The people I know who love fast food, really love fast food. They revel in its greasy, fatty, sketchy glory. They take an almost perverse enjoyment in the fact that they’re attacking their body with calorie bombs (constructed in a lab somewhere) disguised as food. I’ve often wondered why fast food chains don’t play to that demographic. Why don’t they embrace their role as the super villains of the food world? I guess the answer is that by doing that, they’d only be preaching to the converted. Chains like Subway and Chipotle, meanwhile, are taking big chinks out of their armour focusing on fresh, made-to-order foods. Well, the big boys have started to notice.
Burger King adds “healthy” menu options
Burger King will soon be adding “real fruit” strawberry smoothies, Asian chicken salads and oatmeal to their restaurants. “We’re known as the best place for burgers; we’re going to continue that, but we also need to broaden our target,” Steve Wiborg, executive vice president and president of Burger King recently said in an interview. Burger King, you should know, was recently purchased by 3G Capital Inc., a New York-based private equity firm for roughly $3.93 billion. They seem to be changing strategy across the board, even dropping the ad agency that came up with that creepy king character.
All this comes a year after McDonald’s introduced fruit and maple oatmeal and mango-pineapple smoothies to their menus. Wendy’s, meanwhile, is promoting “natural” lemonade and summer salads. These additions may represent a shift in philosophy at these chain behemoths, but then again, it might just be posturing. Wendy’s lemonade is made with sugar and lemon juice, but it still packs 410 calories. And let’s defer to New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman when it comes to McDees’ oatmeal, which he described as, “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”
Will this new approach work? Or is it just going to turn off the hardcore, grease-drenched fanatics of these chains? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I like food too much. 
I think eventually they’ll load those “fresh & healthy foods” with sugar and the cycle will start all over again…I don’t think it’s so much, “the grease” part of fast food that is bad, because once in a while it’s ok…but it’s the sugar loaded and laced foods that should never even have this ingredient in them…also how can you possibly cook food that fast and it be healthy? Not possible.
I recently had 2 x double cheeseburgers and I remember being thoroughly delighted with the wrapping and experience of the food, but equally & again thoroughly disappointed when i first bit into the things…the only thing that kept me going is the 1 oz of ketchup i put in each one of those things…