China's New Menu

By Xiong Min

In China, fast-food giants KFC and McDonald's are competing in a new area: nutrition. Given that health experts are blaming Western food for an obesity surge, China's consumers are getting more cautious about food safety and nutritional value. In April the Chinese Ministry of Health claimed that fried food is carcinogenic and suggested that people avoid eating it, putting KFC and McDonald's at the center of the dispute.

In response, McDonald's, which has 700 outlets in China, says it will list nutritional information on most of its packaging next year, using an easy-to-understand icon-and-bar-chart format. McDonald's already makes some information available. On a recent visit, customer Kangwei Wu saw some brochures on nutritional content at a McDonald's in Guangzhou, but, she said, "they were placed in the back corner of the restaurant where people barely noticed them." KFC, with 1,200 restaurants, began rebuilding its image in China last summer. On its Chinese website, KFC presented a 1950s revolutionary-style picture of a fist (a symbol of the proletariat). The headline reads: KFC CHANGES FOR CHINA. Owner Yum Brands' Chinese CEO Su Jingshi says KFC is determined to provide Chinese-friendly food, like Cantonese egg tarts. KFC also reorganized one of its most popular meal combos: it replaced Coke and French fries with juice and fruit.