Wednesday, December 30, 2009

7400: Taco Bell’s Healthy Hypocrisy.


The New York Daily News reported on the latest gimmick from Taco Bell—a spokeswoman who claims to have lost weight while eating at the fast food joint. Pretty contradictory for a place that introduced The Fourth Meal.

Taco Bell’s new spokesperson, Christine, claims to have lost 54 pounds eating Fresco menu items

By Nicole Carter
Daily News Staff Writer

Move over Jared, there’s a new fast-food weight-loss icon in the making.

Say hello to Christine: She lost 54 pounds by ordering off Taco Bell’s low-fat “Fresco” menu, according to the chain’s new Drive-Thru Diet campaign, ABCNews.com reports.

That’s right, Taco Bell.

The Mexican fast-food chain is serving up a healthier menu items and now a healthy spokesperson, like Subway’s Jared Fogle, who helped rake in billions of dollars over the last decade for the chain, reports ABC News.

Fogle’s now-famous before and after weight-loss commercials (he lost over 245 pounds) made him a household name and rebranded the sandwich joint as a healthy alternative to burgers and fries.

But with nearly one-third of the population obese, experts are having a hard time swallowing the idea that fast food is really an answer to living a healthier lifestyle, according to ABCNews.com.

“What I like is the availability of fast food items that are improved,” Dr. David Katz, director of Medical Studies in Public Health at Yale University told ABCNews.com.

“I also suspect that most people hoping to ‘be’ Christine will be very disappointed, just as most Jared wannabes are,” Katz continued. “These are likely people who made a dramatic commitment to lifestyle change, and simply relied on a particular source of convenience food as a part of their strategy. That doesn’t make that source of convenience food the solution!”

In a short statement on drivethrudiet.com, Christine attributes her weight loss, which happened over two years, to “choosing Fresco items … and making other sensible choices.”

“These results aren’t typical,” she adds, “but for me they were fantastic!”

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