FATTENING UP: FAST FOOD SALES SURGE

McDonald’s sold $5.9 billion worth of fast food in the second quarter, 57 percent more than 2020’s second quarter, the company reported.
Sales beat analysts’ forecast of $5.6 billion for the period. 
Same-store sales for the quarter were 7 percent higher than in 2019’s Q2, with gains in U.S. business leading the increase.
Revenue increased due to greater take-out sales, a 6-percent menu price boost, and the public’s fondness for the chain’s new crispy chicken sandwich, McDonald’s said.
About 70 percent of McDonald’s dining rooms have reopened in the U.S., the company noted, and it expects to open the rest by Labor Day.
However, finding enough workers to reach that goal may be difficult, McDonald’s admitted in comments quoted by The Wall Street Journal.
The company and its franchisees have promised to increase pay and benefits to lure new employees and keep current ones.
The strength of the COVID virus’s delta variant could further complicate the struggle to staff outlets.
Restaurants’ stock prices softened last week as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines calling on vaccinated persons to be masked in areas of the country where a minority of people have received the stab.
McDonald’s share price fell 1.9 percent in 2108 July trading.
Also last week, Yum Brands, owner of KFC and Taco Bell fast-food chains, joined Coca-Cola and Pepsico in reporting better-than-expected sales in this year’s second quarter.
Revenues climbed 34 percent, year on year, to $1.6 billion, ahead of the $1.48 billion median forecast among economists surveyed by Factset. Digital orders ballooned by 35 percent.
Yum’s windfall was the result not only of strong consumer demand but also of the 603 new stores it opened in 62 countries during the quarter, including 522 new KFC outlets.
The company’s 50,000 restaurants worldwide are helping it spread the impact of inflation and spare consumers dramatic price increases, CEO David Gibbs said in comments quoted by the Associated Press.
TRENDPOST: America’s waistline is growing as fast as sales of junk food and sugar-laden fizzy drinks.
In 2018, 73 percent of U.S. adults were overweight and almost 43 percent were obese, as measured by body mass index, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 31 percent of children age 6 and older are overweight and about 20 percent are obese, the Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated.
Politicians crashed the economy to ostensibly protect us from the coronavirus … which largely attacks the obese and Type 2 diabetics that, as the data proves, became less healthy with the lockdowns. 
And, as we have noted, while the media and politicians sell the COVID vax as the only way to avoid getting the virus, absent is how to get healthy and build ones’ immune system to defeat it. 
They have done nothing to defend against a true pandemic of declining health rooted in what is now called the “Standard American Diet” of refined flour, refined sugar, and processed foods that are more noxious than nutritious.
As we have reported in the Trends Journal, not only is the obesity and overweight trend deadly, it’s costly.
The report, “America’s Obesity Crisis: The Health and Economic Impact of Excess Weight,” produced by the Milken Institute, includes data showing that the impact of obesity and overweight on the U.S. economy is more than $1.7 trillion, which equals 9.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development concludes the number of overweight adults reduces GDP by an average of 3.3 percent globally, with modern economies spending over 8 percent of total health budgets on obesity issues.  The U.S. has the highest rate at 14 percent.  
More than one in three adults in Mexico and New Zealand are very overweight and more than one in four in Australia, Canada, Chile, and Hungary.  
The McKinsey Global Institute reports that the economic impact of obesity amounts to $2 trillion annually, which works out to about 2.8 percent of the global GDP.