The main fast food brands in France, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and Quick, lack transparency on the additives used in their recipes and only two of them display a Nutri-Score, points Wednesday the association for the defense of Consumer-Consumer-Consumer-to Choose consumers.
The association highlights the “glaring limits of volunteering” in terms of information to customers and asks the European authorities “to make the mention of the Nutri-Score and the full lists of the ingredients compulsory”, according to a press release.
“Regarding the precise composition of their products, the four brands show here an unfortunate opacity with waves very generic compositions without interest for the consumer,” said the UFC.
The association thus indicates that in countries outside the EU where the legislation forces these brands to lister precisely their ingredients, as in Switzerland, the basic burger of McDonald’s contains 44 ingredients and additives when in France are only listed 6 main ingredients.
In the same way, at Burger King, the “Chicken Nuggets” are made up of 31 ingredients in Switzerland but “none is indicated for the + King Nuggets + French”, according to her.
Problem, according to the UFC: among the additives listed abroad, some “are suspected of increasing as the case may be the risks of digestive problems, inflammation of the intestine, diabetes or colon cancer”.
McDonald’s France assured AFP “scrupulously respect the regulations in force on consumer information, whether about ingredients, allergens and nutritional values”.
The brand prides itself on going “further than the regulations” by displaying “the nutritional values of (its) products, which is not compulsory for non -prepacal foods”.
The UFC survey also looked at the display of the nutritional score of the various burgers and salads sold in these brands and stresses that Quick and Burger King ignore the Nutri-Score.
“Good nutritional information is all the more essential in fast food as the offer is generally very unbalanced,” points out the UFC.
Finally, the UFC looked at the display of allergens.
If McDonald’s and Burger King are good students, the association deplores that in McDonald’s this information is confined to the terminals and that Burger King offers a precautionary labeling “capable of creating the confusion between allergens to the state of potential traces and those truly added in the recipe”.
At the bottom of the ranking on this criterion, Quick “does not give the slightest information on the allergens in terminals, which obliges to ask the information to the staff and, for his app and his site, is content to refer to a general table” while KFC “refers to a very complex general table” on its terminals.
Posted on July 16 at 10:31 a.m., AFP
