About 1,200 McDonald's stores in Britain now have calorie counts on their menu board. The increasing number of overweight and obese British alarmed the government. And because of that, the U.K. government created a healthy program wherein restaurants and fast food chains should be transparent in providing caloric counts in serving their meals.

Though the government program is not compulsory, McDonald's voluntarily imposed posting calories on menus to all their stores in Britain. The leading fast food chain company didn't pledge for salt reduction but the management promised to get rid of artificial trans fats from its food products.

Aside from McDonald's, other restaurants also helped the government in promoting healthy eating by posting caloric counts on their menu boards. Some of them are Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and KFC. The U.K government is really serious about their anti-obesity program since obesity is among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality all over the world.

McDonald's is known to have millions of branches worldwide. And this is the second time that they posted the number of calories for each and every food on their menu board after doing it in all the states of U.S. last 2008.

Because of this program, people will be opt to switch in a healthier way of eating. Most likely, those who usually eat burgers with upsized fries and drinks will gradually switch to healthier options. With this set up, people will think twice before ordering their favorites. People will most likely resist the temptation of ordering a Big Mac especially when they know that it is equivalent to 490 calories.

Just like the U.K. government, The Department of Health in Australia should also create programs against obesity and pro-healthy eating. An alarming increase of overweight and obese children was reported on the latest results of Australian National Healthy Survey. Around 20 to 25% of Australian kids are overweight on which 30% of them are obese. On the other hand, 68.5% overweight males and 52.2% obese females are observed on the older population.

Programs like adding the caloric count of food will indeed help the Australian population in avoiding too much calories. This may be the first step to lessen the increasing number of obese and overweight people and therefore decrease the morbidity and mortality rate.