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Taco Bell is trying desperately to distance itself from the other fast food joints and replicate Subway's PR coup à la Jared Fogle by challenging Oklahoma City to get fit. The city's mayor has already started an initiative to help the fat city lose a million pounds and already the participants have lost a staggering 57,000 pounds. The mayor himself has lost 57 pounds since April 2007, roughly a pound a week since he started.

Taco Bell's main contribution toward eating lighter is its Fresco menu, which is the common sense approach to healthier fare, containing 9 items that have 9 grams of fat or less. Really, this is just another marketing ploy, since the Fresco menu just contains steak or chicken items without cheese, sour cream or deep-fried taco shells. Of course, you can always just turn anything into a "Fresco" option by simply avoiding things with that greasy ground beef and asking them to skip the cheese. The National Weight Registry notes that those people who are most successful with their weight loss are those who avoid fast food, so the Oklahomans who really want to succeed might want to make their own tasty tacos and avoid the drive thru completely, but the Fresco menu is certainly a step in the right direction, and comes a little closer to my dream of having a McMarks & Spencer fast healthy nutritional food joint on American soil. I'll take what I can!