http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/05/taco.bell.diet/index.html
CNN recently released an article detailing the "Drive-Thru Diet," Taco Bells new initiative to jump on the healthy eating bandwagon. This diet consists of eating off the Fresco menu, which is seven burritos or tacos with lowered calorie values. But here's the issue.
The items are not cooked any differently than the regular items on the Taco Bell menu. In fact, the only differences in the products at all are that those on the Fresco Menu have a tomato, onion and cilantro salsa instead of cheese and sauce. While replacing these high fat toppings is undoubtedly healthier, CNN reports that there is only a 20-100 calorie difference per item when eating off the Fresco Menu. Given that the average person consumes roughly 2000 calories in a day, this difference hardly seems significant. Additionally, Items on the Fresco Menu are still very high in sodium. Many nutritionists throughout the article are cited in debunking this "Drive-Thru Diet" with their Jared-like spokeswoman, as she lost the weight over a period of years and increased her exercise, as well as the fact that this diet required her to eat Taco Bell approximately 5-8 times per week.
Now, it seems to me that this is just another attempt by the fast food industry to make themselves still seem like a viable option to our society as trends continue to favor diets and extreme weight loss. When one makes a serious attempt to lose weight, they eat more home-prepared and fresh food, in addition to increasing exercise, not eating fast food nearly every day of the week. The calorie difference in these products is minimal, certainly not enough to base a diet on these products. It seems clear that all that matters, to Taco Bell at least, is making use that they keep their profits up with continuing trends, even if they use misleading advertising to do so.
Here is Taco Bell's Drive-Thru Diet website
http://www.drivethrudiet.com/
What I get out of this article is a fast food's desperate cry for attention and a game of tug-of-war over the minds of consumers. Since research and health officials are targeting fast food places as extremely unhealthy meal options, many consumers are backing away and listening. However, now fast food places introduce their newly "improved" food lineup in order to win their consumers back. Magically enough, the constant back-and-forth consumers go through while deciding what they should and shouldn't eat is a continuous cycle. Because our society is based off of a fast-paced daily schedule, many Americans do not have time to really look into what is and isn't good for them. In turn, they end up reading the front page of the New York Times or Star magazine's inside diet article, and base their food choices from an opinionated writer.Rather than researching a food intake plan with some relevance to their own lifestyle.
This "drive-through diet" campaign, similar to the advertising efforts many other fast food restaurants are practicing in order to appear more health conscious, is relying on the lack of nutritional education the public possess towards the fast food industry. The average American watches a catchy commercial with emphasis on the word "diet" and automatically believes they will lose weight as they crunch into their favorite fat filled meal. From a advertising prospective, this idea of creating an entire line of "healthier" options is quite clever, regardless of the fact these new options have little difference to the overall health of the customer.
The fact that Taco Bell is preparing their Fresca line almost identically to a normal item on the menu is something I think people need to take into consideration. Though any efforts to drop fat content in a calorie-packed taco is useful to the customers, these efforts are definitely aiming for the money of the customer, more so than the well being of the individual.