McDonald’s is trying to make its food offerings better and fresher to coax young adults back to their restaurants. In addition to a simplified drive-thru menu, the company is also testing fancy giant burgers, cutting ingredients from its products, and will no longer use chicken treated with antibiotics also used in humans. Yet their decision to start serving kale as a regional test is drawing lots of attention.

That’s because we don’t really associate leafy green vegetables with McDonald’s. Maybe we should reconsider. The amount of a vegetable needed to put it in the massive McSupply Chain means that McDonald’s can very quickly become the top buyer of a fruit or vegetable once they put it on the menu. For example: their McWrap sandwiches contain English (semi-seedless) cucumbers, and Bloomberg News explains (warning: auto-play video) that it took the company two years to make sure they had access to enough cucumbers to fill wraps in stores nationwide. In the wraps’ first year, McDonald’s bought 6 million pounds of cucumbers. After adding apple slices to Happy Meals, McDonald’s became the biggest buyer of Gala apples in the country. If the breakfast bowls that include kale take off, that one item alone could significantly increase how much kale Americans eat…and how much needs to be grown.

How McDonald’s Could Conquer Kale [Bloomberg News] (Warning: auto-play video)

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