Struggling McDonald's Announcing Plans to Pretend Fast Food Is Healthy

It’s a tale as old as time: a fast food restaurant and an American fall in love; the American becomes unhealthy and vows to change his or her ways; the fast food restaurant taps experts to ensure its customers aren’t going anywhere; the cycle continues.

But really: I’m laughing at this, because McDonald’s has hyped up today as being a “big reveal” for some changes down the road—mostly those of the health and wellness variety—in order to keep up with changing tastes (both literally and proverbially).

Reports AP Online:

Back in December, it [McDonald’s] said it would start trimming its menu to simplify operations and make room for new offerings. The nips and tucks in the past couple months targeted minor sandwich variations. More recently, the company revamped its grilled chicken recipe and said it would curb the use of antibiotics.

The company also said last month that it would double its planned restaurant closures this year to roughly 700.

I’m all for chicken that’s free of antibiotics, but I remain highly skeptical of any fast food chain that tries to get on board with healthy eating bandwagons—in particular, the juicing and detox trends that are finally starting to take off in Boston—because at their core, they’re fast food restaurants, and frankly, fast food is not supposed to be healthy. It’s supposed to be disgusting, greasy, and fuck with your emotions as you feel anxious and bad when you cruise through a drive through, but also vindicated when you chomp into your first fry and think, yep, this is what life’s about. A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a Big Mac.