McDonald’s says the film “540 Meals,” criticized as an infomercial that the fast food giant is pushing in schools, is about “making informed and balanced choices no matter where you choose to eat and incorporating exercise into your daily routine.” The 19-minute film follows a school teacher from central Iowa, John Cisna, who lost weight while eating every meal for 90 days at McDonald’s.
The blog The Lunch Tray says McDonald’s is promoting the film in middle and high school classes, with an accompanying discussion guide for teachers, but “is hardly a neutral lesson in calorie balancing” and gives little time to nutrition or how to calculate daily caloric needs.
In the film, Cisna, who weighed 280 pounds in September 2013, describes how he lost 37 pounds in three months by limiting himself to 2,000 calories a day while adding 45 minutes of walking to his daily routine. “This experiment wasn’t about me” or a fast-food chain, he says. “This experiment is about teaching kids to use critical skills in making proper choices.” Cisna says his students selected his menu one week at a time while heeding the calorie limit and tracking 15 nutrients.
Cisna made an amateur video and wrote a book about his experience. The fast food giant then appointed him a “brand ambassador” in late 2014 and he now “travels the country to share his personal story of choice and balance,” said McDonald’s spokeswoman Lisa McComb.
“John’s story is not a weight loss plan, and we do not recommend that anyone eat every meal at one restaurant every day for an extended period…While the decision on how schools choose to educate and inform their students is up to them, we support John’s desire as a teacher to provide students with facts to make informed choices,” said McComb in a statement.
“Critics say the program is a new attempt by McDonald’s to hook youngsters on unhealthy food,” said Reuters. “For example, Cisna says in the video that careful planning allowed him to eat french fries nearly every day.” Bettina Siegel, who writes The Lunch Tray, cites an analyst who says Cisna’s fast-food diet had twice the recommended daily limit for salt. Nor does the film tell students that Cisna’s meals were “a far cry from the generally accepted definition of a healthful diet, i.e., one rich in whole grains and containing five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables,” wrote Siegel.
Although there were reports that McDonald’s pulled the Internet link to the film, “The program is still alive and well,” said McComb, pointing to the company’s YouTube channel.