Nutrition & Marketing Practices

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McDonald's mission is to create delicious feel-good moments for everyone. We listen to our customers and evaluate our menu to identify ways to evolve our offerings while maintaining the great taste people know and love.

On this page, you'll find information about our approach to this topic and links to related topics. For our progress and performance relating to nutrition and marketing, see the Goal Performance & Reporting page where you'll find our latest Purpose & Impact Report.

Our Strategy

We believe parents are looking for menu choices they can feel good about when it comes to feeding their kids. That’s why, in accordance with our values, we’ve been making balanced meals more accessible to families across the world by offering options that contribute to recommended food groups, such as fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy.

In 2018, we set five goals to evolve our Happy Meal over a five-year period. We published a report announcing our significant progress on those goals across 20 major markets¹ from 2018–2022. Read more in the independent report on our Global Happy Meal Goals (PDF – 1.8 MB).

We continue monitoring performance of our 20 major markets against the following key measures of progress:

• Offer balanced meals.
• Maintain simplified ingredients.
• Be transparent with Happy Meal nutrition information.
• Market responsibly.

As we look to the future, McDonald’s will continue to evaluate how our strategy can evolve to meet changing customer needs and preferences, building on the progress we have made to date.

Governance

Our nutrition and marketing strategies are overseen globally by our Chief Sustainability & Social Impact Officer and Global Chief Marketing Officer, who together provide updates as needed to a cross-functional leadership team of senior executives from across the Company who are accountable for leading McDonald’s Impact Strategy and report to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). They are supported by representatives from Global Impact, Global Menu Strategy, Global Brand and Global Supply Chain.

We also partner externally with industry experts to help inform our strategy. For example, we work with Keybridge, an independent third party supporting us in data collection and verification for metrics related to our key measures of progress. We worked with the nonprofit Alliance for a Healthier Generation on our kid’s nutrition efforts, including engaging them as a valuable third-party advisor on the development and measurement of our Global Happy Meal Goals – goals we have now reached and are focused on sustaining.

Marketing Responsibly to Children

We’re proud of our work in responsible marketing to children. To help us address this topic at both a Company and an industry level, we participate in various local and regional pledges such as the EU Pledge and the U.S. Children’s Food & Beverage Advertising Initiative.

McDonald’s Global Marketing to Children Guidelines, which apply to all our markets, incorporate our commitments related to responsibly marketing to children.

Supporting Informed Decisions

We believe that clear nutrition information is key to helping consumers make informed choices. We publish nutrition information to customers in a variety of ways, depending on location, including via printed brochures, nutrition labeling through the use of QR codes on select food packaging, innovative use of our mobile apps and kiosks, offering online nutrition calculators, and displaying calories on menu boards.

We also leverage opportunities to positively influence customer choices through how items are presented on our menus. For example, in the U.K., we are using our technology platforms to encourage customers to choose more balanced options. Since 2017, we have shown lower-calorie soft drinks first on menu ordering screens. In the U.K., we changed the position of low- and no-sugar drink options on our menu ordering screens; we also saw a significant increase in sales of these drinks. In 2023, we made the switch to promote our grilled chicken offerings ahead of crispy chicken across kiosk and app platforms in the U.K. and have since seen a meaningful increase in the share of grilled wraps selected by customers.

Focus on Evolving Our Menu

McDonald's is listening to our customers and evolving our menu based on their changing tastes and preferences. Our menu offerings vary by market to accommodate local consumer preferences and expand customer choice, including by featuring options like salads, alternate protein choices (grilled chicken, McPlant, fish, vegetarian and vegan), fruits and vegetables in menus to expand customer choice.

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Footnotes

¹ Our major markets include Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the U.K and the U.S.

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