02/08/04 - Health & fitness section

The McCalorie counter By Mark Prigg, Evening Standard, Science Correspondent

It is the latest attempt by McDonald's to convince us that its menu is healthy.

Next week the fast-food chain launches an adult Happy Meal for £3.99, offering a choice of salads, a diet drink - and a pedometer to count the number of steps you take.

McDonald's hopes the campaign will improve its image. However, today we can reveal that:

* To burn off a Big Mac meal you would need to walk 16 miles - four and a half laps of Hyde Park. * Even the healthiest salad would take 2.5 miles to walk off, according to experts. * A chicken Caesar salad contains 530 calories and carries 18.4 grams of fat - compared with 299 calories and 11.5 grams of fat in a standard cheeseburger.

As concerns grow over Britain's obesity epidemic, McDonald's has come under fire in a documentary, Super Size Me, in which director Morgan Spurlock ate only its food for 30 days, seriously damaging his health in the process.

Over the 30 days, Spurlock put on weight, suffered depression, lost his sex drive and his liver began to fail.

McDonald's was also recently criticised for the fat content of its salads.

Experts warned today against the new menu. Nutritionist Natalie Savona said many high street salads were misleading.

"Salads in general are a bit of a myth," she said. "If you just eat the salad, then great, but once you've put the dressing with cheese, oil and bacon on it then it can become very unhealthy.

"It is also very important to watch for the salt content, as in many salads it can be very high. But it's not just McDonald's who are at fault here. Walk into any supermarket or sandwich shop and you'll see salads layered with mayonnaise. People think just because they are buying salad it is the safe option, but that is rarely the case. But something like a Big Mac meal is definitely one to avoid; it's your entire calorific intake for a day."

Miss Savona said to rely solely on fast food is to court disaster. "The key is to eat a variety of food. Relying on any one food or diets that restrict what you eat heavily is a bad idea."  
 
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