Obesidade

The challenges that Mcdonalds is facing on obesity its mainly because the base of McDonald's food contains two ingredients combated by health authorities: fat and carbohydrates.  

Obesity has become an epidemic, according to World Health Organization report released in 2000. In some countries, more than half of the population is overweight. In Italy, 36% from 9 year-old girls are chubby or obese. The United States has one-third of overweigh citizens.  And at the same time there is a big trend of healthy lifestyle starting to grow even faster all over the world.

So with all that McDonalds starts to face an image crisis. An image crisis, first of all, it is a crisis of confidence, a crisis of credibility, a reputation crisis. McDonald's does not sell sandwiches. It produces sandwiches. What it sells every day is confidence - confidence in product quality, security of facilities, confidence in sanitary conditions. Therefore, an image crisis is potentially more devastating than the other "normal" crises such as financial, that can often be faced without affecting consumer confidence.

For a few years now McDonalds hired nutritionists with the responsibility of making some healthy menus. The result is that McDonald's started to sell salads, wraps, fruits and white meat nuggets. Other change is in the Happy Meal, that now you can choose fruits instead of French fries, juice instead of Coca-Cola, and some other healthy choices.

The hamburger market, although it is the largest segment within the category fast food, has lost ground in developed markets. According to Euromonitor, the fast food still growing, but the share of burgers is growing a lot slower. So what helped Mcdonalds what the adoption of salads, a few years ago, which increased sales and stopped the growth of competitor like Subway, said to be healthier.

http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/obesity/WHO_TRS_894/en/

http://www.euromonitor.com/corporate-strategies-in-consumer-foodservice-a-year-of-change/report