As the Government increases its oversight on food, with proposals for mandatory lower salt requirements, and ideas of taxes on sugar and fat, people are still choosing burgers over salads.

The nation’s first Lady Michelle Obama has been on a campaign for more than a year to try to reduce the number of overweight and obese people. Many agree they want to eat healthier foods and in response fast food chains, such as MacDonald’s have put an array of options in place. Despite all of the changes and public awareness going on, it appears much of it has been in vain with a recent study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) showing that only 15% of diners order lower fat / healthier options.

The sentiment of many people seems to be that they wouldn’t even enter a fast food chain restaurant if they wanted to eat a healthier meal and while restaurants are coy as to the percentage of sales their healthier options are making, independent research shows repeatedly that diners don’t care about healthier options that much. A BMJ article also shows only one in six people pay any attention to the calorie and food stats that fast food chains now make available.

Nearly 70% of Americans are classed as either overweight or obese, and when asked people generally say they’d like healthier options, but it appears the temptation for the happy meal is too great to resist. Another survey conducted by food research firm Technomic showed only 23% of diners ordering lower fat “healthier” options and only 11% of parents ordering apple slices as an alternative to fries at MacDonald’s happy meals.

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You might think that perhaps the restaurants would have given up on their “healthier options” but public opinion and Government oversight is keeping them on track, even while items such as KFC’s Double Down, a $5 sandwich of bacon and cheese slapped between two slabs of fried chicken with 32 grams of fat and 540 calories remain popular. IHOP offers a Simple & Fit breakfast with yogurt and fruit bowls, but its best seller is a 1,180-calorie breakfast sampler of eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns and pancakes, though IHOP claims that sales of the Simple & Fit have doubled in the last 12 months.

Burger King committed to promote healthier foods for children but then added a 530 calorie, 17 grams of fat Oreo Brownie Ice Cream sundae to its menu, while McDonald’s says its fruit smoothies and oatmeal with brown sugar released in 2010 are selling well, although it declined to disclose their revenue.

“We would not have them on the menu if we were not selling them at a rate that we could sustain them at,” said Molly Starmann, director of McDonald’s family business category.

This explains the fate of the 91% fat free burger developed by Macdonalds in 1991, which had poor sales.

A part of the problem is the time it takes to develop and market test a “healthier” alternative can be expensive and complicated for a food chain. It took Dunkin Donuts four years to find an alternative to transfats. Even once a change is successfully implemented and rolled out across the branches, if sales aren’t solid, the chain really has little choice but to can the item if performance doesn’t pick up.

You have to sympathize with comments from Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants Inc., which runs the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. fast-food chains, who pointed out that although his outlets offer salads and turkey burgers, he figures his best seller at Hardee’s is probably the Thickburger. The fully loaded version of it comes with two types of cheese, fried onions, mayonnaise and nearly half a pound of beef and weighs in at 1,170 calories and 83 grams of fat. (Recommendations are that most people consume 2,000 calories and no more than about 70 grams of fat each day.)

Puzder said :

“We have wonderful, healthy foods if people want to buy them … But they don’t sell particularly well.”

Rupert Shepherd reporting for Medical News Today.com