Taco Bell Making Changes…Slowly

Worried that Taco Bell’s plans to make its meals more nutritionally balanced will ruin your favorite fast food experience? You can relax, at least for a while. The big changes Taco Bell is touting are set to be rolled out in 2020. Yes, you read that correctly. According to Taco Bell’s parent company, Yum Brands, Taco Bell will be giving themselves plenty of time to tackle an ambitious agenda that includes ensuring that 20% of their combo meal combinations (a drink, a side, and a main dish) meet one-third of the federal government’s recommended guidelines for calories and fat.

Why the long timeline? Well, the last time Taco Bell turned its focus to healthier eating — 20 years ago with its “Border Lights” menu — the results were a bust.

The company also announced that new product development guidelines, which formerly only looked at two variables — taste and price — will now look at three — taste, price, and the brand’s new nutritional  goals. Products that don’t meet the guidelines might not be developed. Taco Bell says their younger customers are asking for the change. Let’s hope the changes are still as interesting to those customers seven years from now.

To be fair, even slow progress is progress, and Taco Bell has already removed 20% of the sodium from its menu, so give them credit for committing to long-term progress. And send some of their Doritos Locos Tacos our way. We hear Taco Bell has been busy creating 150,000 jobs with those little gems.

Click here to read more in USA Today, click here to read more in the Huffington Post, and click here to read about 150,000 new jobs from one little taco.

Tortoise image © Aaron Logan / Wikimedia

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