Taco Bell Decides That ‘Living Mas’ Shouldn’t Always Make You Fat

Yes, the company that brought you Doritos-shell tacos (in two flavors), the phrases “fourth meal” and “live mas!,” and which will basically shove anything inside of a tortilla and sell it, says it no longer wants to have such a direct impact on customers’ waistlines.

In spite of the fact that a number of Taco Bell items are not at all bad for you, calorie-wise, the fast food chain has stressed in its marketing and packaging that customers should be eating a lot of these items, and washing it down with a soda. Now Taco Bell says it will be rethinking the whole notion and offering meal options that won’t constitute a day’s worth of calories.

According to AdAge, Taco Bell’s curiously Australian CEO Greg Creed said yesterday that, among other initiatives, the company has realized that the average human eats three meals a day. As such, it will be reducing the calories on some of its combo meals so that they only add up to around 666 calories, or about 1/3 of one’s recommended daily caloric intake. The Bell also says there will considerations for other dietary concerns like fat and sodium.

“We have to offer more balanced options,” explained Creed, who says that only about 20% of the chain’s combo meals will be affected, but wouldn’t say exactly which menu items would be altered. As for a timeline, expect some of these changes to start rolling out in 2014.

“We are not going to walk away from who Taco Bell is,” Creed assured the Taco Bell faithful, saying that these changes are about creating a “better” and “more relevant Taco Bell.”

A look at the current Taco Bell menu shows that there are already a number of individual items that are beyond that 666-calorie threshold, including the Volcano Nachos (970 calories); all three Fiesta Taco Salads (Beef: 780, Chicken: 730, Steak: 740); the Cantina Burritos (Chicken: 760, Steak: 780, Veggie: 740); the XXL Grilled Stuft Burritos (Beef: 880, Chicken: 830, Steak: 850); the A.M. Crunchwraps (Bacon: 680, Sausage: 730), and the Nachos BellGrande (760).

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