No More Cheeseburgers and Chocolate Milk, Kids

McDonald’s Happy Meals have been the go-to fast food meal in many American kids’ lives since the introduction of this product in 1979.

The iconic meals typically feature a hamburger, cheeseburger or chicken nuggets as the main course; a side item such as fries or fruit, a drink; and the ever-popular small toy or trinket.

McDonald’s announced in a press release on Thursday that by June of this year, Happy Meals on their menu boards will all be 600 or fewer calories.

To meet this goal, the company will be making a number of adjustments. Those include:

• removing cheeseburgers from the menu boards (you can still order one, though);
• swapping regular-sized fries for kid-sized fries in the six-piece chicken nugget meal;
• removing chocolate milk from the menu until McDonald’s can reformulate it to have less sugar (you can still order this, too); and
• adding bottled water as a beverage option.

In the press release, McDonald’s said that the upcoming changes to the children’s menu listings reflects the company’s “expanded commitment to families.” By 2022, the company plans to “offer more balanced meals, simplify ingredients, continue to be transparent with Happy Meal nutrition information, reinforce responsible marketing to children, and leverage innovative marketing to help impact the purchase of foods and beverages that contain recommended food groups in Happy Meals.”

Parents, health care advocates and others have long been concerned with the questionable nutritional value of Happy Meals. Though the meals certainly have improved over the years — with the addition of fruit options, reduction in fry size, and the removal of soda from the menu listings, for example — the children’s meals still leave quite a lot to be desired in the nutrition department.

Calories, sugar, saturated fat, and sodium levels have all been targeted as problematic.

Related: Fast Food and Income: The Shocking Disconnect

In addressing those nutrition-based concerns, McDonald’s noted, “With these planned menu updates, there will be average reductions of 20 percent in calories, 50 percent in added sugars, 13 percent in saturated fat, and/or 17 percent in sodium, depending on the customer’s specific meal selection.”

Are Happy Meals still “happy”? Sure! And soon, they will be a smidgen more healthy, too.

Denizens of social media, of course, had some feelings on the matter.

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[lz_third_party align=center width=630 includes= https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/964132228937773056]

[lz_third_party align=center width=630 includes= https://twitter.com/barstoolsports/status/964186316689719296]

[lz_third_party align=center width=630 includes= https://twitter.com/fed_fan81/status/964193775408074752]

[lz_third_party align=center width=630 includes= https://twitter.com/davidtark/status/964199729772056577]

Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and regular contributor to LifeZette.