McDonald’s replaces corn syrup in buns, artificial preservatives in McNuggets

Artificial preservatives will be removed from McDonald’s pork sausage patties, eggs served on McGriddles sandwiches and scrambled eggs served on breakfast platters, according to the company.

Chicken nuggets and some breakfast items will see artificial ingredients eliminated, while the high-fructose corn syrup used in buns will be replaced by butter.

McDonald’s has been continuously tweaking its menu over the a year ago in an effort to drive up sales and improve the widespread perception that its food is unhealthy and overprocessed.

Additionally, McDonald’s has completed its commitment to only serve chicken not treated with antibiotics important to human medicine nearly a year ahead of schedule.

McDonald’s got rid of them in McNuggets and a number of other menu items as part of a continued commitment to being more transparent about its food, the company announced Monday.

“We’re taking steps to ensure the food we’re proud of is food you love, and feel good eating”, a section of the print ad reads. This announcement comes a year and a half after McDonald’s publicly committed to require its poultry suppliers to stop using medically important antibiotics, and after a continued dialogue with Friends of the Earth and a coalition of groups working to end the misuse of antibiotics in meat production.

“We’re about making purposeful change”, says Marion Gross, senior vice president of supply chain for McDonald’s USA. This includes buns used on Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, hamburgers and cheeseburgers, Filet-O-Fish and McChicken sandwiches.

The latest changes were announced at an event about the company’s “food journey” at its headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Michael Jacobson from the Center for Science in the Public Interest told the AP, “swapping out high-fructose for sugar doesn’t make burger buns any healthier”, and doesn’t address the “big picture problem with restaurant food – the overabundance of calories”.

That salad switch, for one, was not all that hard to pull off as lettuce only takes 60 to 90 days to grow, said Ali Leon, VP-Ready Pac Foods, one of McDonald’s produce suppliers.

Critics have come down hard on McDonald’s for not making certain changes faster, such as a switching to cage-free eggs and removing antibiotics from its chicken supply.

And will we have to pay more?

The “new equation” now for food manufacturers, Moss said, is “more than just taste, something that doesn’t make you unhealthy in longterm consequences”. Some of this, said Andres, is because grocery prices are falling and more people are packing their own lunches.