McDonald's labels tell you just what you're eating

The new labels give percentages, based on the needs of a reasonably active adult.

McDonald's is adding nutritional information to its packaging from next month and is also planning to make what is inside healthier.

It is putting nutrition guides on all its products except its drinks and is planning to replace its cooking oils with a healthier alternative by the end of the year.

But nutrition experts are unsure if the moves will do much to curb the country's growing obesity problem.

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McDonald's marketing director, Ian Sutcliffe, said the new packaging labels, which would be used with burgers, breakfast items, french fries, deli choices and salads, would be introduced over six months.

And by the end of the year, the company hoped all its restaurants would be using canola oil. This would reduce the amount of saturated fat and trans fat, which have been strongly linked to heart disease.

The change would be most noticeable in the fat content of its french fries, he said.

The company at present uses a blend of sunflower and canola oil, which replaced beef tallow in June 2004.

Massey University nutritionist Professor John Birkbeck said the shift in cooking oils was a "two-edged sword".

Polyunsaturated oils such as canola oxidised quickly under high heat, which could make them less healthy.

Brownish french fries were often an indication that old oil was being used in deep-frying.

Professor Birkbeck said the oil would have to be changed more often for there to be any benefit.

However, he had "strong misgivings" about the nutrition labels. The labels were based on the needs of a reasonably active adult and requirements could vary by up to 50 per cent depending on age, gender, body size and physical activity.

"I think it really depends on how much information the public actually has or gets about how to interpret those things," he said.

"I don't think it's easy to interpret them just at face value. You do need a certain amount of knowledge about what those numbers mean.

"This is not a criticism of McDonald's because it's actually being encouraged by quite a few people in the health area."

Obesity Action Coalition executive director Celia Murphy preferred a traffic light system, with foods labelled with red, orange or green labels depending on how healthy they were.

Nutrition panels were a complicated way of giving people information, she said, and the new labels would change buying patterns only among "the healthy, wealthy and well-informed".

"It needs to be something that's very, very simple."